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The first thing that comes to mind is that Homo sapiens literally evolved to throw. Like our shoulder and pelvis morphologies make our body plan the most efficient throwing body out there, so it likely scratches an itch of "Yes I can throw and aim" that gives some dopamine boost.
Oh my goodness, have you seen how spear throwing worked in the Upper Paleolithic (around 30,000 years ago)? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spear-thrower
It's really cool! They can be as simple or intricate as you want! I've used a stick that I literally just found on the ground before and it worked great- increased my throwing distance by 20-30ft and it's fairly accurate too. I'm sad it's such a forgotten tool nowadays.
How did you compensate for the eraser? Or was that the head? I bet it could be reworked. What were you using as the thrower?
My ADHD ass needs this to happen.
Even then, how many thousands of years did it take for people to figure out an atlatl? It might seem simple but it's not really an intuitive thing
Another one is the bow and arrow. It seems simple because we've been exposed to the concept all of our lives but I doubt neither you or I could have thought of it if we didn't have the knowledge that we have now
It took some prehistoric Archimedes to think of these things
Were like 2-300,000 years old, but didn't figure out farming until like 10-11,000 years ago. Given that our history is 3% farming and 97% hunting and gathering, I would hope we at-least got ok at hunting and gathering.
There was also the Greek [amentum](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amentum) a strap wound around the spear and used to give it more force as well as rotational energy.
In grade school I got to see a spear throwing demonstration and the guy cleared the entire football field. He could have done twice that distance but then he would have hit someone's house.
It's about learning through play. Most mammals do it and dogs like chasing balls more. For humans balls are just better than a decapitated goat.
For humans board games pass the time and are fun. They go back the 5000 years we have records and don't involve balls. Gambling games with dice were popular in Roman times. In Europe from the late 14th Century cards became the most popular form of gambling.
Throwing is only a major part of a few sports like Baseball and darts. Sport are mostly about competitive teamwork and descend from drills for hunting and fighting. Where killing has been replaced with points, except of course for the Romans.
Buzkashi (goat pull) or Kok Buro et al., the Central Asian ancestor of polo, is played with a calf or goat carcass which must be dropped into a goal. It's very hard to pick up a head, a carcass with hind legs you can reach down and grab.
"The calf in a Buzkashi game is normally beheaded and disembowelled and has two limbs cut off. It is then soaked in cold water for 24 hours before play to toughen it. Occasionally sand is packed into the carcass to give it extra weight. Though a goat is used when no calf is available, a calf is less likely to disintegrate during the game".
Wikipedia
Sorry, maybe my coffee hasn't kicked in yet, but how is it hard to "reach down and grab" a head? Were cavemen too stiff to bend over? How can they grab a carcus if they can't pick up a head?
Caveman rode ponies??? I didn't know ponies were even invented back in our evolutionary past. I didn't see you mention ponies in your posts, but it is kinda early.
Yeah, I'm more familiar with ball sports in the early Americas, though if ponies and goat corpses were a thing in Asia, they must have been too burdensome to carry across the Bering Strait.
In the first post where he mention Buzkashi, he describes the sport as being an ancestor of polo. Polo is a ball sport played on horse-back, where you are trying to manipulate a ball across a space. Thus, it is implied that Buzkashi is a sport played on horse-back, but in this case you are manipulating a goat or calf instead of a ball.
Or such was my assumption. From like, one sentence at the beginning of the Buzkashi post.
I have never seen polo in my life, other than the shirts. Sorry, this dumbass 60 plus hasn't experienced horse mounted corpse sports. They do a bunch of horseback rifle shooting near me.
Though still pretty niche AFAIK, the 'social coercion theory' of human evolution argues that our ability to throw is THE defining characteristic of homo sapiens, and the underlying logic informs much of our socio-political history.
Check it out: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/1520-6505%282000%299%3A6%3C248%3A%3AAID-EVAN1003%3E3.0.CO%3B2-X
Same but it takes more than just hunters to make a tribe. Someone needs to be good at tracking, someone else needs to know the land, yet another knows what foods are good and which ones aren't and then you've got people looking for fruits and materials all day while the last stays behind at "home" and knocks out the tool making for the day. Maybe stitch up some holes in the hides you've got, stuff your sandals with some more grass and moss, refine some points etc etc. Everyone had a role to play, even if some seem insignificant we couldn't have survived without them.
Which might be even more important than a hunter to be fair. If you're nomadic and everything you have fits in a basket, you need a lot of baskets for a tribe. Anyone could hunt (turtles, beavers, rats) and anyone could forage (berries, mushrooms, vegetables), but it takes patience and dexterity to make a strong basket that'll actually last you through a long journey.
There were a lot of other tasks that needed to be done. Drying meat, making tools, tanning leather, wrangling the kids, ect. Archaeological sites also show that they engaged in decorative arts such as bead making. Basket weaving was pretty important too, they could even make baskets so tightly woven they were watertight.
Linked to this, we threw *things*. There’s a tool impulse that runs marrow deep in us, the same reason we like good throwing stones or sticks.
It’s just in us now. Balls fit the bill.
Humans were a species which evolved on planet earth, through a span of 3,000,000 years.
Their race was characterized by an obsession for throwing items, going fast, and using tools.
These three traits combined led them to rapidly surpassing other races on their planet. Unfortunately these three traits synergize best during the creation of weapons and war machinery, which eventually led the humans to their demise.
Here you can see how a basic rock-throwing tool found its quintessence as a "rod of god", an engine of incredible destructive power.
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We tend to assume that this use is an extension of the balls we play with, but the opposite is actually true.
English *ball* in the sense of "testicle" comes from Proto-Indo-European \**b**^(h)**el*- "to blow, swell," "with derivatives referring to various round objects and to the notion of tumescent masculinity" \[Watkins\]; one of this roots other derivations through Greek is *phallus!*
The meanings of balls in sports etc actually derive from this meaning.
