Archaeology still votes dolls the oldest known toys
Dolls model humans or humanoids for play and ritual. Digs treat them as leading candidates for the oldest toys, fashioned from clay, wood, bone, ivory, leather, or wax. Roman children took clay and ivory figures to graves; rag dolls appear by 300 BC.
Egyptian tombs have yielded wooden paddle dolls from as early as the 21st century BC, and dolls with movable limbs and removable clothes go back at least to 200 BC. Greeks made clay figures jointed at hips and shoulders, some worked by strings, and their word for doll meant little girl. At puberty Greek and Roman boys offered their toys to the gods; at marriage Greek girls gave their dolls to Artemis and Roman girls to Venus, but a girl who died unmarried was buried with hers.
Cultures draw no firm line between plaything and sacred object. Ashanti akuaba, wooden fertility figures from Ghana, have large disc-shaped heads. Hopi carve Kachina dolls from cottonwood so children can learn each masked spirit, and Innu girls carried tea dolls stuffed with tea on long journeys. In Japan, hina dolls in layered robes are displayed at the Hinamatsuri festival, while round red Daruma dolls stand for Bodhidharma, founder of Zen. Among the Lur of Iran, a hinged dancing doll named Layli, after the heroine of Layla and Majnun, can dance in public where women may not.
German clay dolls are documented from the 13th century and wooden ones from the 15th, and cheap peg dolls from Germany and the Netherlands served poorer European children from the 1500s. Russia's nesting matryoshka dates from 1890. Mass-produced German china dolls, with glazed porcelain heads, sold in the millions between 1840 and 1890, while matte bisque dolls peaked from 1860 to 1900.
European dolls mostly depicted adults until baby dolls appeared around 1850. By 1923, 80 percent of dolls sold to American children were Mama dolls that cried when tilted, and soft vinyl took over from the mid-20th century.
Source: Doll
