It is almost impossible to pick a date when American Football was invented. The invention of American football was incredibly gradual. Even though American football is a relatively young sport it has slowly developed and evolved over a long time. While we tend to think of it as a uniquely American sport, its origin and history demonstrate that it is an evolution of sports that have been played since ancient times.
The Early History of Football
Ball games or games involving an object a player possesses while others try to tackle or wrestle have a long history. We know of games such as Harpastum, which was Roman ball game probably similar to a Greek ball game called Episkyros (Figure 1).[1] We do not know the exact rules for each of these games but it seemed to involve a ball where two teams would try to score or place the ball in a position that would register the game's points while the other team would tackle and try to prevent the other team from scoring.
