The basics of bowling can be quickly learned from scratch by both adults and children. And this simple but interesting game has a lot of fans all over the world today. Bowling is also remarkable for its history, which goes back several millennia.
The first bowling prototypes
Archaeologists find peculiar prototypes of the bowling game in different places of the planet - in Egypt, India, Yemen, Polynesia … Moreover, some of the finds date back to very ancient times - to the fourth millennium BC.
And in Europe bowling appeared in Upper Germany. There was a certain religious rite here, in which a stone ball had to be knocked down with wooden clubs - kegels. And the one who managed to knock down a large number of pins was considered a good person leading a righteous lifestyle. The first mentions of this rite date back to the 3rd century AD. e. Over time, this action lost its religious meaning for the Germanic tribes and became just a game.
Bowling in the Middle Ages
A little later, during the Great Migration, a game involving knocking down wooden oblong objects with a ball from Upper Germany spread throughout Europe - under similar names it appeared in France, Italy, Holland, Denmark and England. Moreover, the rules in each specific area could vary.
In the Middle Ages, various types of bowling, primarily nine-pin bowling, became the hobby of a large number of Europeans. This game was played by all classes - peasants, urban artisans, military, aristocrats and even kings. It is known, for example, that King Henry VIII of England (1491-1547) was not indifferent to this game. And it was he who is believed to have come up with the idea of using cannonballs for bowling.
It is also worth noting that in the English city of Southampton there is the oldest (from among those operating to this day) bowling alley. It was played here as early as 1299.
Bowling in the USA
At the beginning of the 17th century, the game was brought by settlers from Europe (Dutch, Germans, British) to North America. A hundred years later, a park dedicated to the game of nine-pin bowling appeared in New York. Today this park is called “Bowling Glade”.
Often in the States in those days, bowling was played for money. And, of course, many have tried to win and get rich through deception and fraud. Soon the authorities drew attention to this gambling and tried to ban it. Initially, such a ban was in effect only in the states of New York and Kentucky, and since 1870 - throughout the United States.
Bowling enthusiasts responded by inventing a new, ten-stick version of their game (the so-called tenpin), which was not formally covered by the law. The pins were placed in it not with a rhombus, but with a triangle of four rows. Subsequently, other differences from the nine-leg version appeared in the tenpin. As a result, by the end of the 19th century, it was tenpin that became the predominant and most widespread version of bowling.
First national tournament and further development of the game
In 1895, the American Bowling Congress adopted uniform standards for balls, pins and lanes in the States. In addition, official rules of the game were developed by the Congress. Six years later, in 1901, the first ever national Tenpin tournament was held in the city of Chicago according to these rules. More than forty teams from nine states participated in this tournament. His prize pool was about $ 1,500.
Interestingly, at that time, balls made of bakout were used for the game - very hard, heavy and expensive wood. And there were two holes in them, not three as now. Later, balls began to be made from more affordable rubber, and from the seventies of the twentieth century - from plastic and polyurethane.
In general, bowling has improved a lot over the past hundred years - a pinspotter (pinning machine), a ball return system, special surfaces for tracks, etc. have been invented.
