Disputed Statements

Alquerque, Games

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Originating Region

Currently States Disputed: ancient Egypt for the earliest possible (undated) board evidence at Kurna; the Arabic-speaking Near East and Moorish Iberia for the earliest securely dated textual record

The dating dispute is over TIME, not place; both proposed regions are named because the evidence for each rests on a different kind of source.

Source A History of Board-Games Other Than Chess, H.J.R. Murray tier 2

Alquerque, Games

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Origin Year

Currently States 976

976 AD is the death year of the Kitab al-Aghani's author, the earliest secure textual attestation. The Kurna temple boards, if genuinely ancient, would push the game to roughly 1400 BC, but graffiti cut into temple stone cannot be reliably dated to the building's own construction; both figures are carried in the description rather than collapsed to one.

Source A History of Board-Games Other Than Chess, H.J.R. Murray tier 2

American Football, Sports

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Origin Year

Currently States 1869

The first intercollegiate game, Rutgers against Princeton on 6 November 1869, was played under rules closer to association football than to the modern game. Walter Camp's rule changes through the 1880s, the line of scrimmage and downs, and the forward pass added in 1906, are what separated American football from its rugby football and association football ancestors, so no single year cleanly marks when the game began.

Source Encyclopaedia Britannica tier 2

Asian Games, Competitions

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Founding Year

Currently States 1951

1951 marks the first Asian Games, held under the earlier Asian Games Federation; the Olympic Council of Asia, the body that governs the Games today, was not established until 1982.

Association Football, Sports

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Origin Year

Currently States 1863

1863 marks the founding of the Football Association in England and the first published unified code of laws, taken here as the sport organized origin. Football like kicking games are far older and much less documented, including cuju in Han dynasty China and various medieval English folk football games, so no single origin year for football as a broad practice commands consensus among historians.

Source Encyclopaedia Britannica tier 2

Athletics, Sports

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Origin Year

Currently States -776

776 BC is the traditional founding date of the ancient Olympic Games and their stadion foot race, the earliest recorded athletic contest, but that date itself is a later Greek chronographic reconstruction rather than a contemporary record. Modern organized athletics is a separate nineteenth century development, formalized with the Amateur Athletic Club founding in 1866 in England, so 776 BC and 1866 answer two different questions about the sport origin rather than agreeing on one.

Source Encyclopaedia Britannica tier 2

Backgammon, Games

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Origin Year

Currently States 1645

1645 is commonly cited as the first English attestation of the name backgammon. The game itself descends from a much older lineage of race and dice games, including the Roman game tabula, documented from around the first century AD, and more distantly the Royal Game of Ur, from Mesopotamia around 2600 to 2400 BC, but the exact line of transmission across the intervening centuries between these ancient games and the modern form is not fully documented and is debated among game historians.

Source A History of Board-Games Other Than Chess, H.J.R. Murray tier 2

Baseball, Sports

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Origin Year

Currently States 1845

The Abner Doubleday origin story is a documented myth with no contemporary evidence behind it. The Knickerbocker Rules, codified by Alexander Cartwright in New York in 1845, are the earliest organized modern ruleset; the game itself descends from older English bat and ball games, principally rounders and stoolball, played in America since colonial times.

Source Encyclopaedia Britannica tier 2

Boxing, Sports

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Origin Year

Currently States 1867

1867 marks the publication of the Marquess of Queensberry Rules, which introduced padded gloves and timed rounds and underlie boxing as practiced today, taken here as the sport modern codified origin. Pugilism itself is documented in Egyptian and Sumerian art as early as the third millennium BC and was an ancient Olympic event from 688 BC, so boxing antiquity as bare handed fighting goes back millennia further than its modern codified form, with no single origin point resolvable.

Source Encyclopaedia Britannica tier 2

Bridge, Games

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Origin Year

Currently States 1925

1925 is the year Harold Vanderbilt codified contract bridge, the game as generally played today, but bridge itself is the end of a longer line: whist is documented in England from at least the sixteenth century, auction bridge, an intermediate form, emerged around 1904, and Vanderbilt scoring table refinement in 1925 is the point at which the modern contract game is usually dated from rather than a true single invention date.

