The stories featured in Greaking Out are usually original adaptations of classic Greek myths.

This week's story features a river of blood, decapitation,

resurrections, giant bats, scary scorpion facts, sentient knives, the underworld, and using your inside voice.

We are on the move today and traveling to the ancient Maya homeland, which is modern day

Belize, Guatemala, and parts of El Salvador, Honduras, and Mexico, where the Maya civilization once

thrived. People lived in this area since way back, but artifacts from the Maya civilization

started showing up around 1200 BCE, and the last independent Maya city fell to Spanish soldiers

in 1697 CE. So that's almost 3000 years. It spans from the new kingdom in ancient Egypt

all the way until just after the Salem witch trials in the Massachusetts Bay colony.

And of course the Maya people still live in the Yucatan to this day. In fact, there are 32 different

Maya languages still spoken. The ancient Maya had a system of writing and they did write things

down, though most of what they wrote in books has been destroyed or lost. Luckily, we still have a

lot of their writing in the form of stone carvings, painted pottery, and other artifacts.

So the story we're telling you today is from the Popovu, which you can think of as the Maya version

of the Odyssey. It tells the story of the hero twins and the adventures they have.

So let's get to it. The hero twins, Honapu, and Shibalanke. Now this is a long story,

so we're going to fast forward to the part where the twins are teenagers. You see, they don't know

their father who was the corn god, but they know that their father and uncle were killed by the

lords of the underworld. And they know that for some strange reason, their mother forbids them

from playing ball. Now this probably isn't the ball game you're thinking of. Not soccer or

football or baseball. In this game, there are teams of two or more and you most likely had to hit

the ball with your torso, so not your hands and not your feet. The game was probably similar to

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