What is the oldest sport? or: Why it is a bad idea to try and determine what is the oldest anything on the internet.

Why is this relevant?

I started today’s blog post wanting to write about the history of sports gambling giving its prevalence in advertising today. I was going to do a short section on the history of sports, reference the oldest sport as a fun aside, and then get onto the gambling side of the post, which would have been the majority of the post. However, I got held up at the very first part of my research, and that was my attempt to give a brief history of sports. That is because the online sources that come up first when you google oldest sports are messy and poorly cited, and the real history is equally as messy. So instead of looking at the history of sports gambling, we are just going to take a look at the history of sports.

It is a good lesson about why citations matter, and why you should always check sources when claiming that something existed in pre-history. Especially in the age of AI summaries.

Defining a Sport

Before I begin, I want to define what a “sport” is. While a part of every first grader’s vocabulary, this is slightly more complicated than it seems at first. And it is very important for this exercise. Take a look a three definitions I pulled from three of the most prominent dictionary websites referenced online. All definitions I have selected relate to its usage as a noun, not the verb, and I already ignored to old form uses of the word sport that referred to simple recreation or sexual acts.

Merriam Webster

1.a : a source of diversion: recreation

1.b : sexual play

1.c

(1) : physical activity engaged in for pleasure

(2) : a particular activity (such as an athletic game) so engaged in

Cambridge Dictionary

a game, competition, or activity needing physical effort and skill that is played or done according to rules, for enjoyment and/or as a job.

Oxford English Dictionary

I.1.b.

Success, pleasure, or recreation derived from or afforded by an activity, originally and esp. hunting, shooting, or fishing. Frequently with adjectives expressing the level of success.

Taking a brief look at the definitions, there seem to be two primary elements that a relevant when defining a sport. It needs to be (1) an activity that requires physicality and (2) it needs to be engaged in for pleasure or recreation. Some definitions include elements of rules or varying skill levels, but those seem to be more supplemental than determinative.

Now that we know sports are physical activities that are engaged in for pleasure, let’s take a look at our oldest sports.

The Oldest Sport is… Running. Maybe.

And the oldest sport in the world has… not conclusively been determined. It depends on what source you are using. Let’s take a look at the few most common answers that come up when you perform a quick Google search. You might find websites that say running, others wrestling, and a few swimming. One even claims spear-throwing. So, which one is right?

If you are wondering about the methodology for dating sports, it is actually more difficult than you might think. The sports that are discussed above in all likelihood predate the earliest evidence of written text that we have in the world, which was derived from the Sumerian script. The earliest examples of written script appear to date back roughly to around 3400 B.C. in Mesopotamia. And that script was cuneiform, which started as markings on stone tablets. With only a cursory knowledge of history, it might be tempting to say that we cannot for sure say that sports are older than written script because there would be no way to write about it. And yet, the oldest sports are believed to be much older than that. How can we source something older than written script? We use art and bones. Because a picture is older than a thousand words. That’s the correct use of that phrase, right?

Running According to the Paleontologists

Let’s start with the sport of running. It is clearly a physical activity, and despite what many people say, it can and has been done for pleasure. So is it the oldest sport? Probably, but the evidence is suggestive more than determinative.

According to paleontologists, evidence supports that early humanoids increased their travel speeds to speeds we would today count “running” as far back as 1.8 million years ago. This time frame includes the evolution and development of homo habilis and homo erectus from the less nimble Australopithecus, which allowed those hominoids to run. And the assumption is, if we could run, we likely did run at some point. The exact elements that we look for in those species are the advanced development of joints, the increasing length of leg bones, and even the broadness of shoulders. Paleontologists are comfortable in saying these developments support the idea that our early ancestors could run a little less than 2 million years ago.

So, where does the confusion come from? Well, what we are missing here from this early evidence is proof that running was done for pleasure or recreation, the thing that makes a sport a sport according to the definitions we just looked at. While we may be able to show that we could run, the reason for running is less clear. These physiological developments appear to be connected with ideas such as endurance hunting, but this trait appears to be more for survival, not for pleasure or recreation. And if we can’t say with some amount of confidence that the activity was used for pleasure or recreation, I don’t think we can say we have a sport yet. The ability is there. But the proof isn’t.

So let’s move a little closer to the present, instead of millions of years, let’s look at tens of thousands.

Cave Paintings and Sports

I am sure a few of you have googled the answer by now. If you have, you might have noticed that many websites claim that running as a sport dates back about 15,300 years ago, with depictions of men running on cave walls. Example 1. Example 2. Example 3. More often than not, these websites cite the cave paintings from the Lascaux caves in France as their source for that 15,300 number. Even wikipedia does. The funny thing I noticed is these websites tend not to show which painting supposedly has a man or men running for sport in it. Separately, I would still like to challenge that a man running because he is hiding from a predator or chasing down prey is not really a sport in how we define it. Unless you think being chased down by a tiger is a form of recreation, it’s not a sport yet.

So, with the supposed websites not providing me with a source, I did some research to try and find the picture so that I could post it. So I searched for any source with Lascaux paintings to try and see which one depicts running. Spoiler, I haven’t found any.

Despite all these websites referencing the time period for the Lascaux paintings or the cave itself that the paintings are in, from what I can tell there is no depiction of either a man running or men wrestling (another common claim on websites). Really. Take a look at this website, which from what I have found appears to be the largest list of the different paintings on the cave that I have found. Or this website, or this one or this one, or even this one. No men running. Seriously, I can’t find the image of running or wrestling in these prehistoric French caves anywhere. And I mention wrestling because this website says there are images of wrestling in the Lascaux caves. If you have a source that shows otherwise, please let me know. But as far as I can tell, we can write off the 15,300 dates, at least until someone shows me what supposed depiction is constantly being referenced here.

