In 1936, a real-life Indiana Jones type named Sir Flinders Petrie journeyed to Egypt hoping to unearth a pharaoh’s fortune. The British explorer instead ransacked a child’s tomb and discovered evidence of a crude form of bowling dating back at least 5,000 years.
It’s no coincidence that when sociologist Robert Putnam tried to sum up his 2000 study on the decline of participatory democracy in America, he titled it Bowling Alone. Our nation of joiners and of tightly knit communities was beginning to abandon bowling leagues in favor of following spectator sports, and Putnam felt it was a bad omen for our civic strength. Even after his study was published, the decline of bowling continued: over the 15-year period from 1998 to 2013, the number of alleys in the U.S. fell 26 percent.
