The slave trade brought the game to the Caribbean and the east coast of South America. North of the equator they use a “two-rank” board south of the equator, a “four rank” board is used. It is played all over Africa with two basic variations. Some even place Mancala among the oldest games in the world, with archaeological evidence reaching back perhaps as far as 6000 B.C.E. carved into the temple roofs of Memphis, Thebes and Luxor. Mancala is a generic name for this type of “count and capture” game and stems from the Arabic word which means “to move.” Examples of this game have been found in Egyptian ruins dated from 1400 B.C.E. Rotterdam & Leiden (Netherlands) 1996.A lesson plan by Rachel Burgess and Sarah Gamble from the University of Maine
Board-games and Divination in Global Cultural History: A Theoretical, Comparative and Historical Perspective on Mankala and Geomancy in Africa and Asia. New Approaches to Board Games Research: Asian Origins and Future Perspectives (Working Paper Serie 3). On Some Newly Described Mancala Games from Yunnan Province, China, and the Definition of a Genus in the Family of Mancala Games. Their meaning and relationship to mancala games is still discussed. They were found in the Sahara, in Egypt and Jordan (Petra), on Cyprus and Sri Lanka. The playing pits must be distinguished from "cup marks", petroglyphs carved in rocks and buildings.
Grand Coastal Oh-Wah-Ree is exceptional in so far that pits can be conquered during a game, in fact, he who has conquered more holes eventually wins. It is possible, however, to lose and sometimes also to win pits in mancala variants that are played in rounds.
In most mancala games, the ownership of pits doesn't change during a game. However, there are a few games, aside from solitaires, which have shared pits, that is, the whole board is owned by both players.įollowing the terminology of game theory, pits, which are controlled by just one player could be called "partisan pits", while those with communal ownership could be called In most two- row games one row is controlled by each player, in three-row boards each player owns one and a half row, and in four-row boards each player controls the two rows on his side. Furthermore, seeds can usually only be captured on the opponent's side. A player may begin his turn only from a pit he owns (an exception is Tap-urdy). A contiguous sequence of holes controlled by a player is called his "side" or "sector" (Eagle). Usually each player owns a part of the board. In most mancala games pits are owned (or "controlled") by one player, which distinguishes these games from most other board games. Shimo (pl.: mashimo) (round pits) nyumba (square pits) More conclusions can be obtained from the names used in some traditional games: In Space Walk, a modern mancala game, the playing pits signify planets. This interpretation has been later disputed by other scholars. As many mancala games use 12 playing pits, it was assumed by the French ethnographs Marcel Griaule and Germaine Dieterlen in 1951 that the pits represent the months of a year, so to speak constitute a cosmological symbol. The playing pits have numerous symbolic meanings. In Bao most pits are round, except two ones, which are square or diabolo-shaped and have a special function. The shape of the pits is usually circular, but they can sometimes also be squarish (i.e. Traditional boards usually have playing which have at least a diameter of 6 cm. Similar can happen with board made for tourists usually they have pits that are too small in relation to the size of the seeds. In Europe, industrially produced game boards often have rather small counters and playing pits so that the games can be sold cheaper, which, however, makes the playing cumbersome. The size of the pits depends on the number and size of the counters, which are typically used in the game.
They are arranged in rows, usually two or four, but sometimes also in a circular fashion (i.e. The number of playing pits varies depending on the game, from two to 160. Children in Madagascar draw them on a sheet of paper and, as in Yunnan, south-eastern China and the Dominican Republic, with chalk on concrete. Pits are usually carved in wooden boards, while nomads and children often just dug them into the ground. The playing pits are used in actual game play, while the stores, if they exist at all, are used to store the captured counters.ĭigging holes in the earth to play Hoyito The pits are a characteristic feature of mancala games, which, for that reason, are also called "pit-and-pebble-games" in English. The pits (also called holes, small holes, houses) are hollows of mancala boards, which contain the playing pieces.