Fifa.com provides a brief history of the evolution of the football, which many people would consider mankind’s most important invention. 3,000 years ago, the Chinese filled animal skins with hair or feathers for a game of Tsu chu, an early forerunner of the football we know today. The very oldest balls still in existence today originated in Egypt two millennia before the Christian era, and were fashioned from wood, leather or papyrus.
Creative forebears of ball manufacturing took inspiration from the anatomies and objects that surrounded them. Australian Aborigines, for example, stuffed kangaroo scrotums with grass. Eskimos played with sealskin balls filled with moss or tufts of fur. And the early modern English favored an old leather wine pouch packed with cork.
What is thought to be the oldest specimen of a leather football was discovered in 1999 in the roof above Queen Mary’s chamber in the Scottish castle of Stirling. The pig’s bladder encased in gray leather is estimated to be 450 years old. Historians think the Queen may have initiated a game by throwing the leather from her balcony into the courtyard below, where servants and soldiers eagerly awaited the start of play. However, the game more likely resembled rugby than football.