The Constant Pursuit of Knowledge

If you are anything like us you want to know everything you possibly can about the sport of bowling. I mean, it is the best sport around, so why wouldn't you want to learn all about it?

When you were first starting out you learned the basics of the game. You learned how to score, how much better a strike is than a spare, but you also found out how important it is to pick up the spare when you have the opportunity. The worst thing in bowling is a pin left standing, right?

Maybe as you improved you began to think about lane conditions, how much oil is on the lane, what the oil patterns are and how they affect your roll. Most bowlers start out bowling straight down the lane. Maybe you just began with a house ball when you were a kid, like I did. But once you improved your gear you took the time to learn how to take advantage of a ball that hooks. That's when it really started to get fun, when you raised your scores and maybe began competing with others. Then you learned that practice builds muscle memory and you realized the only way to grow in consistency is through discipline and effort (basically bowling as much as humanly possible).

I'm sure you learned early on that you want to hit the sweet spot of the pocket as often as possible. It's a great feeling! Then for the next 50 years you'll pursue that goal, always looking to improve. You regularly upgrade your bowling equipment and try out new accessories to help you toward that goal. You seek out what the latest technology improvements are.

Basically, you are always learning, always improving, always picking other people's brains for tips about the game. But in your pursuit of all the bowling knowledge you can cram in your brain have you ever stopped down and thought about where the sport of bowling actually came from? That's my question. Who invented bowling anyway?

So then who exactly invented bowling?

So while we at Bowling.com are pretty partial to ten-pin, there are lots of different types of bowling or similar games that have been played for centuries around the world.

As far as we know (we weren't actually there!) bowling can be traced back to ancient Egypt around 5,000 BC. Picture this. Grab a rock and roll it at other objects with the goal of knocking them over. Sounds a good bit like the game we love. That's what the Egyptians did about 7,000 years ago.

Over the centuries (and millenia), different varieties of bowling emerged from the simple Ancient Egyptian game. Of course you have traditional ten-pin bowling and nine-pin bowling, candle pin bowling, duck pin bowling, and five-pin bowling. And you don't want to forget lawn bowling and bocce, hugely popular around the world.

So the next time you "roll the rock" you can be thankful to the ancient minds that came up with the sport and all those who have tweaked it and turned it into the perfect game it is today!