The Popol Vuh was recorded in writing by K’iche’ Maya scribes in the sixteenth century, shortly after the Spanish conquest, in an effort to preserve the oral and possibly written traditions of their community.

The text opens with a cosmological account of creation and moves through the deeds of a series of supernatural beings before reaching the story of the Hero Twins.

The Hero Twins’ father and uncle — Hun Hunahpu and Vucub Hunahpu — are ballplayers who are summoned to the underworld and killed by its lords.

Hun Hunahpu’s head is placed in a gourd tree, and from this tree his head spits into the hand of Ixquic, a maiden of the underworld, who becomes pregnant with the Hero Twins and eventually flees to the surface world to give birth.

The twins, Hunahpu and Xbalanque, are themselves ballplayers — clearly defined as male in the narrative — and they eventually receive the same summons to the underworld that destroyed their father and uncle.