FYI: What Is the Oldest Toy in the World?
Old Teddy Bear Peter Anderson/Getty Images The National Toy Hall of Fame awarded "oldest toy" to the stick. Edward Bleiberg, a curator of Egyptian art at the Brooklyn Museum, says that Neolithic balls made from mud are probably out there, but in any case it would be difficult to determine if they were playthings. In 2004, archaeologists dug up a 4,000-year-old stone doll head in the ruins of a village on the Italian island of Pantelleria. That the head wasn't found in a ceremonial ground made it different than most ancient human figures and suggests that it was probably a toy. It had curly hair and was buried with miniature kitchenware. Bleiberg says that archaeologists have found many wooden dolls in Egyptian tombs that date back just as far, but most of those figures were found engraved with reproductive symbols, and probably weren't for play. Games might be older than dolls. In...