The roots of hockey are buried deep in time and can be found throughout the world’s history. Although it is not possible to know exactly when and where the game actually began though historical records show that a crude form of hockey was played in various antiques civilizations. The 4,000-year-old drawings found in the Beni-Hasen tombs, in the Nile Valley, Egypt depicted men playing the sport.  

                      Beni-Hasan Tomb 4,000 B.C

Other traces show that Arabs, the Persians, the Romans (a version called paganica), the Ethiopians, as well as the Aztecs were playing their own variation of the game. The first evidence of a team game was found on bases of statues that were part of the wall built by Themistocles in 478 B.C. Six men are carrying hooked sticks, two of which are opposing each other over a ball in what looks like the bully that starts modern games.

The Irish game of hurling dates from at least 1272 B.C. European settlers in Argentina in the 16^th century described a hockey-like game of the Araucano Indians called cheuca (or ‘the twisted one’ from the twisted end of the stick used by players). In Western Australia, early white settlers witnessed Noongar people played a game called dumbung, in which bent sticks were used to hit a ball made of dried sap from the native pear tree (the game is believed to be the source of the name Dumbleyung, a town near were it was played).

In the Middle Ages, hockey-like games were played throughout Europe, cambuca (or comocke or cammock; compare modern camogie) in England, shinty in Scotland, jeu de mail in France and het kolven in The Netherlands. There are various depictions in cathedral windows (Canterbury and Gloucester), a book (Decretal of Gysors), and other artifacts. Clubbes, hurl-bat shinnops, jowling, baddins, and doddorts were all games played in different parts of England. Both Edward III and Richard II tried to ban cambuca and bandy-ball as an interference with archery practice.

Actually the origin of the word Hockey is obscure. Hockie was forbidden in the Statutes of Galway in 1527. The word may derive from comocke and the Anglo-Saxon word for ‘hook’, hok; alternatively, it may come from the French word for a shepherd’s crook, hocquet.

Various museums offer evidence that a form of the hockey game was played throughout the centuries. However, the modern game of hockey evolved mainly in England in the mid-18^th century. 

                       England’s women in 1896