If you do an internet search for the “World’s Oldest Toy” you’ll see it’s a title with many contenders and a good deal of speculation. There are claims made for the 4000-year-old ceramic rattle from the Turkish site Kültepe Kaniş-Karum, or the even older 5000-year-old wheeled “toy car” found in a child’s grave nearby. Others make the case for a 4000-year-old “doll’s head” from the island of Pantelleria, Italy.
Identifying any artifact from a single surviving example is a real challenge to archaeology, as archaeologists rely on patterns to determine the use and meaning of objects. Without patterning, an object is open to multiple interpretations: Is the object a toy, venerated figurine, ritual object, or something else? Many prefer to attribute the world’s oldest toys to the Indus Valley Civilization of nearly 5000 years ago because there is a relative abundance of wheeled and stationary figures from sites like Harappa and Mohenjo Daro. Patterns in manufacture, use, and depositional context suggest many were indeed toys for children.
The media uses headlines about the “world’s oldest toy” to fascinate the public, but to be honest, the idea of which toy is the oldest is of little archaeological interest. Why? There are many reasons—but most importantly is that archaeologists realize that play has been going on as long as there have been children—and there have always been children! The importance of play for juvenile animals is well documented, and humans are no exception. While we associate toys with play, they are hardly essential. Many kinds of imaginative play require no objects at all. And objects don’t need to be specially designed or intended for play to be included in playful activities. Archaeologist Sally Crawford argued in 2009 that any object can be a toy, because a toy is determined by how an object is used and the mindset of the user—not the object itself.
Across cultures, natural objects are regularly transformed in children’s play. These toys would never preserve to be recovered archaeologically, and if they did, they would bear no evidence of having been used as a toy. When you see claims being made for an object being the “world’s oldest toy,” realize a more likely candidate was inducted into the National Toy Hall of Fame in 2008: The stick!
Jane Eva Baxter is a Professor and Chair of the Department of Anthropology at DePaul University. She has been a leading scholar in the archaeology of childhood for over 25 years. Her publications include The Archaeology of Childhood, second edition (Rowman and Littlefield, 2022) and The Archaeology of American Childhood and Adolescence (University Press of Florida, 2019).
