Baseball invented by the ancient Egyptians Sports Illustrated – April 30, 2003 Forget Abner Doubleday, Alexander Cartwright and that rounders theory —
the seeds of our national pastime were planted four millennia ago on the banks of the Nile. Academics have long batted around theories of baseball’s origins.
Our national pastime has been traced to age-old games played in England, France, Germany, Libya and Spain. One 10th-century Norse variation, knatteleik, was a dawn-to-dusk affair in which Viking batters swung at balls of leather or wood. (No, the batting helmets weren’t horned.)
“The Abner Doubleday myth dies hard,” says Tim Wiles, director of research at the Hall of Fame. “But we no longer think the sport had a single inventor. It has evolved over many, many years