Food historians tell us the history of small cakes/cookies/biscuits with snickerdoodle-type ingredients dates back to ancient Roman times. Small cakes of this sort were quite popular in Medieval Europe. In Medieval and Renaissance England, similar cookies were called jumbles. Germans often added more spices and dried fruits, in the gingerbread tradition. When Europeans settled in the New World they brought with them their culinary heritage and their recipes. We find plenty of recipes printed in 18th-19th century American cookbooks that would produce something quite like snickerdoodles, but they are called other names (jumbles, ginger cookies).