Sumerian wrestlers were cast in bronze by 2600 BC
Sport’s deep past reaches at least to the ancient world around 7000 BC, tangled with war training and spectacle. Upper Paleolithic cave art at Lascaux seems to show sprinting some 15,300 years ago, and Sumer left slabs and a Khafaji bronze of wrestlers dated near 2600 BC.
Early games doubled as military tests: contests showed whether a man was fit to serve, and team play rehearsed the cooperation of a fighting unit. The evidence thins the further back one looks, but it is striking. Neolithic paintings in Mongolia's Bayankhongor Province, around 7000 BC, show a wrestling bout ringed by spectators; rock art in Egypt's Cave of Swimmers suggests swimming and archery around 10,000 BCE; and prehistoric Japanese cave art shows something like sumo. A Sumerian slab of three wrestling pairs dates to about 3000 BC, and fishhooks from Ur hint at angling around 2600 BC.
Written records follow. The tablets of the Gilgamesh epic, from around 2000 BC, describe the hero belt-wrestling Enkidu, and King Shulgi boasted of his athletic prowess in praise poems. Egyptian monuments at Beni Hasan show wrestling, weightlifting, long jump, rowing, archery and ball games already regulated, while a Minoan fresco from 1500 BC captures ritual bull-leaping on Crete. In Homer, the funeral games Achilles holds for Patroclus mark sport as a pastime of the wealthy, and Odysseus proves his rank by throwing a javelin.
Greece formalised it all. The Olympics, first recorded at Olympia in 776 BC and held until 393 AD, began as a single sprint and grew to include armoured races, boxing, pankration, chariots and discus, with a truce guaranteeing athletes safe travel and laurel wreaths for winners. With the Isthmian, Nemean and Pythian games they formed the Panhellenic circuit, and the Heraean Games were the first recorded women's competition. Elsewhere, the Maya ballgame Pitz was played around 1200 BCE, and hurling, shinty, Roman harpastum, Chinese cuju and Persian polo are each at least 2,500 years old.
Medieval villages fought violent ballgames such as Shrovetide football for centuries, and English kings issued at least thirty bans on football, handball and hurling by the fourteenth century.
Source: History of sport
