They would sacrifice the winners since by winning they demonstrated that they were more fit and blessed in the eyes of their gods and so were sacrificed to give their strength to the gods.
After some investigation, it turns out that we are all in the quantum state of being right as well as wrong, since the exact rules for the so-called Mesoamerican ballgame are unknown. In fact, there are probably no “exact rules”, or rather there is more than one set of rules, since ollamalizti was played by many mesoamerican cultures since as far as 3500 years ago.
On the other hand, there are known instances of captives being sacrificed after LOSING a rigged game of court ball.
Yeah, we still sacrifice the winners, but the losers get it too
Actually, I believe in a game of court ball it was the losers that got sacrificed.
They would sacrifice the winners since by winning they demonstrated that they were more fit and blessed in the eyes of their gods and so were sacrificed to give their strength to the gods.
After some investigation, it turns out that we are all in the quantum state of being right as well as wrong, since the exact rules for the so-called Mesoamerican ballgame are unknown. In fact, there are probably no “exact rules”, or rather there is more than one set of rules, since ollamalizti was played by many mesoamerican cultures since as far as 3500 years ago.
On the other hand, there are known instances of captives being sacrificed after LOSING a rigged game of court ball.
the only ball game in the world where there are NO winners!