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They do represent the real yokes that were worn during the ball game, but those real yokes were of perishable materials and they probably, in almost all circumstances, have not survived."
它們象征著比賽中人們真正會使用的腰帶。不過那些腰帶通常都是用不耐久的材料制成的，無法保存下來。
We know a bit about the Central American ball game because it was quite frequently represented by local artists, who over hundreds of years made sculptures of player figures, and models of pitches, with the public sitting on the walls of the court watching the players. Later European visitors wrote accounts of the game, and a number of stadia built specially for it still survive today. The Spaniards, when they arrived, were amazed by the actual ball that the game was played with. It was made of a substance entirely new to Europeans...rubber. The very first view of a bouncing ball must have been extremely disconcerting-this round object, defying gravity and shooting around in random directions. The Spanish Dominican Friar Diego Duran reported a sighting:
我們對中美洲的球類比賽略知一二，是因為在幾百年間，當地藝術家創造了許多跟這種比賽有關的藝術品，如運動員雕像、觀眾圍坐著觀看比賽的球場模型等。此外，歐洲來客也曾記錄過這些比賽，而且至今在美洲還能找到一些當年專為這些比賽而修建的球場。比賽用球讓初到美洲的西班牙人震驚，這是一種對歐洲人來說完全陌生的材質橡膠。一個有彈性的圓球，似乎完全無視地心引力，可以向任何方向彈射: 第一次見到這種物品必定會驚訝萬分。西班牙多明我會修道士迭戈?杜蘭報道過：
"They call the material of this ball 'hule' (rubber) ... jumping and bouncing are its qualities, upward and downward, to and from. It can exhaust the pursuer running after it before he can catch up with it."
他們把制作這種球的材料稱為hule (橡膠）。彈跳性能極佳，能上下左右彈射。追球的人在追到之前，就已經筋疲力盡了。
These balls also became a kind of currency. Spaniards recorded the Aztecs' exacting tribute payments of 16,000 rubber balls. Not many have survived, but excavations and finds made by farmers across Mexico and Central America have turned up a few, as well as hundreds of stone belts like ours-and stone reliefs and sculptures showing players with these 'yokes' or belts around their waists.
橡膠球也變成了一種貨幣。據西班牙文獻記載，他們曾向阿茲特克人強行索要過一萬六千個橡膠球作為貢品。留存至今的球并不多，但墨西哥和中美洲的農民挖到過一些，同時還有數百件類似本節中文物的腰帶，以及一些石頭浮雕和雕像，上面的球員都戴著腰帶。
