History of Juggling
The humble beginning of Juggling can be traced back thousands of years to the Stone Age. As the story goes, a Stone Age man became impatient with his meal of baked potatoes and grabbed three before they were cool enough to hold. The craze caught on because of mimicry. The man's friends, anxious to relay the story and share a good laugh, gathered around the hearth fires with potatoes in hand to make fun of their friend. Two words from an ancient Mesopotamian dialect make up the roots of the word "juggler". The word for potato is "jugg" and the word for drop is "lar".
According to information on the Rosetta Stone, juggling remained popular in Egypt until the times of the pharohs. It is a little known fact that Moses took up juggling as a hobby and that he frequently juggled to entertain his Egyptian family. When he led the Israelites out of Egypt, juggling became outlawed by Pharoh. Although Moses did try to teach juggling during those 40 years in Exodus, the craze sadly did not catch on. A number of factors contributed to juggling’s dying popularity: lack of potatoes, manna’s poor aerodynamics, and Moses’ quick temper at being a juggling teacher.
The skill of juggling was absent from the earth until the time of Jesus. Jesus thought it would be a good idea to spread the Word with a simple skill like juggling. His apostles went out into the world to find the best juggling materials since potatoes were often misshapen. John, the apostle whom He loved, found a tiny village that sewed little round bean-filled bags. John also discovered that, with tougher material and using barley as a filler, the little beanbags could be kicked around. John called these Hackeysacks (but that is a different story). Beanbags in hand, the 12 Apostles went out to teach the heathens and the juggling craze again was reborn.
Juggling became extremely popular with the Romans, as modern anthropologists have recently discovered. A marble statue of a juggler was found in July 1994 in a tomb outside of Rome. The statue was later identified as the juggling god Oops, the son of Bacchus and Clutza (the goddess of accident prone people). A small temple was built for him on Corsica, but it was seized and made into a temple of Diana. The battle for the temple ended almost as soon as it had begun, for the women devoted to Diana had taken juggling lessons and they were better jugglers than the defenders of Oops’ temple. Although his godhood had remained virtually unknown for centuries, his name will remain in common language for untold ages.
The largest craze in history for jugglers was in medieval Europe, when great kings would have court jesters and wandering minstrels roamed the countryside. Many of the court jesters were honoured by their monarchs as Wise Fools. Contrary to popular belief, the fools were not known as "wise" because of great advice that they would often give their leaders. It was believed that only the most intelligent people could handle juggling. Thus, when a monarch requested juggling lessons, the jester would make it seem as difficult as possible. In spite of the elitist group of jesters, there were many entertainers who could juggle. There were so many jugglers wandering Europe that many out of work minstrels travelled to Asia to seek their fortunes (and Chinese food. It is a well known fact that most jugglers will travel great distances for good Chinese food). Instead of Appearing at the Chinese court however, many of the migrating jugglers settled to become monks in Tibet, founding a religious sect of jugglers.
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