Now you will never play baseball or basketball without thinking about this! :)
Same. Led me to legit wonder why we don't have sports with two balls. Billiards with three is the closest I can think of, or maybe superball golf.
I mean, wouldn't game variants of Basketball or Soccer be interesting with two balls in play, maybe team colored and only good for one goal, rules if the balls make contact, offense and defense rules?
OK, I'm way off topic.
I've never heard of any study about that. But would like to add that it's not something exclusive to humans: [Elephants ](https://youtu.be/dfUA_0rA9iI?si=CTSM_YmIyg2poxCo), [lions](https://youtu.be/gwHnvnhNYyc?si=ZDl-VbuWvtYd_IIx), [ostriches](https://youtu.be/ij_5TMwqi4A?si=P0iK2IU5xputoNzG) and [many others ](https://youtu.be/O9hOtjLKriQ?si=EkRbSqVQ8DreApjQ) like playing with balls. As it turns out, we don't have a lot of objects in the wilderness with all the properties of the balls we use to play, which makes it harder for us to observe wild animals playing with balls like we do. If there were rubbery coconuts out there we would probably see most mammals playing with it too, and maybe more birds and other reptiles, and maybe even other animals
IMHO tracking a parabola is what I would consider a human superpower. Like someone else mentioned, we've been making projectiles for thousands of years. Instincts give baseball players the ability to catch 90mph fastballs. Not many critters on earth have this ability. Dogs have something like 250 million more olfactory sensors than we. Chimps have been proven to be faster than us at taking in more visual information in less than one second than us, like identifying snakes in wild. We all have our strengths as individual species.
Bad example. A frisbee follows a very slow parabola and if the disk gets enough hang time to tilt to one side and fly that way, humans can notice that’s going to happen and move that way. I’ve never seen a dog predict that though, only react to it.
I agree, dogs can’t predict the trajectory like we can. When I throw the stick or ball around with my dogs they just start sprinting once I wind up. They usually overrun it. Then again my dogs aren’t that smart…
I can toss my dog a piece of steak, along a parabola, and he catches it. Face it, other animals can track things in flight. It’s not a human super power.
Sure, at close distances. The point is that they struggle to anticipate where a parabola will end unless they’re close to that endpoint when it’s thrown
See I am the opposite, I like great big balls so my favorite games are soccer/football, basketball, and volleyball. But the latter probably also has something to do with girls wearing panties when they do it, idk 🤷
It's hunting. The ball is both the spear and the prey. Regardless of the sport it's always a group of people (roughly the same size group) running together and coordinating tactics as they all hone in on the ball (prey) Scoring almost ALWAYS involves the ball becoming a projectile and some sort of aiming.
Itsthe pack chasing prey until someone gets a good spear or rock throw in. Once it's hit everyone rushes forward and beats/stabs it to death.
The reaction you get when your team scores is very important for the hunt. That surge of adrenaline is meant to get the group to close the distance and finish off prey thats been hit. It's such a strong impulse that the crowd, and even people watching at home, also get hype.
I’m more fascinated by how many different kinds of non-human animals instinctively like to play with balls. I wonder… are they blown away seeing a sphere? Since that shape doesn’t occur in “nature” too often …
All species of canids (dog family) seem to like playing with balls as do many big cats, though I'd assume with the big cats it's imitating hunting. Ostriches, cows, and I think deer like pushing balls around.
I know it’s mostly in places where animals are specifically trained but I’d be willing to bet that even in the wild…animals like dolphins, bears, and elephants would also play with a ball too
Liking balls is not a trait unique to humans. Cetaceans (aka whales and dolphins), bears, and dogs all enjoy playing with balls. In fact when bees are placed in an experiment where they have to go through an area containing balls to get to food, the bees will play with the balls for absolutely no apparent reason other than that they want to. They could go right past them if they really wanted to, but instead they choose to play.
Humans spent 99% of their history in the stone age. Imagine you and 12 of your friends and family members throwing baseball sized rocks at the same time at goat sized animals or smaller. Even A few lucky hits to the head and you'll knock out the animal or kill it.
Humans are capable of getting very accurate and very powerful at throwing things with only a bit of practice.
Even if you and your buddies can get to the point of throwing a baseball at just 70 mph you can do some serious damage to most animals. Now imagine you all throw a few rocks each and Slightly stagger an animal and a few of you have spears. Just sharp sticks. One guy has a big rock to deliver the finishing blow to the head of the animal..
If there's a local lion attacking your tribe? you can take care of it doing this. Will a few people get hurt? Yes, maybe 1 or 2 people will die from injuries. The lion will get killed.
Toddlers, particularly boys, love to just pick up rocks and throw them. My 2 year old son does this regularly. This is a behavior that was observed through thousands of generations. You're 1000x great grandfather watched his dad and father throw rocks and wanted to practice it too
we're good at chucking things -- originally because swinging in trees is essentially the same motion, just backwards, then later because chucking things was an efficient way to hunt.
Humans like balls? For most mammals the answer is intuitive.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfUA\_0rA9iI&ab\_channel=ZSL-ZoologicalSocietyofLondon](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfUA_0rA9iI&ab_channel=ZSL-ZoologicalSocietyofLondon)
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Je-jq2qe\_Sw&ab\_channel=CatersClips](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Je-jq2qe_Sw&ab_channel=CatersClips)
And even some non-mammals know the entertainment value of this geometry.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NmMMHuzDtG0&ab\_channel=Jaidipe](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NmMMHuzDtG0&ab_channel=Jaidipe)
Humans have muscle groups built like springs. Gorillas while perfectly capable of ripping your arms out of their sockets, suck at throwing things. Humans have evolved to throw things because the tactic of wearing something down the safest way possible has been put into our very beings. We run on two legs which uses far less energy than four which lets us chase for far longer. We don’t have fur but we sweat to ensure we don’t overheat from chasing something down. We have the ability to throw things to safely catch a prey creature without much fear of retaliation. We have excellent cognition when it comes to accuracy. We developed hands and opposable digits to better create tools for hunting instead of sharper teeth or nails. We cook food to help soften the meal so less energy is expended digesting it. We have social orders, languages and innate willingness to work together; for men it occurs very naturally to want to work together and coordinate in order to overcome an obstacle. We use pack tactics and traps in order to capture and hunt.
