In this fascinating column, Dex mentions that “the yo-yo is the world’s second oldest toy–only dolls are older.” Marvelous little factoid, definitely something to file away. It also feels cool just to hold a yo-yo, knowing how far back they go, and how many hundreds of generations of people have played with them. When I close my eyes, I can almost smell the mammoth.
So what’s the third-oldest toy? Fourth-oldest? How do they know, exactly? Is there a list of, say, the oldest ten? I imagine the order gets a little fuzzy; how can they say which came first, the slingshot, or the spinning top, or “Quake II”?
(Again, kudos on yet another fascinating article. It’s amazing, the stuff you didn’t know you didn’t know, but now that you know it, you now know you needed to know it.)
We need a good working definition of toy, right? I played with rocks and sticks as a kid, and I imagine little Neanderthal youngsters did the same.
How do archeologists define it? I would definie a toy as a portable object (thus excluding tree swings or seesaws) manufactured solely for the purpose of play by a child. (That probably puts out slingshots, since they have a practical purpose, as well.)
I’m gonna guess kites! They’ve got to be pretty ancient, at least as old as yo-yos.
The Encyclopedia Americana says the Egyptians had “crude pull-along toys as long ago as 3000 B.C.” The same article (under “Toy”) shows a picture of a wheeled terra cotta horse from Cyprus from 1200-1000 B.C. Either is older than the dates Dex gives for the yo-yo (1000 B.C. according to Asian historians, 500-450 B.C. for the Greek artifact).
Thoughta that, bibliophage, but dismissed them as dolls–though one could easily argue against that.
Interestingly, Mesoamerican cultures had wheeled toys, but never exploited the wheel’s potential at full scale.
There are some weirdos from Caltech who suggest that the Egyptians used kites to raise megaliths . . . They claim that some Egyptian art depicts kite flying, but I can’t find any specifics or dates, and, as one might imagine, mainstream egyptologists think they’re nuts.
I can imagine a “pull-toy” that a Neanderthal boy might turn to in the cave on a rainy day. 