Since long before the earliest written records, people have participated in a wide variety of sports and forms of entertainment. Many ancient peoples developed theatrical and musical entertainments. The earliest physical games and sporting contests seem to have arisen out of the need to improve prehistoric survival skills.
Running, jumping, and fighting were all essential skills during the early history of humanity, as people needed to hunt for food and flee from predators. Over thousands of years, these activities developed into some of the sports that are still watched and played.
Hunting and Fighting Sports
Some sports arose out of the need to practice and perfect hunting and fighting skills. For example, the need to fire bows and arrows or throw spears with accuracy and over great distances led to archery and javelin competitions.
From as early as 2500 BCE, people of the Indus valley civilization held regular sporting competitions involving weapons such as the toran (similar to the javelin) and the charka (a form of discus).
Some sports were a test of bravery as much as athleticism. The Minoans, whose culture flourished from 2000 BCE, invented the sport of bull leaping, which involved the athlete—who could be either a man or a woman—clearing a bull that was rushing toward him or her by a combination of seizing its horns, flipping, and jumping. Spectacular and dangerous, it is considered a forerunner of bullfighting.
Weaponless Combat Sports
Many sporting contests developed out of one person’s desire to test himself or herself against another person. Tests of strength and weaponless fights may have had a purpose other than entertainment or exercise in prehistoric times. In some cases such contests may have decided leadership of a tribe.
Wrestling is believed to be one of the oldest of all recognizable sports. The ancient Sumerians wrestled for sport more than four thousand years ago. The oldest written record of a specific sports event was a wrestling contest between Egyptian and foreign soldiers, held in front of the pharaoh Ramses III in 1160 BCE.
Influenced by wrestling in both China and Korea, sumo wrestling developed in Japan between 300 and 200 BCE, while the ancient Egyptians and Mesopotamians boxed many centuries before it became an event in the ancient Greek Olympic games.
Racing with Horses
The domestication of animals began in prehistoric times, as humans started to settle in one place and learned how to farm crops and rear animals for food and clothing. The taming and riding of horses is believed to have started in Arabia more than five thousand years ago. Racing horses or using them to pull chariots in races was a popular sport in many ancient civilizations.
Although chariot racing was a major feature of Roman games, chariots were raced many centuries earlier in Babylonia, Egypt, and ancient Greece. One of the most famous of all ancient charioteers was Cynisca. The daughter of the Spartan king Agesilaus II, she was the first woman known to have bred horses and, in 396 BCE, also the first to win at the ancient Olympics.
