Players of the Mesoamerican ball game are often shown wearing U-shaped pads or "bumpers" low on the waist as protection from the large, dense ball. Stone yokes are replicas of the wood and fiber protectors used in play. The complex images they bear emphasize their importance to ceremonies associated with the game. Small, blade-shaped stone pieces call hacha, carved to suggest human and animal heads, were attached to ceremonial yokes and may have served as markers on the ball court.
This yoke depicts a crouching man peering from the jaws of a felinelike creature, often interpreted as guardian of the entrance to the underworld. A player wearing such a yoke thus stood poised between life and death, his fate determined by the game and the cosmic forces he represents. A human face, eyes closed as in death, appears at each end of the yoke.
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<P>Players of the Mesoamerican ball game are often shown wearing U-shaped pads or "bumpers" low on the waist as protection from the large, dense ball. Stone yokes are replicas of the wood and fiber protectors used in play. The complex images they bear emphasize their importance to ceremonies associated with the game. Small, blade-shaped stone pieces call hacha, carved to suggest human and animal heads, were attached to ceremonial yokes and may have served as markers on the ball court.</P><P>This yoke depicts a crouching man peering from the jaws of a felinelike creature, often interpreted as guardian of the entrance to the underworld. A player wearing such a yoke thus stood poised between life and death, his fate determined by the game and the cosmic forces he represents. A human face, eyes closed as in death, appears at each end of the yoke.</P>
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