Let us start with a question. Where did hopscotch originate?

How many of you said "The Roman legions often played hopscotch in full armor and pack"? Maybe even mentioned 100 foot long courses and the road from London to Glasgow? If so, you are part of an internet myth.

Just look up hopscotch and odds are very good you will read something akin to this, a almost every site repeats it word for word (though most omit the part about "legend has it"):

Legend has it that hopscotch was invented as a training exercise for Roman soldiers stationed in Britain. The hopscotch course would be over 100 feet long, and the soldiers would "play" the game in full armor and kit, with the aim of improving their fitness, endurance, and footwork. According to some sources, the courses were marked out on the main Roman road between Glasgow and London.

However, common as this quote is, there are a few logical issues with it.

1. There is no Roman road from London to Glasgow. Glasgow would have been south of the Antonine/Severan wall, but north of Hadrian's wall, had it existed. However, at the time, Glasgow was likely a settlement of some sort, but not a city worthy of a Roman Road. And a glance at any map of Roman settlements and roads will show that the Glasgow region was quite empty of major roads, certainly none that lead to London. This doesn't disprove the whole claim, but makes me skeptical.

2. The game is quite clearly distributed around the world pretty evenly, and there is evidence a hopscotch-like game was played in China well before the Roman Empire existed. That being the case, it seem that the game may have a very ancient origin, and to claim Romans invented it is akin to claiming Greeks invented music int he time of Pericles or the Chinese invented painting in the 11th century BCE. Perhaps Romans adopted a children's game to train (though even the evidence for that is very scant), but did not invent it.

3. Most quotes mention not only military training for legions, but training conducted in full pack. I had originally asked myself, how does one hop squares while carrying a shield and two pila? But the "full pack" bit makes it even more doubtful. Prior to late in the empire, a "full pack", meant 17 days rations, full digging gear, blanket, and a bit more. Try it some day, strap on some armor made of thick bronze straps, a full helmet, 17 days of uncooked food, a mess kit and cooking utensils, a blanket, some rope, tent pegs, a shovel, flint and steel, a shield, two javelins and a sword and go hop through a 100 foot long hopscotch court. The absurdity of this "origin" will become obvious. Hopscotch may have been used as a training tool by some general, perhaps, but I doubt it was ever standard, and I am doubly so that it was run with a full pack.

4. The names for hopscotch are varied and not one seems to have a common Latin root. If this were part of legion training, originating in Britain and spreading back to the empire, then there would be a Latin name for the game, and it would stand to reason that in the Empire, or at least the western, non-Greek speaking part of the Empire, the word for hopscotch would be based on this Latin word. There may be some regions where a local name would replace the Latin name, but one would expect the Latin word to be retained in the majority of areas, but it clearly has not. That argues against a common Roman origin.

5. This has the feel of one of those stories people love to toss around to show they have some secret "inside" knowledge. Like the plague story of "Ring Around the Rosie" or that ludicrous "mother plucker" email that made the rounds (and its predecessor in the claim that Agincourt inspired the middle finger, or two finger, gesture). There are dozens of such tales, and not one of them has the slightest bit of historical truth behind it. Unfortunately, the internet has allowed them to spread beyond the "secret knowledge" of a small group of the misinformed, and they now form a body of dubious "common knowledge", no more correct for being widespread.

But by and far the biggest problem is this: There is not a whit of evidence to support it. Look on the internet and you will find Youtube films of legionnaires playing hopscotch, Roman villa recreations where hopscotch is played, rules for "Roman hopscotch", and so on, but not one primary source. The best I could find was this page, where one skeptic points out a 19th century antiquarian's quote which may be the origin of the hopscotch myth.

So, why do I mention this? Because it is hardly limited to trivial matters like hopscotch,t he phenomenon of the "internet myth". Thanks to the interlinked nature of the internet, and the tendency for sites to pillage wikipedia for data, what is published in one place can often become its own primary source. As thousands of sites pick up a wikipedia mistake, it will then be spread far and wide, until we find wikipedia citing those very sites as sources, in effect citing itself at second or third hand.

I wrote on this before in "Mystery Quotes", "Wikipedia Absurdities", "Rush Debate", "They're Here! Mystery Quotes Revisited", "A Mystery Quote, Several Dubious Quotes, More Boring Quotes, and One Very Bad Conclusion", "Amusing "Truths"" and "Oh No!", but it bears repeating. Unless there is a primary source, a real live eyewitness or document or something similar, never accept what you read on the internet, be it a claim George Bush called the Constitution as "damn piece of paper", Rush Limbaugh proposed the Medal of Honor for James Earl Ray, or that Obama's grandmother placed a false birth announcement. They may be true, they may not, most likely are not, but with only other internet cites as confirmation you have no way to know, and you may be buying into a fraud.

POSTSCRIPT

Though a bit off topic in this post, my general criticisms of Wikipedia can be found linked in the postscript to "Life is Strange".