I’m familiar with rounders and stool-ball, they seem like natural predecessors. But what about before that? And were there no similar games in continental Europe?

I also know about seker-hemat in ancient Egypt, but that was around 3,000 years before stool-ball is attested. And I can’t find much else on the subject. Was there really no tradition of bat-and-ball sports in the meantime?

Maybe I’m biased as an American who grew up loving baseball, but striking a thrown object with a stick seems like such a natural impulse to me. I find it crazy that this idea would happen once in Egypt, and again in the British Isles 3000 years later, and not at all in between, or in other cultures.

Educate me please!