A history of Platform Tennis?

The Spring edition of Platform Tennis News carried the following article from an anonymous paddler from Troy, NY who was obviously unaware that the eminent historian and Old Army Athlete C. Alison Scully had already provided a history of the game to Fess Blanchard in 1935 for an article Blanchard had been asked to write for Esquire (See Tracing the Origins of Paddle Tennis).

The History of Platform Tennis:

THE EARLIEST SIGNS

Carbon dating has fixed earliest known relics of platform tennis around 40,000 B.C. Signs at the tundra town of Jhurk, have unearthed early paddles, probably made of caribou or whale skin, laminated by placing under eskimos. Over what must have been a precipice have been found thousands of round, resilient projectiles, leather around packed fur, which were called furballs.

Piles of rock forming the perimeter of a rectangle were originally thought to be a ceremonial ground, then a sacrificial area, an early solar calculator, or a platform playing ground. Most archeologists are willing to accept that all of these are essentially the same thing.

Computer calculation of the sun’s position 40,000 years ago determined that in the spring, as the tundra thawed, the rock mounds were used to elevate platforms. Present hypothesis is that the softening tundra no longer allowed the furballs to bounce.

This discovery sparked a branching of thought in platform archeology academia. Since the softening tundra would not allow a ball to bounce, while one group thought of the platform solution, a second group of lhurks applied their neolithic imaginations to develop a new game. They would put the ball on the ground-or elevated a little above it on a bone shard-and using the same clubs they used to brain their early arctic meals, would hit the ball, seeing how far they could make it go. The proliferation of prized penguin pellets indicates that wagering often accompanied this latter game. The debate rages about which game came first.

Source: Platform Tennis News, Spring 1989