Mancala the real game
One can imagine that it would have been a popular game for travelers, whether merchants or migrants, since playing it requires only a piece of at earth and something to use as counters. Whether we accept one of the early dates or a more certain medieval date for the origins of the game, experts agree that mancala developed in the general region of the Near East and traveled outward from there, in part as a result of Arab expansion. It is also mentioned in one of the stories of the Arabian Nights, and the word we use for the game today comes from the Arabic word “naqala” meaning “to move.” An object discovered at ‘Ain Ghazal in modern Jordan may be a Neolithic game board. The earliest definitive reference to mancala we have is from the 10th century Kitab al-Afghani from Persia and, indeed, mancala seems to have been popular in the medieval Muslim world. Although many of these objects do bear a strong resemblance to mancala boards, it is impossible to prove that they actually functioned as such without textual or iconographical evidence. Later possibilities include boards and rock carvings from Bronze Age sites in Cyprus, Egypt, the Levant, and Mesopotamia. Researchers have proposed several discoveries as possible early mancala boards, the oldest of which are stone slabs with rows of depressions found at Neolithic sites in Jordan and Iran. This is due in part to the fact that it may be played in the earth, which leaves no trace, or on wooden boards, which deteriorate with time. While mancala may be one of the world’s oldest games, its history is difficult to reconstruct accurately. History of Mencala This Nigerian board shows extensive wear from gameplay. The goal is generally to capture the most counters, though rules of capture vary.
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The basic game play consists of selecting the counters in a pocket and distributing them-or “sowing” them-around the board by dropping them one at a time into consecutive pockets. With all this variation, what defines a game as mancala? In essence, mancala is a sowing game. The counters used in the game, always undifferentiated, can be made of seeds, beans, pebbles, cowrie shells, and other materials.
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Pockets can also be scooped out of the ground to create a temporary game board, a practice still common today. The boards are most commonly made of carved wood, but can also be made of stone, ivory, or metal. Doug Polumbaum described the great variety of games, saying that hundreds of different versions of the game have been recognized and that boards may be configured with two, three, or four rows of pockets with between four and fifty pockets in a row. Versions of mancala are traditionally played across Africa and Asia, with gameplay and board dimensions varying considerably between different regions. Doug holds a game board from Abeokuta, Nigeria. What is Manacala? Doug Polumbaum and Risa Korris with some of the boards they gave to the Penn Museum. The boards in the Polumbaum/Korris collection represent some of the nest modern exemplars of a diverse and ancient tradition and, as Dwaune Latimer, Friendly Keeper in the African Section notes, they form a wonderful addition to the Museum’s preexisting collection of mancala boards established by Stewart Culin (see page 44 of this issue). The simple kalah game is, in fact, only the most recent in a long line of mancala games that may stretch back to prehistory. Some have four rows of pockets as opposed to the two found in kalah one has the expected two rows, but each of the rows has twenty pockets. Most are carved out of a single piece of heavy, high-quality wood, with sculptural decorations like leopards, human faces, and snakes. Many of the donated boards are massive by com- parison, with some standing over two feet tall. But these boards-generously donated by Doug Polumbaum and Risa Korris-are hardly comparable to the kalah boards American children grow up using. For those familiar with this version of the game, it may seem surprising that the Penn Museum has recently acquired a large collection of mancala boards.
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This version of the game is simple to learn and is played on a small, plain wooden board with two rows of six pockets and a set of flat marbles to use as counters. Mancala has been popular in the United States since a commercialized version was intro- duced in the 1940s under the brand name Kalah.