Hoop rolling

[1] A version of hoop rolling played as a target game is encountered as an ancient tradition among aboriginal peoples in many parts of the world.

[4] It is postulated that its wide distribution is a factor of the rich symbolical possibilities of the game, rather than indicating radial diffusion from a single center of invention.

[6] Although a popular form of recreation, hoop rolling was not featured in competition at the major sports festivals.

Hoop driving is an attribute of Ganymede, often depicted on Greek vase paintings from the 5th century BCE.

CLXVIII)[14] Martial also mentions the sport was practised by Sarmatian boys, who rolled their hoops on the frozen Danube river.

[15] According to Strabo, one of the popular Roman venues for practising the sport was the Campus Martius, which was large enough to accommodate a wide variety of activities.

"[19] It was also presented as a virtue in the Distichs of Cato, which enjoin youth to "Trocho lude; aleam fuge" ("Play with the hoop, flee the dice").

[20] A 2nd-century medical text by Antyllus, preserved in an anthology of Oribasius, Emperor Julian's physician, describes hoop rolling as a form of physical and mental therapy.

[23][24] The game was a common pastime of Tanzanian village children of the African Tanganyika plateau circa the 1910s.

Some preferred the ashen hoops, round on the outside and flat on the inside, to the ones made of iron, as the latter could break windows and hurt the legs of the passers by and horses.

[35] By the late 18th century, boys driving hoops in the London streets had become a nuisance, according to Joseph Strutt.

[36] The London police attempted to eradicate the practice, confiscating the iron hoops of boys and girls trundling them through the streets and parks.

[37] Other writers mocked the complainers as grumblers depriving the "juvenile community" of a healthy and harmless pastime that had been practised for hundreds of years "without any apparent inconvenience to the public at large".

Regulate with exquisite minuteness the cries of the baby in the cradle, the laughter of the hoop-trundling boy, the murmurrings of the toothless old man.

[40] Babbage achieved a certain notoriety in this matter, being denounced in debate in Commons in 1864 for "commencing a crusade against the popular game of tip-cat and the trundling of hoops".

[41] The fuss over boys playing with hoops reached around the globe—in the Colony of Tasmania, boys trundling hoops were blamed for endangering men riding horses and women's silk dresses, and the Hobart newspaper called for their banishment to the suburbs by law and police attention.

The practice, however, was brought to an end sometime before 1816, by means of a statute that forbade Masters of Arts to roll hoops or play marbles.

[43] By the early 19th century, the game was already part of the standard physical education of girls, together with jumping rope and dumbbells.

Though the forms of the game exhibited great variation, generally certain elements were present, namely a prepared terrain over which a disc or hoop was rolled at high speed, at which implements similar to spears were thrown.

Since hoop and stick involves spear throwing, it is thought to predate the introduction of the bow and arrow that took place around 500 AD.

[60] Hoop driving was also seen as a remedy for the sedentary and overprotected lives led by many American girls of the mid-19th century.