Marble (toy) in Codd-neck bottles, which were often collected for play. In the early twentieth century, small balls of stone, identified by archaeologists as marbles, were found on excavation near Mohenjo-daro. Marbles are often mentioned in Roman literature, as in Ovid's poem "Nux" (which mentions playing the game with walnuts), and there are many examples of marbles from excavations of sites associated with Chaldeans of Mesopotamia and ancient Egypt. They were commonly made of clay, stone or glass. Marbles arrived in Britain, imported from the Low Countries, during the medieval era. In 1503 the town council of Nuremberg, Germany, limited the playing
Elgin Marbles running out of ammunition, in order to prevent damage to the Acropolis. Fry had previously written a blog post along much the same lines in December 2011 entitled "A Modest Proposal", signing off with "It's time we lost our marbles". A YouGov poll in 2014 suggested that more British people (37%) supported the marbles' restoration to Greece than opposed it (23%). In older polls, Ipsos MORI asked in 1998, "If there were a referendum on whether or not the Elgin Marbles should be returned to Greece, how would you vote?" This returned these values from the British general adult population: