Did the Maya Really Sacrifice Their Ballgame Players?

When they landed in the New World, the Spanish had never seen a ballgame, let alone a rubber ball. The Europeans were so intrigued, they sent a team of indigenous players to Spain to show the game to Charles V, according to the Met. But as the Spanish began conquering Mesoamerica in 1519, they stamped out the game, forbidding anyone from playing it because of its associations with human sacrifice and "idolatrous" religious practices, according to the study in Res: Anthropology and Aesthetics.