The first ball games in Eurasia may have been played 3000 years ago, according to a new analysis of three leather balls unearthed in an ancient cemetery in northern China. One of the men buried with a leather ball also sported the world’s earliest known pair of trousers , which he may have worn while playing.

The Yanghai cemetery, which contains more than 500 graves , was in use between about 3200 and 1850 years ago. A few years ago, archaeologists …