《波波尔·乌》是危地马拉基切玛雅人的圣书，意思是「议事之书」。西班牙殖民后，基切人在16世纪中期用拉丁字母把它记了下来；今天存世最早的抄本，是西班牙传教士希门尼斯约在1701年前后抄写并译成西班牙文的，现藏美国芝加哥的纽伯里图书馆。

The Popol Vuh is the sacred book of the Kiche Maya of Guatemala, and its name means Book of the Council. After the Spanish conquest, the Kiche wrote it down in the Latin alphabet in the mid sixteenth century. The oldest surviving copy was made around 1701 by the Spanish friar Francisco Ximenez, who also translated it into Spanish, and it is now kept at the Newberry Library in Chicago.

故事里的球赛，就是玛雅人真实的球赛：参赛者不能用手，只能用臀部、膝盖等部位击打沉重的橡胶球。这种球赛在中美洲流传了三千多年，墨西哥奇琴伊察遗址的大球场长约168米，是已知最大的古代球场。

The ball game in the story is a real Maya game: players could not use their hands, only their hips, knees and other parts of the body to strike a heavy rubber ball. The game was played in Mesoamerica for more than three thousand years, and the Great Ball Court at Chichen Itza in Mexico, about 168 metres long, is the largest ancient ball court known.

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