Qualla: Paso de la Amada

Paso de la Amada: Introduction

Sun, 22 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Baquides, CC BY-SA 3.0. Somewhere around 1400 BC, in what is now the Soconusco coast of Chiapas, Mexico, someone laid out a playing field eighty meters long and eight meters wide, flanked by parallel mounds with low benches. It was not placed in a ceremonial center, as later ballcourts would be, but next to elite residences. The Mesoamerican ballgame, which would obsess civilizations for the next three thousand years, had its earliest known court at a 50-hectare settlement called Paso de la Amada, a place whose Spanish name translates to the Beloved's Pass.

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Image: Baquides | CC BY-SA 3.0

Paso de la Amada: Before the Olmec Arrived

Sun, 22 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Rys. T. E. Wake, M. H. Wake, R. G. Leasure, CC BY-SA 4.0. Paso de la Amada was occupied from roughly 1800 to 1000 BC during the Early Formative era, likely by the Mokaya, a pre-Olmec people who inhabited the fertile Soconusco region along the Gulf of Tehuantepec. The site sits in farmland between the modern town of Buenos Aires and the ...

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Image: Rys. T. E. Wake, M. H. Wake, R. G. Leasure | CC BY-SA 4.0

Paso de la Amada: A Game for the Elite

Sun, 22 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Rys. R. G. Leasure, CC BY-SA 4.0. In 1995, archaeologists uncovered the ruins of a ballcourt structure dated to 1400 BC, making it the oldest known example in Mesoamerica. The court measures approximately 80 meters long and 8 meters wide, situated between two parallel mounds with benches 2.5 meters deep and 30 ce...

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Image: Rys. R. G. Leasure | CC BY-SA 4.0

Paso de la Amada: The Mound That Watched Power Concentrate

Sun, 22 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit AlejandroLinaresGarcia, CC BY-SA 4.0. The largest structure at the site, Mound 6, reads like a time-lapse of political evolution. Six distinct building phases were stacked on top of one another, each telling a different story about who held power and how publicly they displayed it. The first structure was a large bui...

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Image: AlejandroLinaresGarcia | CC BY-SA 4.0

Paso de la Amada: The Olmec Shadow

Sun, 22 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit AlejandroLinaresGarcia, CC BY-SA 4.0. According to archaeologist Richard Diehl, Olmec merchants appeared in the Paso de la Amada area and their visits gradually reshaped the local social hierarchy in what Diehl described as the 'Olmec-ization' of the region. The influence was not just cultural but structural: Olmec c...

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Image: AlejandroLinaresGarcia | CC BY-SA 4.0