Top 10 toys from history

More than 500 objects excavated at sites across the Roman empire have been identified as dolls, many of them found in the tombs of young girls, with the earliest examples dating from c200 BC. Ancient dolls – such as the fourth-century AD, discovered in a child’s grave at the Necropolis of Ontur in Albacete, Spain – were made of cloth, bone, clay, wood or ivory, and some even boasted jointed limbs.

Interestingly, these ancient dolls were modelled on adult bodies: many featured breasts and elongated legs and torsos, as well as detailed faces and hairstyles.

Elsewhere, the discovery of manufacturing moulds at religious sanctuaries, and the fact that many were made from fragile materials, indicates that ancient dolls had sacred functions in addition to their role as much-loved companions.

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Rattle

Noisy, usually brightly coloured and great to fling around: it’s little wonder that the rattle has remained a firm favourite with babies across the centuries.

One of the oldest baby rattles ever found – a sealed terracotta ball containing tiny pebbles, dating back to c2200 BC – still makes a sound when shaken, as it would have for its tiny owner more than 4,000 years ago. This Bronze Age toy was discovered in Aksaray, Turkey, in 2016.

Three years earlier, a clay rattle in the shape of a pillow, filled with small balls, was discovered in pit tombs in Łęgowo, Poland.

Even royal babies enjoyed making some noise – albeit with fancier toys – including the future Edward VI, shown in a painting clutching his golden, sceptre-shaped rattle in c1538.

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Yo-yo

Trickier to master than it might seem, the yo-yo boasts a surprisingly long history: it’s thought to have evolved from an ancient Chinese toy, the diabolo.

What’s believed to be the earliest depiction of a yo-yo appears on an ancient Greek vase from the fifth century BC, showing a young boy seemingly honing his yo-yo skills – though it has also been argued that he is twirling a disc known as an iynx, in a bid to attract luck in love.

The plaything’s appeal quickly went global, with peoples ranging from the Maya to the Romans trying to ‘walk the dog’ with terracotta, clay, wooden or even metal yo-yos.

Fast forward a couple of millennia and you’ll find the future Louis XVII of France clutching a treasured yo-yo in a 1789 portrait.

Nearly a century later, the first US patent for the toy was granted, and in 1928 Filipino immigrant Pedro Flores made adaptations that enabled users to master new tricks, introducing it to a new audience – and bringing with him the name by which the popular toy is now known.

Spinning top

It’s said by some that the spinning top is the world’s oldest recognisable toy – and it’s easy to see why: the simple, gravity-defying design offers hours of repetitive fun. The toy even has its own international day, the second Wednesday of October.

One of the oldest spinning tops, made of clay and dating from around 3500 BC, was discovered at an archaeological site in Muqayyer, Iraq. But spinning tops have been found in various places worldwide, including China and Turkey, crafted from a wide range of materials.

A carved wooden spinning top was found in the tomb of ancient Egyptian pharaoh Tutankhamun, and one even gets a mention in Homer’s Iliad. Designs varied: in ancient Greece and Rome, for example, the sides of a multi-sided top known as a teetotum were marked with symbols, serving in place of a dice and used in gambling games.

Marbles

Unsurprisingly, marbles also have a long history. It’s thought that cave people may well have played with small rounded pebbles or balls of natural clay many thousands of years ago. Indeed, small clay balls have been found around the world in ancient Egyptian tombs, Native American burial grounds and Aztec pyramids.

It was in 19th century Germany, though, that the creation of glass marbles really took off, aided by the 1848 invention of marble scissors, which revolutionised the process. Not long afterwards, in the 1880s, glass marbles entered mass production.

Towards the end of the century, American entrepreneurs decided they wanted a piece of the marble action and, in 1902, Danish immigrant Martin Frederick Christensen patented a machine that could make “spherical bodies or balls”.

By 1910, up to 10,000 marbles were being made every day at the MF Christensen and Son Company in Ohio. Marble-making was officially on a roll.

