THE
BIG WORLD TRIP
What we've been doing ...
NEW YORK CITY
Mon 15 Sept.
Our first full day in NYC. After breakfast and some
admiring of our view, we decided to go to the NY Museum of Natural History
on Central Park West, only a few blocks from our hotel. When we arrived we
decided to buy City Passes, the same deal as we had in San Francisco (without
the transport, sadly) and the passes gave us entry to the Natural History
Museum, the Empire State Building, the Guggenheim, a Hudson River cruise,
the Museum of Modern Art (presently relocated to Queens).
We first cruised through the American wildlife section,
which was pretty cool and had some amazing dioramas, then the famous Ocean
Room, which includes a full-size model of a blue whale, which is pretty impressive.
The Dioramas here were also superbly done.
Later on we explored their superb collection of fossil
dinosaur skeletons, which included the first complete T-Rex skull ever found.
Lucas loved it, of course.
The whole museum was fantastic but the highlight for
Averil and I was the incredible collection of of Meso-American artefacts,
I was particularly fascinated by the artefacts of the Mayan ball game, which
is reputed to be the inspiration for basketball. The gear the players wore
has to be seen to be believed.
The game was played in a large walled court and the
players bounced a solid rubber ball using only their hips. The rules of the
gane are lost to history but a few facts have been surmised form the artefcts
that have been found. Amazingly, the players wore U-shaped girdles carved
from solid stone around their hips, and these evidently acted as some
sort of counterweight which enabled them to propel the ball, which was apparently
very dense and heavy.
The figurine above depicts a ball player wearing
one of the stone girdles. How they were kept on is not certain but they were
presumably tied on by some means.
It seems incredible that they could play a very vigourous ball game with
these heavy stone girdles on, but apparently they would have been quite comfortable
to wear
and very effective in propelling the ball from player to player.
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This is a lamp that was made in the shape of one
of the ball-game girdles. The upright piece at the front was usually carved
in the shape of a stylised head
and evidently attached to the front of the girdle, but the method of attachment
and the purpose of the head-piece in the game are both unknown.
The girdles were, it seems, always worn with the open side to the left.
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This is a selection of the head-pieces which were attached to the girdles.
Some, like those at the back, are highly stylised, but others are very naturalistic.
The large head-piece at the centre back would be at least 10-12" high.
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Below are two of the best examples of actual girdles
used in the Mayan ball game.
On the inside of the upper one you can still see some traces of the pigment
used to colour it.
Make no mistake, these are big pieces of stone, at least 18" long
on a side and weighing something like 40 lbs each.
As you can see, they are beautifuully carved.
The lower example is very striking and apparently depicts a stylised crouching
jaguar(?).
From the depth of the carving at the ends it would appear that ropes were
probably wound around
the ends to attach them around the waist, but thats only a guess. Pretty
amazing, huh?
Ý