 It is a Basque version of the family of ball games that covers squash, tennis, and real tennis, all of them thought to derive from the Jeu de paume and hence a relative of Valencian pilota.But the main innovation of Basque pilota is that players share a common playground and throw the ball to a wall, making it an "indirect game", while the other games in this family are generally "direct games" where the players face each other in two separate fields separated by a net or line on the ground.The Basques began playing pelota "indirectly" during the middle of the 19th century.