Top 5 Oldest Sports in the World

Top 5 Oldest Sports in the World

Sports vary as far and wide as the human body is able to push through its physical limits, ultimately resulting in different variants of the same sport, each with its fair share of records and achievements. While the volume depends on the sport’s popularity and widespread practice, it ultimately comes down to its primal origin, with some sports dating hundreds of centuries back in time.

Archery

The use of the bow and arrow is about as primitive human civilization gets, once it has established its place in the macro ecosystem and started looking for ways to survive and improve their way of life. The oldest records of archery practices date back to 20.000 years BC, and mainly consist of cave carvings of the actual use of such skills for survival.

Wrestling

Research so far has shown that wrestling as a sport has come to date back to the ancient fighters of the primitive human race, somewhere around 150 centuries BC. Records of this kind were first discovered in France, in the Lascaux cave carvings, while newer evidence are only half the time frame, dating back from 7000 BC to 6000 BC and later on. Wrestling as a modern day sport is still widely popular, even though it has come to evolve and develop into many different types and categories.

Running

Not only is running the second oldest sports activity in the world, it is also the first Olympic sport to have a written record off its event, dating back to 776 BC. With four different sub-disciplines explicitly stated back then, there is no doubt that running attracted enough audiences that today, you can bet on running events on any betting site that allows sports betting online, or in any betting shop.

Javelin Throwing

The practice of throwing a javelin dates back from the same century as running, and even though there aren’t too many ways to offer an alternative design, javelin throwing has retained its practice as an Olympic and thus international sports discipline. Discuss throwing has originated from these practices, more or less around the same time of 708 BC, but it took the sport and its enthusiasts a much lengthier time period to develop the spear and discuss used for its purposes.

Polo

Polo as a sport is unique in itself, as there is hardly any other similar sports discipline to compare it when analyzing common origins. Hockey has been known to look slightly alike a game of polo, but the inclusion of horses, taller sticks, a wooden ball and the goal that polo players are supposed to hit in order to score, are nothing alike a different type of sport activity. Nevertheless, there are quite solid records showing the initial origins of this sport as dating from the Persian Empire, sometime around the 4th century BC. A more prominent revival of the sports type known as polo came about in the 19th century, when the sport was discovered by British colonizers who were overtaking territories in India.