Did it all start in ancient Egypt?
Possibly. To date, the earliest record we have of someone bowling, or bowling at pins as it was called in the early days, comes from ancient Egypt.
Archeologist discovered 9 pieces of stone, a stone ball and a marble archway in the tomb of a small Egyptian child that they where able to date back to
around 3200 BC. In the Egyptian’s version of bowling, the ball had to be rolled through the marble archway before striking the 9 stones. That’s an interesting twist.
The more popular version of bowling that we play today probably originated in Germany in the 3rd of 4th century, but for those early Germanic people, bowling was not a
sport, but a religious ritual. Parishioners of the cloisters of churches used their Kegels or clubs, which they carried for protection, as pins at the end of a long runway
that was very similar to the lanes in bowling alleys today. A stone was rolled at the kegels, and anyone who could successfully knocked them down was said to have been cleansed
of their sins.
In time, bowling at pins evolved into a game and spread throughout Europe. Numerous variations of the game was played, and the equipment took on numerous forms, from the palm
sized bocce balls used in the Italian version of bowling to the pumpkin sized bowling ball used during the time of King Edward the III. The number of pins varied from 5 to 9, and
the type of surface the bowling ball was rolled upon varied from simple “beaten paths” to wooden planks.
Eventually, bowling was introduced to the “new world”. Exactly when and by whom is under dispute, but it is likely that British settlers introduced lawn bowling to the Americas
when they arrived, and the Dutch introduced their version of bowling when they began to explore the northeast. The earliest known reference to bowling in the United States can be
found in the short story “Rip Van Winkel” written by Washington Irving in 1819. In the story Rip Van Winkel came across “a company of odd-looking personages playing at ninepins” while
wandering around in the Catskill Mountains.
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