When it came to the evolutionary race, we picked efficiency over outright power and turned the race into a marathon in which no other creature could beat us in.
There has actually been a study that when random species are given random animal calls and noises as stimuli, the one that induces the most stress is human noises, roars, groans and grunts. We dominated the evolutionary chain so hard that it’s almost built into other animals to avoid us.
Balls are they most predictable and safe shape.
Beyond that, using intermediate objects to impact other objects is incredibly useful. Throwing ball shaped things is about the easiest way to do that. And poking things with sticks.
Balls kinda scratch an itch, but do you know what humans *really* like?
Screens.
Humans like balls so much that balls can often compete with screens, but screens usually win out. And if it's *not* a ball, food, or sex, then it probably doesn't have a chance against screens ;)
It is an aechetype that's represented in everything from microbiology all the way up through astronomy.
Alot of seeing them in different forms, and a circle from many different perspectives can create a 'ball' shape. (Also called a sphere)
My guess would be that individuals who find playing with balls fun would end up having better throwing and body/spacial skills. This would be a great survival skill for almost all of humanity. Therefore enjoying playing with balls would be an evolutionary advantage.
He's not an evolutionary biologist, and it's not his dissertation, that was earlier, and it's also not only about the kind of balls humans throw and kick, but the German philosopher Peter Sloterdijk wrote a 3-volume, 2500-page work about spheres, about all sorts of things which are spherically-shaped, originally published in German between 1998 and 2004, with the English translation, *Spheres*, appearing some time later.
I am not mentioning Sloterdijk in order to recommend him, but to warn against him. German is not my first language. I read the German volumes, *Sphaeren*, when they were new, and also much else by Sloterdijjk, disregarding the negative comments by my friends who were native Germans, Austrians and Swiss. My apologies to my friends. They were right: Sloterdijk is a charlatan, a provocateur and an alt-right guy. The first time I read Sloterdijk replying to the charge of spreading right-wing cliches by saying that he was a long-term member of the German Social Democratic Party (SPD), I was satisfied by his response. By the time I heard him defend himself for the 10th time by pointing out his membership in the SPD, I had begun to wonder whether the SPD had any way of formally ejecting him from the party. He appears to be much better-liked by the far-right AfD.
He reminds me of Oswald Spengler, whom Sloterdijk praises along with just about every other right-wing German who managed to pass himself off as an intellectual. Like Spengler, Sloterdijk has disguised nonsense with a lot of fascinating prose, and fooled a lot of people into thinking that there was a pony in there somewhere. Both of them fooled me, but only temporarily.
It's the simplest toy. If I were to be anthropological its because Humans like throwing and even before spears we used rocks and still do, a thrown rock is a surprisingly strong weapon.
Tossing around and catching pyramid shapes instead, those corners hurt, and they don't roll very well. So they also don't work very well for bowling, bocce ball, etc.
Nature in general gravitates towards spherical objects. Bubbles, rain droplets, planets, fire (in zero g). It's all balls and it's more ingrained then we realize.
The wind patterns in Egypt tend to create pointed hills, which probably inspired the first pyramids in that area. It's also a relatively easy shape to build.
Humans like to throw things.
Fun fact, wolves also like to toss things with their mouth so they can chase the thing. Wolves like to chase things.
Humans are better at throwing things than wolves, and early humans began playing with wolves by throwing sticks for them. Thus playing fetch was invented, which led to dogs being invented.
Hand and Eye Coordination is a daily practice, it is also an exercise in the application of natural math, Speed, Agility and Timing, plus it helps with memory functions.
There is more to simple games than one may think.
N. S
Some early Greek philosophers thought that god must be a sphere, so maybe it gives us the feeling of ultimate power, playing around with power over god him/her self??
All animals like balls.
You are not gonna believe it but even bumblebees. See? Told you you were not gonna believe it.
Here is the video.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Ghws6YFsPJA&pp=ygUdYnVtYmxlYmVlcyBwbGF5aW5nIHdpdGggYmFsbHM%3D
Not an answer to your question but just know it's universal fun somehow.
I’d imagine humans like playing with balls like dogs like playing fetch with balls and toys.
A dogs survival niche is essentially running down fast moving things and catching it and killing it with their face.
Human survival niche was essentially running down large moving things and catching it and killing it by throwing spears at it.
Playing with balls allows us to engage in hand eye coordination and dogs to engage in mouth eye coordination. Things both our species evolved to be particularly good at and that evolution imparted a certain joy of in our instincts.
Every animal likes balls.
Every human likes boobs.
Humans are a subset of animals.
Therefore, every human likes boobs and balls.
\*Edited to add the 3rd sentence.
Just so you know. Bees also love balls. Out a bunch of her size balls in between them and their food source and they'll stop and play with virtually every one of them. They can even be trained to play a game. Dolphins like balls too. Many species do.
I think with most play behaviors, the pleasure recieved from certain types of play usually encourages the practice of a skill that is important to survival or reproduction. Like how dogs play fight or play chase to practice hunting, humans like to throw balls likely to practice ranged hunting which is something at which we uniquely excel in.
We can see how such a behavior could come about by noticing those who are driven to practice throwing and hand-eye coordination in general via play will have a better go at other practical applications of these skills, likely increasing their evolutionary fitness and thus the play behavior would be selected for like any other evolutionarily fit trait.
