FUN BOWLING FACTS. In the 1930s, a British anthropologist discovered a collection of objects in a child's grave in Egypt that appeared to him to be used for a crude form of bowling. If he was correct, then bowling traces its ancestry to 3200 BC. Balls were made using the husks of grains, covered in a material such as leather, and bound with string. About 2,000 years ago, Roman legionaries played a similar game where they tossed stone objects as close as possible to other stone objects. This game eventually evolved into Italian Bocce, or outdoor bowling.