Jom

El término k'iche' jom quiere decir "cancha" o "campo", específicamente en el contexto del Popol Wuj es donde se juega la pelota: "hace referencia al campo de juego de pelota," conforme al lingüista k'iche' Sam Colop (2008: 195n333).

The K'iche' term jom is best translated into English as "ballcourt." Within the context of the Popol Wuj, it is where the Mesoamerican ballgame is played. According to anthropologist Allen J. Christenson (2007: n378), "The ballgame was played throughout Mesoamerica beginning at least by the time of the Olmecs ca. 1500 B.C. Although the rules varied over time and from region to region, it generally involved opposing teams of two or more players attempting to bounce a solid rubber ball without the use of hands through a ring placed vertically along the ballcourt’s walls. Sahagun described a similar type of ballgame among the Aztecs in the sixteenth century:

These balls... were solid, of a certain resin or gum which is called ulli [rubber] which is very light in weight and bounces like an inflated ball.... The ballgame was called tlaxtli or tlachtli. The court consisted of two walls with some twenty or thirty feet of distance between them and each was up to forty or fifty feet in length. The floor and walls were heavily plastered, the latter having some one and a half estados [nearly ten feet] in height. In the middle of the court was a line made especially for the game; and in the middle of the walls, halfway down the playing stretch, were two stones like millstones perforated in the middle, facing each other, and they each had holes wide enough that the ball could fit into each of them. And whoever placed the ball there won the game. They did not play with their hands but hit the ball with their flanks. For playing they wore gloves on their hands and a leather apron on their flanks to hit the ball (Sahagún 1938, II.viii.10, pp. 297-298)."

Image credit: Justin Kerr Maya Vase Database, #1209.