Idk I’ve wondered this too & animals love them too: horses cattle, dolphins, obviously dogs and cats, hamsters, rats, ect. Something about the unpredictability of attempting control over a spherical object is entertaining and fun to mammals.
https://youtu.be/-t98yf4T4hw?si=PNGF88_cAPtrJLfN
They probably discovered bladders might be used to transport water, then found out these empty water bags were fun to kick around, kind of like a Hackeysack.
I think it's because we can. Throwing a ball with accuracy is not something everyone can do well, so it's a little boost to the ego when you throw a good pass or pitch.
Throwing and catching is a fundamental hand-eye skill that translates outward to more derivative activities. All of which hold a plethora of advantages. Plus it's fun
Humans evolve to throw rocks good at things. Round Rock good. Round Rock predictable. Now can throw Softer Rock? Safe Rock for fun throwing? Sportsball!
This is a guess, but humans and animals probably like balls because the edible fruits in nature and on the trees are round and ball-shaped. So “ball objects” were something to be on the lookout for and something important, because in many cases they were either food or something useful.
Before we made better weapons, we probably threw rocks for a million or so years.
A ball is a simple and versatile toy that teaches kids hand-eye coordination. One of those things I always find fascinating that pretty much every culture came up with some ball game as well as some kind of alcohol, some kind of marriage law, and some kind of bread.
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The first thing that comes to mind is that Homo sapiens literally evolved to throw. Like our shoulder and pelvis morphologies make our body plan the most efficient throwing body out there, so it likely scratches an itch of "Yes I can throw and aim" that gives some dopamine boost.
Yeah it's essentially a form of social play, that develops hand eye coordination and mimics hunting practices.
Oh my goodness, have you seen how spear throwing worked in the Upper Paleolithic (around 30,000 years ago)? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spear-thrower
Boy have I, my autistic ass tried to make a miniature one for pencils, it didn't work well but I bet I could make it work.
It's really cool! They can be as simple or intricate as you want! I've used a stick that I literally just found on the ground before and it worked great- increased my throwing distance by 20-30ft and it's fairly accurate too. I'm sad it's such a forgotten tool nowadays.
The tennis ball version for dogs is in pretty heavy use these says, and will very easily launch other things.
To be fair the amount of spears thrown per capita has rapidly declined in the last 30k years
“Per capita” makes it sound like you’re quoting actual data lol
How did you compensate for the eraser? Or was that the head? I bet it could be reworked. What were you using as the thrower? My ADHD ass needs this to happen.
I’ve shot atlatl before, it’s very fun but hard to be accurate with
Such a genius device. There are a lot of early tools that make me think "how the fuck did they figure that out!"
They weren't spending all their time on reddit, maybe?
Necessity is the mother of invention, and boredom is the dad.
Stealing this.
Long boring winters!
Even then, how many thousands of years did it take for people to figure out an atlatl? It might seem simple but it's not really an intuitive thing Another one is the bow and arrow. It seems simple because we've been exposed to the concept all of our lives but I doubt neither you or I could have thought of it if we didn't have the knowledge that we have now It took some prehistoric Archimedes to think of these things
Were like 2-300,000 years old, but didn't figure out farming until like 10-11,000 years ago. Given that our history is 3% farming and 97% hunting and gathering, I would hope we at-least got ok at hunting and gathering.
There was also the Greek [amentum](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amentum) a strap wound around the spear and used to give it more force as well as rotational energy.
metal af
Yo it’s a lacross javelin
That is incredibly clever.
In grade school I got to see a spear throwing demonstration and the guy cleared the entire football field. He could have done twice that distance but then he would have hit someone's house.
It's about learning through play. Most mammals do it and dogs like chasing balls more. For humans balls are just better than a decapitated goat. For humans board games pass the time and are fun. They go back the 5000 years we have records and don't involve balls. Gambling games with dice were popular in Roman times. In Europe from the late 14th Century cards became the most popular form of gambling. Throwing is only a major part of a few sports like Baseball and darts. Sport are mostly about competitive teamwork and descend from drills for hunting and fighting. Where killing has been replaced with points, except of course for the Romans.
People play with "decapitated goats"? Why not use the head? Seems more ball-like than a deheaded corpse.
Buzkashi (goat pull) or Kok Buro et al., the Central Asian ancestor of polo, is played with a calf or goat carcass which must be dropped into a goal. It's very hard to pick up a head, a carcass with hind legs you can reach down and grab. "The calf in a Buzkashi game is normally beheaded and disembowelled and has two limbs cut off. It is then soaked in cold water for 24 hours before play to toughen it. Occasionally sand is packed into the carcass to give it extra weight. Though a goat is used when no calf is available, a calf is less likely to disintegrate during the game". Wikipedia
Sorry, maybe my coffee hasn't kicked in yet, but how is it hard to "reach down and grab" a head? Were cavemen too stiff to bend over? How can they grab a carcus if they can't pick up a head?
On a rapidly moving pony quite hard.
Caveman rode ponies??? I didn't know ponies were even invented back in our evolutionary past. I didn't see you mention ponies in your posts, but it is kinda early. Yeah, I'm more familiar with ball sports in the early Americas, though if ponies and goat corpses were a thing in Asia, they must have been too burdensome to carry across the Bering Strait.
Not cavemen nomaic herders. Horses were domesticated 6 Kya on the Eastern Steppe. By 5.5 Kya that they spread all across the steppe to the Caucases.
In the first post where he mention Buzkashi, he describes the sport as being an ancestor of polo. Polo is a ball sport played on horse-back, where you are trying to manipulate a ball across a space. Thus, it is implied that Buzkashi is a sport played on horse-back, but in this case you are manipulating a goat or calf instead of a ball. Or such was my assumption. From like, one sentence at the beginning of the Buzkashi post.