Dice

Despite the ancient Greek tragedian Sophocles’ insistence that dice were invented by the legendary Palamedes during the siege of Troy, dice have a far longer history.

In fact, the precursors of dice are believed to have been used by primitive people for the casting of lots to divine the future. And cube-shaped dice – similar to modern equivalents – have been found in excavations in China, dating from 600 BC, and in Egyptian tombs built around 2000 BC.

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Elsewhere, the first written records of dice appear in the Mahabharata, a Sanskrit epic completed more than 1,600 years ago. It seems that cheating is not a modern phenomenon, either: so-called crooked dice – tampered with to fix how they fall when thrown – have been found in ancient tombs, Viking burial sites and prehistoric graves in North and South America.

Hula hoop

From fun to exercise, dancing to hunting, hoops have been used by children and adults alike for many centuries. Hooprolling in ancient Greece was a form of light exercise, while Native Americans used hoops as a way of honing their hunting and harpooning skills, throwing poles through the moving hoops to increase their accuracy.

The Native American Lakota people are also known for their hoop dancing, beginning the routine with a single hoop, which represents the never-ending circle of life, and then adding additional hoops to represent other elements such as humans, animals, wind, water, and the seasons.

The hula hoop gained international popularity in the late 1950s, though, after the California-based Wham-O toy company began marketing plastic hoops: within four months, an estimated 25 million hula hoops were sold.

The world was in the grip of a hula-hooping frenzy: hooping in the streets was banned in three Japanese cities for allegedly increasing traffic incidents; and public demonstrations were banned in Jakarta for fear they might “stimulate passions”. Six months later, the fad had burned itself out. Whilst hula hoops remain popular, they never again reached the dizzying heights of 1958.

Kite

Believed by many to have been popularised in China around 3,000 years ago – although Malaysian, Indonesian, and South Pacific cultures are all also credited with being early kite users – kites have been flown for myriad reasons, among them to ward off evil, deliver messages, catch fish, spy on enemies and, of course, for sheer pleasure.

The earliest written account of kite flying is from 200 BC China, where Chinese General Han Hsin of the Han Dynasty is recorded as flying a kite over the walls of a city he was besieging in order to measure how far his army would need to tunnel in order to breach its defences.

European kite flying came much later, with Marco Polo widely credited with bringing stories of the flying contraptions back from his voyages. According to his diaries, in 1282, he supposedly saw a man tied to a kite flying above the Chinese city of Weifang.

Toys on wheels

From ducks to dogs, cars to chariots, the novelty of toys on wheels has failed to wear off since someone first had the idea to create such a thing.

In 2017, what is believed to be the world’s oldest ‘toy car’ was discovered in the ancient city of Soğmatar in southeast Turkey. Made from earthenware, the little chariot on wheels is around 5,000 years old and is thought to have been made for the children of the city’s kings or leaders.

Elsewhere, the existence of wheeled toys provide the only evidence that wheels were used in any part of Mesoamerica before the 16th century. Other ancient toys on wheels – from wooden horses, to clay cows and even a bird with a ram’s head – have been discovered in countries like Greece, Pakistan, Egypt and Italy.

Chess

It’s not entirely clear where or when the game of chess originated. The oldest known forebear is chaturanga, thought to have emerged in what is now northern India during the sixth century AD. The exact rules have been lost to history, but the game was played on an 8 x 8 board with each type of piece boasting its own unique moves – just like today’s game.

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The powerful queen piece (which replaced a figure known as the ‘counsellor’) was granted its present moves by the 15th century, and by the early modern period, chess had gained a reputation as the ‘royal game’. In the 18th century, chess got serious, thanks, in part, to the efforts of Frenchman Francois-André Danican Philidor, who wrote extensively on chess theory.

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Within a few decades the game began to be played in formal tournament settings, with the first international chess tournament taking place in London, in 1851.