Source The Oxford Guide to Card Games tier 2

Carrom, Games

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Origin Year

Currently States 1900

Carrom's exact origin is unresolved: it is widely believed to have developed in South Asia, with surviving nineteenth or early twentieth century boards cited as the earliest physical evidence, but no securely documented single founding date or place is agreed among the sources checked this wave. 1900 marks the earliest period for which organized play is well attested, not a claimed invention date.

Source Wikipedia, Carrom tier 2

Chaturanga, Games

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Origin Year

Currently States 600

Chaturanga is clearly attested in Indian sources by around the sixth century AD, the date taken here, though the game may well be older; no securely dated earlier textual or archaeological evidence survives, and the rules of its earliest forms are only partially reconstructed from later references.

Source A History of Chess, H.J.R. Murray tier 2

Chess, Games

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Origin Year

Currently States 600

Chaturanga, chess earliest documented ancestor, is attested in northern Indian sources by around the sixth or seventh century AD, but the game likely existed in some form before the surviving textual evidence, and the exact date and place of its invention are not settled by historians.

Source A History of Chess, H.J.R. Murray tier 2

Cricket, Sports

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Origin Year

Currently States 1598

1598 is the date of the earliest known documented reference to the game, a Guildford court case in which a witness recalled playing creckett around 1550. The game almost certainly existed informally before that as an unrecorded children or shepherds pastime, so 1598 marks the earliest surviving evidence rather than a true origin date, which is not recoverable.

Source Encyclopaedia Britannica tier 2

Cycling, Sports

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Origin Year

Currently States 1868

The bicycle developed gradually from the 1817 draisine through pedal driven designs of the 1860s; the first organized bicycle race on record was held at the Parc de Saint Cloud in Paris on 31 May 1868, taken here as the codified competitive origin, though the machine raced that day continued to change for decades afterward.

Source Encyclopaedia Britannica tier 2

Dominoes, Games

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Origin Year

Currently States 1750

The modern Western double six domino set is documented in Italy from around the early to mid eighteenth century, roughly 1750, from where it spread to France and the rest of Europe. Tile matching games using pipped markings are separately documented much earlier in China, with a set called pupai recorded around 1120 AD under the Song dynasty, but the line of transmission, if any, between the Chinese and later Italian traditions across the intervening six centuries is not documented and is debated among game historians.

Source The Oxford History of Board Games tier 2

Draughts, Games

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Origin Year

Currently States 1100

No exact year is attested for the French codification onto a chequered board; this stands for the twelfth century, distinguished from alquerque's own much older and disputed ancestry.

Source A History of Board-Games Other Than Chess, H.J.R. Murray tier 2

French Open, Competitions

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Founding Year

Currently States 1891

1891 is the year the French Championships began, restricted to French club members. The tournament is sometimes dated instead from 1925, when it opened to international competitors, or 1928, when it moved to the newly built Stade Roland Garros that gives the tournament its common name.

Source Roland Garros (French Open), Official History tier 1

Go, Games

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Origin Year

Currently States -400

The Zuo Zhuan, a Chinese chronicle traditionally dated to around the fourth century BC, is the earliest surviving text to mention go, already as an established game, which means the game real invention lies at some earlier point that no surviving record documents. Go is commonly described as more than twenty five hundred years old on this basis, but no exact origin date or inventor is known.

Source A History of Board-Games Other Than Chess, H.J.R. Murray tier 2

Golf, Sports

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Origin Year

Currently States 1744

1744 marks the earliest surviving written rules, by the Company of Gentlemen Golfers at Leith; the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St Andrews, founded 1754, became the game's most influential later standardizer. Golf itself is attested informally in Scotland from the fifteenth century, and claimed but unproven resemblances to the Roman paganica, Chinese chuiwan and Dutch kolven push proposed antiquity earlier still with no documented continuity, so no single origin year is settled.

Source Wikipedia, Golf tier 2