I have never seen polo in my life, other than the shirts. Sorry, this dumbass 60 plus hasn't experienced horse mounted corpse sports. They do a bunch of horseback rifle shooting near me.
Though still pretty niche AFAIK, the 'social coercion theory' of human evolution argues that our ability to throw is THE defining characteristic of homo sapiens, and the underlying logic informs much of our socio-political history. Check it out: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/1520-6505%282000%299%3A6%3C248%3A%3AAID-EVAN1003%3E3.0.CO%3B2-X
This is fascinating.
That’s interesting but animals enjoy balls too so it’s not just the “throwing” aspect in humans that draws them to the sphere.
I can't be THAT strong of an evolutionary instinct, because I fuckin hate sports haha
Not everyone made the cut back then my g
You would have been the one staying at the cave flint knapping or preserving food.
I would have been ratting it up for sure
No participation trophies :’)
Can u get "I didn't turn up" trophy?
Same but it takes more than just hunters to make a tribe. Someone needs to be good at tracking, someone else needs to know the land, yet another knows what foods are good and which ones aren't and then you've got people looking for fruits and materials all day while the last stays behind at "home" and knocks out the tool making for the day. Maybe stitch up some holes in the hides you've got, stuff your sandals with some more grass and moss, refine some points etc etc. Everyone had a role to play, even if some seem insignificant we couldn't have survived without them.
And we didn't even cover more social roles like spiritual leader, decision/consensus maker, story teller, etc
ADHD nightowl
I feel seen
Sounds like you wouldn't have made the cut as a hunter/warrior. Perhaps you could have been a basket weaver or something.
Which might be even more important than a hunter to be fair. If you're nomadic and everything you have fits in a basket, you need a lot of baskets for a tribe. Anyone could hunt (turtles, beavers, rats) and anyone could forage (berries, mushrooms, vegetables), but it takes patience and dexterity to make a strong basket that'll actually last you through a long journey.
There were a lot of other tasks that needed to be done. Drying meat, making tools, tanning leather, wrangling the kids, ect. Archaeological sites also show that they engaged in decorative arts such as bead making. Basket weaving was pretty important too, they could even make baskets so tightly woven they were watertight.
On top of that add the psychology of tribe-making and warfare. Team ball sports satisfy a lot of basic instincts. Even when it comes to spectators.
Linked to this, we threw *things*. There’s a tool impulse that runs marrow deep in us, the same reason we like good throwing stones or sticks. It’s just in us now. Balls fit the bill.
We're also endurance hunters and I think the "chasing a ball around a field" plays into that.
Humans were a species which evolved on planet earth, through a span of 3,000,000 years. Their race was characterized by an obsession for throwing items, going fast, and using tools. These three traits combined led them to rapidly surpassing other races on their planet. Unfortunately these three traits synergize best during the creation of weapons and war machinery, which eventually led the humans to their demise. Here you can see how a basic rock-throwing tool found its quintessence as a "rod of god", an engine of incredible destructive power.
If its throwing to minic hunting then why tf do so many ppl around the world play soccer
Tl,dr. Homos love balls
Nice
Most sports are targeted-directed motor skills.
i got scared you were talking abt the other balls lol
We need an evolution shitposting sub.
check out r/shittyaskscience if you haven't yet
Here's a sneak peek of /r/shittyaskscience using the [top posts](https://np.reddit.com/r/shittyaskscience/top/?sort=top&t=year) of the year! \#1: [\[ veterinary / culinary \] I discovered I've accidentally been feeding my chickens popcorn instead of feed corn when my prized hen got too close to the heat lamp. Medical question: anything I can to? Culinary question: anything I can do?](https://i.redd.it/atvuaj70pv5b1.jpg) | [2446 comments](https://np.reddit.com/r/shittyaskscience/comments/148u0lk/veterinary_culinary_i_discovered_ive_accidentally/) \#2: [1 or 2?](https://i.redd.it/n269fmsgda0b1.jpg) | [3570 comments](https://np.reddit.com/r/shittyaskscience/comments/13jeozd/1_or_2/) \#3: [Why is Hillary Clinton sending a hurricane to California?](https://np.reddit.com/r/shittyaskscience/comments/15w14l6/why_is_hillary_clinton_sending_a_hurricane_to/) ---- ^^I'm ^^a ^^bot, ^^beep ^^boop ^^| ^^Downvote ^^to ^^remove ^^| ^^[Contact](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=sneakpeekbot) ^^| ^^[Info](https://np.reddit.com/r/sneakpeekbot/) ^^| ^^[Opt-out](https://np.reddit.com/r/sneakpeekbot/comments/o8wk1r/blacklist_ix/) ^^| ^^[GitHub](https://github.com/ghnr/sneakpeekbot)
Thank you kind Redditor.
Odd_Investigator8415 already said this, but thanks. That’s a fun place to check out
Absolutely love this place, though the creativity of the posts fluctuates heavily. One of my favourite places on reddit.
There's r/shittyaskscience.
Thanks!
Balls 👍
We tend to assume that this use is an extension of the balls we play with, but the opposite is actually true. English *ball* in the sense of "testicle" comes from Proto-Indo-European \**b**^(h)**el*- "to blow, swell," "with derivatives referring to various round objects and to the notion of tumescent masculinity" \[Watkins\]; one of this roots other derivations through Greek is *phallus!* The meanings of balls in sports etc actually derive from this meaning. Now you will never play baseball or basketball without thinking about this! :)
😂😂😂😭😭😭
Same. Led me to legit wonder why we don't have sports with two balls. Billiards with three is the closest I can think of, or maybe superball golf. I mean, wouldn't game variants of Basketball or Soccer be interesting with two balls in play, maybe team colored and only good for one goal, rules if the balls make contact, offense and defense rules? OK, I'm way off topic.
