Origins of the Mesoamerican ballgame: Earliest ballcourt from the highlands found at Etlatongo, Oaxaca, Mexico.

The ballgame represents one of the most enduring and iconic features of ancient Mesoamerican civilization, yet its origins and evolution remain poorly understood, primarily associated with the Gulf Coast and southern Pacific coastal lowlands. While one early ballcourt dates to 1650 BCE from the Chiapas lowlands, ballcourts have remained undocumented in the Mesoamerican highlands until a millennium later, suggesting less involvement by highland civilizations in the ballgame's evolution. We provide new data from the southern highlands of Mexico, from the Early Formative period (1500-1000 BCE), that necessitate revising previous paradigms. Along with ballplayer imagery, we recently excavated the earliest highland Mesoamerican ballcourt, dating to 1374 BCE, at the site of Etlatongo, in the Mixtec region of Oaxaca. We conclude that Early Formative highland villagers played an important role in the origins of the formal Mesoamerican ballgame, which later evolved into a crucial component of subsequent states.

Early evidence of the ballgame in Oaxaca, Mexico.

As a defining characteristic of Mesoamerican civilization, the ballgame has a long and poorly understood history. Because the ballgame is associated with the rise of complex societies, understanding its origins also illuminates the evolution of socio-politically complex societies. Although initial evidence, in the form of ceramic figurines, dates to 1700 BCE, and the oldest known ballcourt dates to 1600 BCE, the ritual paraphernalia and ideology associated with the game appear around 1400 BCE, the start of the so-called Early Horizon, defined by the spread of Olmec-style symbols across Mesoamerica. Early Horizon evidence of ballgame paraphernalia both identical to and different from that of the Gulf Coast Olmec can be seen on figurines from coastal Chiapas and the central highlands of Mexico, respectively. The Mexican state of Oaxaca, however, has yielded little data on early involvement in the ballgame. The discovery of a ballplayer figurine in the Mixteca Alta region of Oaxaca demonstrates the early participation of this region in the iconography and ideology of the ballgame. In lieu of an actual ballcourt, the focus may have been on the symbolic component of ballplayers and their association with supernatural forces, as part of emerging leaders' legitimization strategies.

Olmec pottery production and export in ancient Mexico determined through elemental analysis.

The first Mesoamerican civilization, the Gulf Coast Olmec, is associated with hierarchical society, monumental art, and an internally consistent ideology, expressed in a distinct style and salient iconography. Whether the Olmec style arose in just one area or emerged from interactions among scattered contemporaneous societies remains controversial. Using elemental analysis, we determined the regional clay sources of 725 archaeological ceramic samples from across Mesoamerica. Exported Olmec-style ceramics originated from the San Lorenzo region of the Gulf Coast, supporting Olmec priority in the creation and spread of the first unified style and iconographic system in Mesoamerica.