History of Hockey

There is a depiction of a hockey-like game in Ancient Greece, dating to c. 510 BC, when the game may have been called Κερητίζειν (kerētízein) because it was played with a horn (κέρας, kéras, in Ancient Greek) and a ball.Researchers disagree over how to interpret this image. It could have been a team or one-on-one activity (the depiction shows two active players, and other figures who may be teammates awaiting a face-off, or non-players waiting for their turn at play). Billiards historians Stein and Rubino believe it was among the games ancestral to lawn-and-field sports like hockey and ground billiards, and near-identical depictions (but with only two figures) appear both in the Beni Hasan tomb of Ancient Egyptian administrator Khety of the 11th Dynasty (c. 2000 BCE), and in European illuminated manuscripts and other works of the 14th through 17th centuries, showing contemporary courtly and clerical life.[9] In East Asia, a similar game was entertained, using a carved wooden stick and ball prior, to 300 BC. In Inner Mongolia, China, the Daur people have for about 1,000 years been playing beikou, a game with some similarities to field hockey. A similar field hockey or ground billiards variant, called suigan, was played in China during the Ming dynasty (1368–1644, post-dating the Mongol-led Yuan dynasty). A game similar to hockey was played in the 17th century in Punjab state in India under name khido khundi (khido refers to the woolen ball, and khundi to the stick). In South America, most specifically in Chile, the local natives of the 16th century used to play a game called chueca, which also has a lot of common elements with hockey.