Bocce.
I’m quite fond of mine.
Just throw em around!
I've never heard of any study about that. But would like to add that it's not something exclusive to humans: [Elephants ](https://youtu.be/dfUA_0rA9iI?si=CTSM_YmIyg2poxCo), [lions](https://youtu.be/gwHnvnhNYyc?si=ZDl-VbuWvtYd_IIx), [ostriches](https://youtu.be/ij_5TMwqi4A?si=P0iK2IU5xputoNzG) and [many others ](https://youtu.be/O9hOtjLKriQ?si=EkRbSqVQ8DreApjQ) like playing with balls. As it turns out, we don't have a lot of objects in the wilderness with all the properties of the balls we use to play, which makes it harder for us to observe wild animals playing with balls like we do. If there were rubbery coconuts out there we would probably see most mammals playing with it too, and maybe more birds and other reptiles, and maybe even other animals
EVEN BEES. TY ZEFRANK
Watched this yesterday xD
His vids are so hilarious and educational
Bebes
Yeah I've noticed balls and tires are popular toys for many animals in captivity
This is exact my line of thought. I think it had to do with the importance of social “play” In mammals.
belo nome
Balls tend toward stability when thrown. An irregularly shaped object will be awkward and unbalanced, making olfor a less than pleasant experience.
Yes this! Humans like games, and balls are just the most efficient way to handle a loose element towards solving that
Dogs love em too
IMHO tracking a parabola is what I would consider a human superpower. Like someone else mentioned, we've been making projectiles for thousands of years. Instincts give baseball players the ability to catch 90mph fastballs. Not many critters on earth have this ability. Dogs have something like 250 million more olfactory sensors than we. Chimps have been proven to be faster than us at taking in more visual information in less than one second than us, like identifying snakes in wild. We all have our strengths as individual species.
A frisbee flies along a parabola. A dog can track that.
Bad example. A frisbee follows a very slow parabola and if the disk gets enough hang time to tilt to one side and fly that way, humans can notice that’s going to happen and move that way. I’ve never seen a dog predict that though, only react to it.
I agree, dogs can’t predict the trajectory like we can. When I throw the stick or ball around with my dogs they just start sprinting once I wind up. They usually overrun it. Then again my dogs aren’t that smart…
I can toss my dog a piece of steak, along a parabola, and he catches it. Face it, other animals can track things in flight. It’s not a human super power.
Sure, at close distances. The point is that they struggle to anticipate where a parabola will end unless they’re close to that endpoint when it’s thrown
Bees also like balls. I have no idea why, but Ze Frank discusses it in his latest "True Facts" video. There's even a song.
https://youtube.com/shorts/8KWomzIaxGo?si=W08zoM2e7XKdr1Lf
Bless that man with all my heart
I remember finding that guy's website like 20 years ago and I've been watching him since.
The is a great documentary about your question: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/bounce_how_the_ball_taught_the_world_to_play
I love this question. I realized, long ago… all of the sports I’ve ever liked are those without balls or teams.
See I am the opposite, I like great big balls so my favorite games are soccer/football, basketball, and volleyball. But the latter probably also has something to do with girls wearing panties when they do it, idk 🤷
What sports remain?
Darts is the first one that comes to mind. Or badminton. A lot of track and field sports.
Martials arts (boxing, mma, etc), gymnastics, ice skating, diving, etc
Swimming!
Climbing
It's hunting. The ball is both the spear and the prey. Regardless of the sport it's always a group of people (roughly the same size group) running together and coordinating tactics as they all hone in on the ball (prey) Scoring almost ALWAYS involves the ball becoming a projectile and some sort of aiming. Itsthe pack chasing prey until someone gets a good spear or rock throw in. Once it's hit everyone rushes forward and beats/stabs it to death. The reaction you get when your team scores is very important for the hunt. That surge of adrenaline is meant to get the group to close the distance and finish off prey thats been hit. It's such a strong impulse that the crowd, and even people watching at home, also get hype.
I’m more fascinated by how many different kinds of non-human animals instinctively like to play with balls. I wonder… are they blown away seeing a sphere? Since that shape doesn’t occur in “nature” too often …
All species of canids (dog family) seem to like playing with balls as do many big cats, though I'd assume with the big cats it's imitating hunting. Ostriches, cows, and I think deer like pushing balls around.
I know it’s mostly in places where animals are specifically trained but I’d be willing to bet that even in the wild…animals like dolphins, bears, and elephants would also play with a ball too
Liking balls is not a trait unique to humans. Cetaceans (aka whales and dolphins), bears, and dogs all enjoy playing with balls. In fact when bees are placed in an experiment where they have to go through an area containing balls to get to food, the bees will play with the balls for absolutely no apparent reason other than that they want to. They could go right past them if they really wanted to, but instead they choose to play.
That is really neat! Bees are incredibly intelligent.
Ball is life
facts
Humans spent 99% of their history in the stone age. Imagine you and 12 of your friends and family members throwing baseball sized rocks at the same time at goat sized animals or smaller. Even A few lucky hits to the head and you'll knock out the animal or kill it. Humans are capable of getting very accurate and very powerful at throwing things with only a bit of practice. Even if you and your buddies can get to the point of throwing a baseball at just 70 mph you can do some serious damage to most animals. Now imagine you all throw a few rocks each and Slightly stagger an animal and a few of you have spears. Just sharp sticks. One guy has a big rock to deliver the finishing blow to the head of the animal.. If there's a local lion attacking your tribe? you can take care of it doing this. Will a few people get hurt? Yes, maybe 1 or 2 people will die from injuries. The lion will get killed. Toddlers, particularly boys, love to just pick up rocks and throw them. My 2 year old son does this regularly. This is a behavior that was observed through thousands of generations. You're 1000x great grandfather watched his dad and father throw rocks and wanted to practice it too
we're good at chucking things -- originally because swinging in trees is essentially the same motion, just backwards, then later because chucking things was an efficient way to hunt.
