When did they start manufacturing balls for children and what were they made of?
In the Laura Ingalls Wilder books, she relates that when her father slaughtered a pig, he would clean out the bladder and inflate it for the girls to play with. There’s no reason this couldn’t have been done ten thousand years ago, too. So I’d say that the origin of toy balls is almost certainly lost to history.
One of the galleries at the British Museum contains exhibits of every day life, and one is children’s toys, including a ball sewn from pieces of leather. It was found in a child’s grave (along with a pull toy animal and a rag doll) and is about 2,000 years old.
And here
http://www.expertfootball.com/history/soccer_history_mediterran.php
is a discussion of footy (soccer) type games dating back to 2000BC.
There’s a toy ball used by Australian Aborigines in the NE made of layers of plaited and woven grass. It might sound primitive but it’s a surprisingly effective toy, equivalent to a slightly under-inflated soccer ball in terms of bounce and weight and capable of taking a real pounding. Of course there’s no evidence for how far back that particular ball goes but given the materials it’s quite conceivable that it goes back 30, 000 years or more.
Little boys have been toying with their balls since the beginning of time.
If you consider marbles as toy balls, then I’m sure they’ve been played with since the dawn of people. Suitably round pebbles, shells, or nuts could serve. But almost perfectly spherical marbles can be made from pebbles by making a natural tumbler". I have an article on it in an obscure book – you use the water power of a flowing stream to tumble a stone automatically for you, creating a nearly perfect sphere.
Indeed, the British Museum has a world renowned collection of Greek marbles.
Ba-da-Ba! (ching!)
In his book CVLTVRE Made Stupid Tom Weller has a drawing of the bag containing the Elgin Marbles…
I know a couple of cheeky people who work in the Elgin Marble room at the Museum who carry a few playing marbles in their pockets, for when visitors come into the Gallery and ask them, ‘Where are the Elgin Marbles…’ (Many people are expecting either to see playing marbles, or expect the floor to be marble…they don’t notice all those broken old statues on the walls…)
No worries – they are good natured about it, never mean.
