Ancient Inventions

How Soccer Originated

The clear ancestor of soccer was the Chinese game of t'su chu, played by the third century B.C. The ball was made of leather, at first stuffed, then in later times inflated so that it carried farther. The feet and body, but not the hands, were used to propel the ball. In an aristogratic version played in front of the emperor's palace, the opposing teams tried to kick the ball through a tiny hole in a silken net. Even the emperor would occasionally take part. Women also played in a version of the game with eight players called Eight Immortals Crossing the Sea.

This Chinese "sport of kings" was, oddly enough, the sport of peasants in England during the fourteenth century A.D.—mobs number hundreds played; broken limbs were common and deaths not unknown.

The American Indian equivalent to English soccer was lacrosse (or bagataway in Irroquois), which was played in the eastern half of North America. It was described by European observers in the seventeenth century as an ancient sport.

Up to five hundred warriors on each side, often from neighboring villages, took part in this roving battle, with one team painted dark and the other light. The idea was to gather the deerskin ball in a hollowed-out stick (in later times a curved racket with sinew or hemp strings) and run with it toward the goal. Scoring was made even more difficult by the fact that the goalposts were formed by medicine men, who wandered across the field of play as the spirits directed them.

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