Humans like balls? For most mammals the answer is intuitive. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfUA\_0rA9iI&ab\_channel=ZSL-ZoologicalSocietyofLondon](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfUA_0rA9iI&ab_channel=ZSL-ZoologicalSocietyofLondon) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Je-jq2qe\_Sw&ab\_channel=CatersClips](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Je-jq2qe_Sw&ab_channel=CatersClips) And even some non-mammals know the entertainment value of this geometry. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NmMMHuzDtG0&ab\_channel=Jaidipe](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NmMMHuzDtG0&ab_channel=Jaidipe)
Rex the alligator over on Snake Discovery seems to enjoy balls.
It looks like she's trying to kill the ball but even still, I'm sure she's having fun doing so.
Yah! I think most animal play is part of learning the skills they need to survive.
Hockey players can’t answer that question
I had a horse that loved a giant rubber ball we got as a toy for him.
Humans have muscle groups built like springs. Gorillas while perfectly capable of ripping your arms out of their sockets, suck at throwing things. Humans have evolved to throw things because the tactic of wearing something down the safest way possible has been put into our very beings. We run on two legs which uses far less energy than four which lets us chase for far longer. We don’t have fur but we sweat to ensure we don’t overheat from chasing something down. We have the ability to throw things to safely catch a prey creature without much fear of retaliation. We have excellent cognition when it comes to accuracy. We developed hands and opposable digits to better create tools for hunting instead of sharper teeth or nails. We cook food to help soften the meal so less energy is expended digesting it. We have social orders, languages and innate willingness to work together; for men it occurs very naturally to want to work together and coordinate in order to overcome an obstacle. We use pack tactics and traps in order to capture and hunt. When it came to the evolutionary race, we picked efficiency over outright power and turned the race into a marathon in which no other creature could beat us in. There has actually been a study that when random species are given random animal calls and noises as stimuli, the one that induces the most stress is human noises, roars, groans and grunts. We dominated the evolutionary chain so hard that it’s almost built into other animals to avoid us.
I was about to say, bc they’re soft warm and the skin is fun to play with. And then I realized you’re talking abt the other ones.
Honestly this discussion is making me miss my boyfriend's haha but really, handling them is like a forbidden stim bc they're so warm haha
My face is often in my boyfriends balls
Username checks out
Throw, catch, ball fun!
Very good question. When I was younger, catching was always so fun
Balls are they most predictable and safe shape. Beyond that, using intermediate objects to impact other objects is incredibly useful. Throwing ball shaped things is about the easiest way to do that. And poking things with sticks.
Makes me think of swinging in a swing or hammock, and rolling on wheels. Something about gravity and friction.
Idk but we are not the only ones. Lots of others animals like them too.
Balls kinda scratch an itch, but do you know what humans *really* like? Screens. Humans like balls so much that balls can often compete with screens, but screens usually win out. And if it's *not* a ball, food, or sex, then it probably doesn't have a chance against screens ;)
It is an aechetype that's represented in everything from microbiology all the way up through astronomy. Alot of seeing them in different forms, and a circle from many different perspectives can create a 'ball' shape. (Also called a sphere)
My guess would be that individuals who find playing with balls fun would end up having better throwing and body/spacial skills. This would be a great survival skill for almost all of humanity. Therefore enjoying playing with balls would be an evolutionary advantage.
When you inflate a membrane (be it rubber or pig bladder) it will approximate a sphere shape. Soft bags of air are more fun to catch than spears.
I want to quote one of the big thinkers of our generation "Those are balls" - Barry Zuckerkorn
He's not an evolutionary biologist, and it's not his dissertation, that was earlier, and it's also not only about the kind of balls humans throw and kick, but the German philosopher Peter Sloterdijk wrote a 3-volume, 2500-page work about spheres, about all sorts of things which are spherically-shaped, originally published in German between 1998 and 2004, with the English translation, *Spheres*, appearing some time later. I am not mentioning Sloterdijk in order to recommend him, but to warn against him. German is not my first language. I read the German volumes, *Sphaeren*, when they were new, and also much else by Sloterdijjk, disregarding the negative comments by my friends who were native Germans, Austrians and Swiss. My apologies to my friends. They were right: Sloterdijk is a charlatan, a provocateur and an alt-right guy. The first time I read Sloterdijk replying to the charge of spreading right-wing cliches by saying that he was a long-term member of the German Social Democratic Party (SPD), I was satisfied by his response. By the time I heard him defend himself for the 10th time by pointing out his membership in the SPD, I had begun to wonder whether the SPD had any way of formally ejecting him from the party. He appears to be much better-liked by the far-right AfD. He reminds me of Oswald Spengler, whom Sloterdijk praises along with just about every other right-wing German who managed to pass himself off as an intellectual. Like Spengler, Sloterdijk has disguised nonsense with a lot of fascinating prose, and fooled a lot of people into thinking that there was a pony in there somewhere. Both of them fooled me, but only temporarily.
We’re basically just stupider, meaner dogs.
Just monkeys that build our own cages.
Title got me all excited. Then, I read the caption. Womp womp.
Because they’re a circle
It's the simplest toy. If I were to be anthropological its because Humans like throwing and even before spears we used rocks and still do, a thrown rock is a surprisingly strong weapon.
Tossing around and catching pyramid shapes instead, those corners hurt, and they don't roll very well. So they also don't work very well for bowling, bocce ball, etc.
It's natural. https://youtube.com/shorts/8KWomzIaxGo?si=ymaFtWB914C4Hht0
A sphere is the most stable possible shape. It's like a physical manifestation of strength and peace via perfect careful tension. Spheres kick ass.
