Yoke, c. 1–900 C.E., Classic Veracruz culture, greenstone, 11.5 x 38 x 41.5 cm (American Museum of Natural History, New York City)
[0:00] [music]
Dr. Steven Zucker: [0:06] We’re in the American Museum of Natural History, staring at some of the most magnificent objects I’ve ever seen. These are from ancient Veracruz. They are known in a colloquial sense as yokes, although they have nothing to do with oxen and tilling the field.
Dr. Rex Koontz: [0:20] The “yoke” actually comes from this idea that they held down sacrificial victims, which is absolutely not the case, but they’re so stunning. People have always wanted to know what they meant.
Dr. Zucker: [0:31] In Veracruz, there is no natural deposit of this greenstone, and so this would have had to been imported at enormous cost through treacherous terrain. Imagine how difficult it would have been to take a boulder of greenstone, this incredibly valuable material, and import it into Veracruz.
Dr. Koontz: [0:49] These were only held by the most important political and religious leaders in Classic Veracruz. In fact, they were very proud of having these. When we find burials of nobles, it is not uncommon for them to be buried with a few objects and their yoke.
Dr. Zucker: [1:05] Look at the technical facility that went into carving this. It is stunning. You see these broad, muscular volumes and then this fine, much flatter relief carving.
Dr. Koontz: [1:15] The very broad forms define the major motif, which we believe is a frog or a toad, with eyes, a tongue, the forelegs, and the hind legs. Then, interspersed inside those forms are these incredibly delicate incisions, as if someone’s almost taking a brush. It’s really almost calligraphic.
[1:35] The Classic Veracruz people inherit [those] monumental, simple forms from the Olmec, but this delicate, calligraphic line is their own invention.
Dr. Zucker: [1:46] It is as if the broad forms are sculpture and then there’s drawing within that. It’s really drawn out by the fact that cinnabar was used — that’s the red — to highlight those recessed lines.
Dr. Koontz: [1:56] Many, many objects had cinnabar rubbed into the light incisions to highlight the virtuosity, certainly.
Dr. Zucker: [2:03] Cinnabar is a dangerous material, it’s mercury.
Dr. Koontz: [2:06] Exactly. You have cinnabar used for two things in Classic Veracruz: one is rubbing into these lines to get the viewer to look at them, and the other is they would coat bones of ancestors in cinnabar.
Dr. Zucker: [2:19] How did people in ancient Veracruz view the frog or the toad? Why is that association important?
Dr. Koontz: [2:24] It’s water. Especially the border between water and land, any sort of swampy situation, and there’s a lot of that in Veracruz. Frogs, they are the beings that inhabit both land and water. Water for many Mesoamerican peoples, but for Classic Veracruz definitely, also had to do with the underworld and the land of the dead and where you went when you were buried.
Dr. Zucker: [2:48] This idea that one can trespass across the boundaries between life and death, and that’s especially important when we think about this object in relationship to the ballgame.
Dr. Koontz: [2:59] Exactly. The ballgame itself was one of those places where the supernatural and our world could meet.
Dr. Zucker: [3:06] We’re not talking about baseball or football or soccer as we think of it in the modern game, these were ritual events. We don’t understand the rules or the purpose for which games were played. We know that they weren’t just for entertainment.
[3:18] We know that the ballgame was enormously important because significant real estate was given over to ball courts in the major cities in Mesoamerica, and that’s especially true in this area in Veracruz.
Dr. Koontz: [3:28] In this area, even secondary cities, smaller places, all had their own court. Everyone played the game. However, objects like these were not used to play the game, they were used in processions and in other very important rituals in these courts.
Dr. Zucker: [3:47] What these are are stone representations of a piece of the uniform that was worn by a ballplayer. This was the belt.
Dr. Koontz: [3:54] People had to wear these belts because in the actual ballgame they had a solid rubber ball bouncing around the court. If this hit you, you would hemorrhage inside. In fact, we have Spanish accounts of people doing just that and dying.
Dr. Zucker: [4:08] Modern balls, a tennis ball, this is a thin, hollow ball. It’s quite light, but rubber is heavy material and a large solid piece of rubber coming at you at high velocity is going to hurt.
Dr. Koontz: [4:19] Exactly. They would build these wicker and leather contraptions that would allow them to hit the ball without the ball hitting their body.
Dr. Zucker: [4:27] The ballplayer presumably would have to be quite skilled at making sure they could contort their body to hit the ball with that belt.
Dr. Koontz: [4:33] We have this thing that looks like one of those belts, but is used in very important rituals that only the wealthiest and most important political players in Classic Veracruz would participate in. The ballgame is played everywhere. If the Spanish are any guide, the elite would sponsor these ballgames like the bread and circuses in Rome.
[4:58] People all over the Gulf Coast would come to these ballgames. It was the way to get everybody together and it was the way for the elite to act philanthropically, to be the big people. They wanted to be seen as great players, as great athletes, as great heroes.
[5:13] One of the ways they would do this is dress up like ballplayers, but of course they didn’t wear just any old ballgame suit, they would have greenstones. Again, they were not playing, but they were performing.
[5:25] They were processing for everyone in this highly charged environment, and they were intercessing between the supernatural and the natural, as the great heroes did in the past. In Veracruz, there were so many small kingdoms that in many ways to create spaces in which they could trade and debate and create alliances was difficult.
[5:47] One of the major ways they would do this is through the shared language of ballgame ritual. You had people coming from everywhere, inside and outside Veracruz, playing these games, trading with each other.
Dr. Zucker: [6:00] We have to be careful because we don’t really know how these games were played. We don’t really know what the implications of winning or losing meant.
Dr. Koontz: [6:07] We don’t have the details. What we do have are hundreds of courts during the period of Classic Veracruz.
[6:15] We literally have hundreds of these yokes, and when they’re not preserved whole like this, the Veracruz people then would break them up and put them into their sacred building foundations, ensuring that the power and the prestige of these things lived on in their cities.
Dr. Zucker: [6:32] One part of this that we haven’t discussed, which I find stunning, are the two ends, what you could call the base of the arch. What we’re seeing are two faces facing towards each other in profile, these classic Mesoamerican faces.
Dr. Koontz: [6:45] They’re classic youthful male faces. These are the faces of the youthful heroes throughout Mesoamerica. In fact, in the Maya area, they’re the Hero Twins. Two young males who are the great ballplayers who defeat death.
[7:00] [music]
