Ann Janine Freeman, age 11, of Salt Lake City, Utah, for her question:

How old is discus throwing?

Most sports are played with team against team. A discus thrower plays alone, though he may compete with other players. In any case, the discus throw is an individual sport    most likely the oldest of its kind. Nobody knows exactly when a round discus first was standardized to be used by competitive players. But we do not have to strain our brains to guess what led up to it.

No doubt the great grand daddy of the discus was born when our human ancestors started throwing rocks and stones. Nobody knows when or where primitive stone throwing graduated to a competitive sport. Most likely it was well organized at least 3,000 years ago. We know for a fact that the discus throw was a major event in the original Olympic Games. Writers of ancient Greece described it in detail, samples of their stone discus have been found and Myron, a famous Greek sculptor, carved a bronze statue of a champion discus athlete.