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Just like us, the ancient Maya also enjoyed a good sports game. They had their own ball games and ballcourts. However, their courts weren’t just limited to games and entertainment. A new study reveals that the Maya conducted special rituals to bless their ballcourts. A team of researchers from the University of Cincinnati (UC) has detected four medicinal plants in a soil sample collected from beneath the floor of an ancient Maya ballcourt complex in Campeche, Mexico. The plants were identified usingenvironmental DNA (eDNA) analysis, a technique that allows scientists to find the traces of the …

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