Top, from left: Recovered Mesoamerican ballgame court; Coba ruins from peak; Coba, viewed from ground. Bottom: A selfie; a family portrait- typical tourist stuff; Mayan glyph script, the only fully-developed pre-Columbian writing system in the Americas, of particular interest to me on the trip.

3 January 2016.  10:45a.m.  Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico. 

“The captain of the winning team,” Germán says, “earned the honor of being sacrificed to the gods.”  We stop in our tracks in the hot dirt.  Sweat cascades down our foreheads as we turn toward the guide, a young man who quit his office job and abandoned his college degree to spend six days a week guiding tourists through thousand year old Mayan ruins.  “Some reward, eh?”

An uneasy laugh emanates through our little group of American and European travelers.  The idea is entirely foreign to us; we’re more intrigued than repulsed.  The traditional game still practiced ceremonially by the Maya involves a ball…