When was mancala invented

Be sure to tape them facing outward so you have something to tape your board to. Make sure they are taped securely on the sides, top and bottom. Step 3. Tape each end pocket to either end of the bottom of the carton, the middle piece facing inward to the board. Step 4. Fill each small pocket with four of anything, any color they used jelly beans because they are fun and colorful and edible, but you can use anything from pebbles to beads to Cheerios…be creative!

Now you are ready to play! How to play. Set Up Players start by claiming a side of the board north or south. Sowing Each player have alternate turns, meaning that one player would go first, followed by the other player, which is then repeated. Captures If the last stone lands in an empty hole on the player's own side, he would capture all of the stones from their opponent's hole directly opposite of the player's hole, including their stone.

Free Turns If the last stone lands in the player's own Mancala, that player would be given a free turn which allows them to make another move. End Game The game will end if a player clears all of their stones from their side of the board. Play Mancala online. Click the image to play. Lets Play Mancala online!

Make a Mancala Board. Step 1 Cut your egg carton in half along the fold. Step 2 To make the end pockets or mancalas, tape together each cut off end and the middle-to-edge pieces. At the beginning of a player's turn, they select a hole with seeds that will be sown around the board.

This selection is often limited to holes on the current player's side of the board, as well as holes with a certain minimum number of seeds. In a process known as sowing , all the seeds from a hole are dropped one-by-one into subsequent holes in a motion wrapping around the board. Sowing is an apt name for this activity, since not only are many games traditionally played with seeds, but placing seeds one at a time in different holes reflects the physical act of sowing.

If the sowing action stops after dropping the last seed, the game is considered a single lap game. Multiple laps or relay sowing is a frequent feature of mancala games, although not universal. When relay sowing, if the last seed during sowing lands in an occupied hole, all the contents of that hole, including the last sown seed, are immediately resown from the hole. The process usually continues until sowing ends in an empty hole. Many games from the Indian subcontinent, southern China and Vietnam use pussa kanawa laps.

These are like standard multilaps, but instead of continuing the movement with the contents of the last hole filled, a player continues with the next hole. A pussa kanawa lap move will then end when a lap ends just prior to an empty hole.

Depending on the last hole sown in a lap, a player may capture seeds from the board. The exact requirements for capture, as well as what is done with captured seeds, vary considerably among games.

Typically, a capture requires sowing to end in a hole with a certain number of seeds, or ending across the board from seeds in specific configurations. Another common way of capturing is to capture the contents of the holes that reach a certain number of seeds at any moment. Also, several games include the notion of capturing holes, and thus all seeds sown on a captured hole belong at the end of the game to the player who captured it.

The history of mancala is unclear. The first evidence of the game is a mancala board from the 4th century AD found in Abu Sha'ar, a late Roman legionary fortress on the Red Sea coast, Egypt. A fragment of a pottery board in Aksumite Ethiopia in Matara now in Eritrea is dated by archaeologists as of between the 6th and 7th century AD. 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 years.

There are in fact more than versions of this "count and capture" game, played throughout Africa, all with slightly different rules. In North and West Africa it's common to use two rows of pits, in Ethiopia they play with 3 rows, and in East and southern Africa, they play with four rows.

Some games have "stores" at the end of each board, others do not. In certain West-African dialects the holes in the board are referred to as warri or awari and in those cultures the game is called "Wari". Islamic cultures name the game with respect to the physical action that takes place during the game calling the game "mancala" The word "mancala" means to move in Arabic. Count-and-Capture Games were never very popular in Europe, except in the Baltic area, where they loved the game Bohnenspiel.

But still mancala boards were found in ancient castles in Germany, Greece, Bosnia and Serbia.