#Mancala playing pieces free

Flat, smooth, or perfectly spherical objects are not ideal. The playing pieces are often called beans and may be exactly that, but many different sets of small objects may be used so long as they are easily picked up. These may be used to place beans captured and removed from play by their respective player or they may be incorporated into the play of the game. In addition to the regular playing cups, many types of board will have a larger cup called a store at each end. Also, each cup should probably be concave at the bottom for more ease in picking up the beans. Each cup should be large enough to contain several of the beans. The board consists of several cups (or pits) in which the beans (playing pieces) are placed and moved during a game. Traditional boards range from very elaborate carvings of wood or other materials to simple holes in the ground. The boards I provide here should only be used as models to construct a more functional board for the play of this game in all but the most extreme of circumstances in which no utilizable materials are at hand (prison comes to mind). Further, almost any devotee of the game will argue that it shouldn’t. It would be quite surprising, however, if this were found to be true.Ī Mancala board is not one which is easily played on a two-dimensional surface. It cannot yet be ruled out, however, that the opposite is true and some variety of these games is ancestral to Mancala. The most common and more specific variety of this hypothesis states that mancala games are ancestral to the race games described here as the Royal Game of Ur, The Jiroft Games, Tau, and Senet. The geographical distance between ancient archaeological sites yielding both varieties of boards is not great and both varieties of game stretch far back into antiquity. In general, two rank boards are found north of the Equator, and four rank boards south of the Equator.Īlthough there is not currently any proof for the hypothesis, several games historians have noted the similarity between mancala and games of the backgammon family and a theoretical connection must surely be considered. Variations of Mancala are played all over Africa. Mancala games spread regionally to the Middle East, Asia, just barely into Europe and into the Americas with black slaves. Claims for any game as the most ancient board game known derived by humans are largely fanciful and the true game deserving this title may no longer exist, but mancala and its relatives are most certainly nominees.Īncient Egyptian structures, Temple of Kurna, Pyramid of Cheops,Ī connection between agricultural sowing of seeds and Mancala

The history of this game is largely unknown, but there are several indications that it is extremely ancient. The Mancala family of games is almost certainly Black African in origin. For reference, the games of this family are listed here: Several of these games will be considered separately, but a few words to regard their history in general are necessary. People unfamiliar with these games often refer to any game of this type as Mancala. They are played throughout much of the world today.

#Mancala playing pieces free

Some are also available in Playing with Pyramids, published by Looney Labs.Īdapted from the Wikipedia article, Icehouse Pieces, used under the GNU Free Documentation License.This is a family of games which probably originate from Black Africa and are at least as old as the African Neolithic. Rules for these games can be found on the Icehouse website. Most games need at least two colors, and some require other readily-available equipment such as glass stones or a checkerboard. Icehouse pieces can be used to play many different abstract strategy games. In 2004, the Zendo boxed set won Best Abstract Board Game of 2003.

In 2001, Icehouse: The Martian Chess Set won the Origins Award for Best Abstract Board Game of 2000. In 2006, Looney Labs began selling Icehouse pieces as Treehouse sets, which are multicolored sets of 15 pyramids: five colors, each color having one each of the three sizes. Icehouse pieces were, for many years, sold as tubes containing one stash of durable crystal-look plastic pieces in one of ten available colors (though cyan was only available through their promotional program or as part of the Ice Towers set). The commercially produced plastic sets are hollow and can be stacked and nested this feature isn't used in the original Icehouse game, but is taken advantage of in some of the other Icehouse-based games listed below. Each stash or set of Icehouse pieces consists of fifteen pyramids (variously called pieces, pyramids, or minions) of the same color in three different point (or pip) values: five large 3-point pyramids, five medium 2-point pyramids, and five small 1-point pyramids.