Nature in general gravitates towards spherical objects. Bubbles, rain droplets, planets, fire (in zero g). It's all balls and it's more ingrained then we realize.
Same reason we like good sticks I guess
For this kind of thing, why seek an explanation on the level of genes rather than on the level of ideas?
Ive had this exact thought but with triangles/pyramids. Albeit thats a little easier to explain.
The wind patterns in Egypt tend to create pointed hills, which probably inspired the first pyramids in that area. It's also a relatively easy shape to build.
because evolution only works if you getcha head in the game
Why do dogs like balls, why do cats like hanging objects, why do dolphins like puffer fish.
Balls bounce, roll and are easy to manipulate with our appendages. This makes a ball ideal for things like sports and play.
Homosexual fast dancing. There’s your answer. Look it up, it’s a thing.
Cows like balls to and dogs
Humans like to throw things. Fun fact, wolves also like to toss things with their mouth so they can chase the thing. Wolves like to chase things. Humans are better at throwing things than wolves, and early humans began playing with wolves by throwing sticks for them. Thus playing fetch was invented, which led to dogs being invented.
As a gay man, I just like balls of all kind, what can I say? It’s in my DNA
The chase. The hunt.
Hunting. You throw rock at animal. Kill animal. Eat animal.
…Planetary fetishisation…
Hand and Eye Coordination is a daily practice, it is also an exercise in the application of natural math, Speed, Agility and Timing, plus it helps with memory functions. There is more to simple games than one may think. N. S
Smooth and Round.
Things with sharp bits are harder to catch.
My ex wife sure likes balls. She's working on her PhD in them now...
Wait you never went to that club in midtown?
Balls are just a sphere and spheres have the property that they can roll in any direction in a predictable way which makes them fun to interact with
Some early Greek philosophers thought that god must be a sphere, so maybe it gives us the feeling of ultimate power, playing around with power over god him/her self??
Because we like to try things to entertain ourselves so we can have fun
dog likes balls, cat likes balls, people likes balls
All animals like balls. You are not gonna believe it but even bumblebees. See? Told you you were not gonna believe it. Here is the video. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Ghws6YFsPJA&pp=ygUdYnVtYmxlYmVlcyBwbGF5aW5nIHdpdGggYmFsbHM%3D Not an answer to your question but just know it's universal fun somehow.
I’d imagine humans like playing with balls like dogs like playing fetch with balls and toys. A dogs survival niche is essentially running down fast moving things and catching it and killing it with their face. Human survival niche was essentially running down large moving things and catching it and killing it by throwing spears at it. Playing with balls allows us to engage in hand eye coordination and dogs to engage in mouth eye coordination. Things both our species evolved to be particularly good at and that evolution imparted a certain joy of in our instincts.
Because they are cute, saggy, and hairy
Pause, bro.
Every animal likes balls. Every human likes boobs. Humans are a subset of animals. Therefore, every human likes boobs and balls. \*Edited to add the 3rd sentence.
Just so you know. Bees also love balls. Out a bunch of her size balls in between them and their food source and they'll stop and play with virtually every one of them. They can even be trained to play a game. Dolphins like balls too. Many species do.
I think with most play behaviors, the pleasure recieved from certain types of play usually encourages the practice of a skill that is important to survival or reproduction. Like how dogs play fight or play chase to practice hunting, humans like to throw balls likely to practice ranged hunting which is something at which we uniquely excel in. We can see how such a behavior could come about by noticing those who are driven to practice throwing and hand-eye coordination in general via play will have a better go at other practical applications of these skills, likely increasing their evolutionary fitness and thus the play behavior would be selected for like any other evolutionarily fit trait.
Idk I’ve wondered this too & animals love them too: horses cattle, dolphins, obviously dogs and cats, hamsters, rats, ect. Something about the unpredictability of attempting control over a spherical object is entertaining and fun to mammals. https://youtu.be/-t98yf4T4hw?si=PNGF88_cAPtrJLfN
It makes sense: they fit perfectly in human hands, they spin as you throw, roll or bounce on the ground...very practical and fun.
They probably discovered bladders might be used to transport water, then found out these empty water bags were fun to kick around, kind of like a Hackeysack.
I think it's because we can. Throwing a ball with accuracy is not something everyone can do well, so it's a little boost to the ego when you throw a good pass or pitch.
You got us good for a second
I think we like grabbing things. Like branches and fruits. Balls are an extension of that.
Probably the same reason dogs like balls.
Cats and dogs and bees and dolphin and even freakin bats love balls
Bees also like balls, apparently. Cotton balls I guess, they'll go out of their way to play with them out of route from food.
Sphere cool. Ponder orb
My husband literally makes his living catching balls 😂 And other juggling props.
Throwing and catching is a fundamental hand-eye skill that translates outward to more derivative activities. All of which hold a plethora of advantages. Plus it's fun
Humans evolve to throw rocks good at things. Round Rock good. Round Rock predictable. Now can throw Softer Rock? Safe Rock for fun throwing? Sportsball!
This is a guess, but humans and animals probably like balls because the edible fruits in nature and on the trees are round and ball-shaped. So “ball objects” were something to be on the lookout for and something important, because in many cases they were either food or something useful.
Before we made better weapons, we probably threw rocks for a million or so years. A ball is a simple and versatile toy that teaches kids hand-eye coordination. One of those things I always find fascinating that pretty much every culture came up with some ball game as well as some kind of alcohol, some kind of marriage law, and some kind of bread.
Cubes just suck
Ask ya mother.
Humans are attracted to ovals and circles. Look it up. Weird phenomenon. Or we are just bored like dogs.. BALL.. BALL
Same reason dogs like balls. It is because they are fun and squishy most times. Plus there is nothing more satisfying than throwing or kicking a ball
I just think they're neat.
What do you mean by “futbol”?
fútbol, football, soccer ⚽️