Mounds and shaft tombs.........................

Teuchitlan: the unearthing of a lost world

Today, more than 150,000 people a year visit the Guachimontones, a local word meaning "mounds where you find plenty of bottle gourds." A well paved road takes them up the hill from Teuchitlán to a parking area which became too small almost as soon as it was created. Two of the three largest pyramids have been beautifully restored, each with its circular walkway or "patio" and surrounding platforms, which were previously bases for public buildings.

Between the second and the third largest pyramids lies what was, in its day, the largest ball court in Mesoamerica, 111 meters long. The game they played was quite different from the Aztecs' and, in fact, a form of it, called ulama is still played today in Sinaloa. The ball was a heavy round stone covered in natural rubber which players could hit with their hips. According to archeologists, all the skeletons of males found at Teuchitlán have broken hips. This was not a game for the faint-hearted!

The ball games were often played from sunrise to sunset. Points were gained by getting the ball into a corner in one of the L-shaped legs at each end of the playing field and immobilizing it. Interestingly, points were lost for errors and a team could end up with a negative score if they didn't play impeccably, a concept that even today might be useful for improving certain modern sports. At the end of the day, the captain of the winning team would receive the great honor of losing his life as a sacrificial victim.