Playing Gutties, golfers noticed that their older balls, the ones beaten up with nicks and scratches, were flying farther than the new ones.

打 gutty 球，打高尔夫球的人注意到，他们的旧球，那些被打得有划痕和划痕的球，飞得比新球更远。

Now researchers have pinned a date on what they say are the oldest sporting balls in Europe or Asia: three spheres, dug up from the tombs of horsemen in the deserts of northwestern China and crafted three millennia ago.

现在，研究人员已经确定了他们所说的欧洲或亚洲最古老的运动用球的日期：三个球体，从中国西北部沙漠中的骑兵墓穴中挖出， 制作于三千年前。