Just to be clear, I am not saying that there are not any cave paintings with running men or women depicted that exist. I am saying that those images are not from the Lascaux caves as far as I can tell, which everyone keeps citing too. So if the 15,000 number is correct, we need a different cave.

So, let’s ignore France for a minute. There are claims that wrestling is depicted in cave paintings from the Bayankhongor Province of Mongolia dating to about 7,000 B.C. The only problem is, when you search these paintings to get a look at them, nothing comes up. They are not online. That is not to say that they don’t exist, several sources reference them, there just happens to be no picture proving their existence to someone who has not been to Mongolia. So, I am stuck saying they do exist for the purpose of online research. So let’s keep going.

This mess of unsourced or improperly sourced articles led me to think a little about ancient civilizations. And in particular, I wondered about the Egyptians and why they had not been referenced yet. 

And it turns out that the Egyptians also have some caves that are worth referencing. The Cave of Beasts and the Cave of Swimmers are two natural rock shelters that were found in the western desert of Egypt, at sites referred to alternatively as Wadi Sura I and II. The estimation is that the cave paintings could have been made about 10,000 years ago. While not referenced on any the websites I have mentioned previously, these two caves are the oldest two caves I have found with cave paintings that have a depiction of what we might call a sport. And the pictures are online. Here and Here. In the Cave of Beasts, humans are depicted as dancing. In the Cave of Swimmers, humans are depicted as swimming.

So if you are going by cave paintings, the answer appears to be dancing and swimming. Maybe we all owe Raygun an apology for all the attention she received break dancing at the Olympics. She was just giving us a modern take on an ancient and celebrated sport.

What gives? Is dancing and swimming really older than running and wrestling? Probably not. And that is the problem with this attempt to say what is the oldest. We need records from antiquity to prove it.

But at least we can now say that we have cave paintings that show swimming and dancing as ancient sports about 10,000 years ago. So, if you are saying you don’t like dancing, you are denying thousands of years of programming to the otherwise.

Why Does This Matter?

Outside of winning an obscure argument in trivia, this sort of information may not immediately seem relevant to our day-to-day lives. But it is very informative on what sort of sourcing is common on the internet, the prevalence of misinformation on the internet, and what may come with AI.

Almost every website I searched, including Wikipedia, claimed that there were images of sprinting and wrestling in the Lascaux caves. But as far as I could tell, there are no images of that sort online that are specifically from that cave. And please, I would like to be wrong here, I would like my faith to be restored in all these websites that make the claim that we have depictions of running that are 15,000 years old.

And so far, I have not referenced a new feature on Google that creates AI summaries of articles. If you haven’t seen it, these new AI blurbs appear at the top of a search page. In this case, AI repeated all the same bits of information above that I have already noted appears to be incorrect. That is because AI’s sources are all these articles that are written by people, who get things wrong. And if all of these articles have the same mistakes or misinformation, then the AI summary will be no different. In fact, it will only be harder to detect that this information is wrong, because you never actually click on the websites, articles, or pages that pull that the information is pulled from. Which can be the quickest and easiest way to tell if something is properly sourced.

Take a look at what happens when I search “how old is running a sport.”

[Search conducted on August 26, 2024]

See if you can spot the contradictions that I mentioned in this blog. The source for the 15,000 number is Joggo. And Joggo has no source in the link, it just makes the claim, likely based on the other incorrect references online.

So if the future of searching is these AI summaries, we need to be very careful what we are taking as “fact” in the future. The summaries are only as good as their sources.

An Aside: The Spear-Throwing Claim

I couldn’t help but point this out as well. As opposed to running, swimming, and wrestling, I found one source that claimed that spear-throwing is the oldest sport. Check it out here. This website made the bold claim that spear-throwing as a sport is over 70,000 years old. This would put it well older than any of our other sources have shown. The only problem is… it sort of skirts the methodology I was loosely using above.

Now, when looking for evidence that shows that spear-throwing as a sport is 70,000 years old, I did find a claim that supports it. The article I have linked references a study published In Science Advances looking at the technical knowledge of early Homo sapiens. Stone armatures have been found in the Grotte Mandrin cave located in France that appear to date back 70,000 years, what is believed to be the oldest occupation of homo sapiens in continental Europe. This is likely what the reference was being made to. But the funny part of this is, there is a distinction here between Neanderthals and Homo sapiens. The study found that the purported Homo sapien artifacts were comprised of arrows that would be used for bows, not spears. Here is a quick excerpt from this article.

“When Neanderthals use their traditional weapons, such as a spear thrusted or thrown by hand, the first modern humans came with bow and arrows technologies,” says Metz. “Bows are used in all environments, open or closed, from the desert, and are effective for all prey sizes. Arrows can be shot quickly, with more precision. Many arrows can be carried in a quiver during a hunting foray. These technologies then allowed an incomparable efficiency in all hunting activities when Neanderthals had to hunt in close or direct contact with their prey, a process that may have been much more complex, more hazardous, and even much more dangerous when hunting large game like bison.”

– https://today.uconn.edu/2023/02/new-study-shows-archery-appeared-in-europe-thousands-of-years-earlier-than-previously-thought/# referencing the study published on https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.add4675

Either way, the logic of the original claim is: as these tools existed 70,000 years ago, naturally man would have practiced with them and used them in sport on some occasion. But this takes us back to the same problem as running. We know that proto-humans were capable of running 1.8 million years ago. But should we date running as a “sport” to that point, simply because it was possible? I am not sure. I would say the same thing with these spear tips or arrow tips. Can we date them back 70,000 years? Sure. But can we conclusively say these tools were used in athletics as they are defined in this blog, rather than simply for survival purposes? I don’t think we can.

Isn’t history fun?