a night of tea and mancala

Tonight it's just me, tea and mancala. Mancala is a game I picked up years ago when I was working at a shelter for runaway youth. I played the game with the kiddies and when there was no one to play with I'd often play alone (which the other youth specialist workers would tease me about).

I decided to do some digging into the history of mancala. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the game here are some images and simple instructions.



Object of the Game: Each player attempts to collect as many playing pieces as possible before one of the players can clear their side of the game board of all pieces.

Board Set-Up: The game board is placed between the two players with the long sides facing them. The six- (6) cups nearest each player belongs to that player and the large scoring cup or mancala is to their right. Each player places four playing pieces in each of their six- (6) cups

Game Play: Players alternate turns. On their turn, a player picks up all the playing pieces from one cup on their side of the game board. In a clockwise direction, including their mancala, the player drops one of the playing pieces into each of the next four- (4) cups. If the last playing piece is placed in an empty cup on that player’s own side, he/she may then take all the playing pieces from the opponent’s cup directly opposite that cup. All the playing pieces captured, including the capturing piece, are placed in the player’s own mancala.

History

From Wikipedia

One of the earlist evidence of the game are fragments of a pottery board and several rock cuts found in Aksumite Ethiopia in Matara (now in Eritrea) and Yeha (in Ethiopia), which are dated by archaeologists to between the 6th and 7th century AD; the game may have been mentioned by Giyorgis of Segla in his 14th century Ge'ez text "Mysteries of Heaven and Earth," where he refers to a game called qarqis, a term used in Ge'ez to refer to both Gebet'a (Mancala) and Sant'araz (modern sent'erazh, Ethiopian Chess). The similarity of some aspects of the game to agricultural activity and the absence of a need for specialized equipment present the intriguing possibility that it could date to the beginnings of civilization itself; however, there is little verifiable evidence that the game is older than about 1300 years. Some purported evidence comes from the Kurna temple graffiti in Egypt, as reported by Parker in 1909 and Murray in his "Board games other than chess". However, accurate dating of this graffiti seems to be unavailable, and what designs have been found by modern scholars generally resemble games common to the Roman world, rather than anything like Mancala.