G is for Games

Play is instinctive. Even without Nerf guns, Xboxes, or Hungry, Hungry Hippos, children will play. Young creatures from every species know how to splash their sister at the watering hole; every little brother will pounce on the older one to start a game of chase. Peek-a-boo must be universal. Although what about amoebas? Do amoeba children play peek–a-boo?

Before I go too far down the rabbit hole of biology, let’s just stick to play, specifically ancient toys and games. Strangely enough, academics hadn’t given much thought to play until a few years ago, especially in archaeological digs. Hstorian Philippe Arles actually put forth the theory that in the past children didn’t play, that they were effectively “mini-adults,” because there was too much to do and high infant mortality rates made their parents unwilling to invest in their childhoods–Arles sounds like a guy without children to me. For a long time, though, when archaeologists found a Stone Age figurine or a bit of broken pottery, even in a child’s burial site, they called the former a religious fetish and the latter trash. But those could have been dolls and action figures; they could have been game pieces.

The idea of childhood play wasn’t invented in the 20th century. Plenty of classical Egyptian, Greek, and Roman artwork includes children playing. We can let the academic journal papers debate whether the tiny horse with wheels was for a religious ceremony or a giggling child. For this purposes, let’s call them toys.

With this survey of Ancient Games, we’ll look at:

1. A core definition of the idea of a “game” or toy
2. Where and when it happened first “around the world”
3. How it influenced human development

The Joyless Functionality of Toys

I once had to read an essay by Freud on the purpose of jokes, and it was the least funny thing I’ve ever encountered. I hesitate to talk about the purpose of toys, so as to not take all the fun out of fun. But play serves different purposes, and you can see those in the kind of toys that were created.

Often, games do mimic the adult world, even though by definition play is separate from survival activities. Playing is not hunting, gathering, growing, protecting, defending, or creating shelter. Some of those things can be done in a fun or creative way, though I don’t think you’d play around fending off a woolly mammoth. Play is what passes time when not trying to survive. But even a child can see what a grown-up does and want to act it out on a child-sized doll.

Of course, many games like tag, chase, hit me, I hit you, etc. are played without objects, but we can only analyze physical evidence. These ancient games as evidence can be grouped into categories: besides the toys that simulate the adult world, there are time wasters, games of chance, and games of strategy that both teach and allow adults to compete “safely.” As adults themselves gained a little non-survival time, they, too, invented pastimes of increasing sophistication.

Dolls for All Ages

Small carved women have been discovered in burial sites going back 30,000 years. The problem with such “Venus” figurines is that they appear to be religious symbolism–worship of the mystery of females. Their exaggerated and sometimes graphic genitals suggest these were not for children. Still, one of the oldest finds in a Siberian site dating back @3000 BCE were small figurines with human heads carved from soapstone. These lacked female parts and were specifically buried next to children. It’s thought these were the world’s oldest dolls.

Dolls found in children’s Egyptian burial sites also had a distinctive style. These were called paddle dolls,, after their wooden torso. The body had arms and marking for Egyptian-style “dresses,” while the head was a mat of thick fibers. As we know from yesterday, the Egyptians mass-produced linen, so they could easily have had bits of braided linen thread or wool to fashion into hair for a doll.

The “Buzz,” and Other Toys of Skill and Time-Wasting

The site Tell Jemmeh in Israel has been excavated since the 1930s, with multiple layers of cities and burial grounds found that date back to the days when Egypt and Sumeria vied for control over the Levant. Smithsonian archaeologist Gus Van Beek was digging in 1987 and confused in finding dozens of small carved circles with two holes. They looked like buttons, but it was illogical to think that Sumerians would have used buttons on their clothes. They were made from “potsherds,” the fancy archaeological term for pieces of broken pottery–I mentioned with Letter “D” that sherds are the diggers’ bread and butter. Sherds can help a researcher find a burial site, much like a fossil chip will alert a paleontologist to a buried dinosaur skeleton. But potsherds in the site are typically useful only for dating.

These circles were carved out of potsherds though. They seemed functional, but what for? Then Van Beek remembered a toy he’d once in seen in his youth, a very simple toy. Like a yo-yo, but horizontal rather than vertical. You would thread a string around and through the holes, spin them in one direction, then hold them taut while they unwound, making a buzzing sound.

This “buzz” turns out to be another example of simultaneous invention. Such circle/hole objects have been found in digs all around the world. They were used in the Middle Ages by children; by the time of the Late Industrial Age, they were often lead or metal, sometimes sold as “whirligigs.” Van Beek also started noticing these in museum display cases, but named as buttons or unknown objects: rondelles in France, bum-bums in Japan, gurrifio in Venezuela, or P’unggi-P’unggi in Korea. They would have been easy to make by any child with a discarded bit of rock or dish and some thread. Universal time-waster.

Marbles probably should be lumped into this group with the buzz. Marbles have also been found in sites around the world, simple stones rounded to roll quickly, often “found” glass. Context is important for these and other objects discussed here. They were find where children were buried. Marbles can be played with in dozens of ways though many now forgotten with our shift to Happy Meal Toys and online screens for children.

Knucklebones were also long present, known from their modern variant as jacks. They were really made from the knuckle bones of sheep or pigs, left over from a feast, but given imaginative play by the kids. Here on a faded wall in Karkamesh (modern Syria) are some 800 BCE Sumerians playing knucklebones. They might be tossed and caught, tossed while something else was tossed and caught (like jacks), or even rolled on the ground with a wager over which side would land up.

Naturally, once we start talking about games, we quickly get to games of chance. That becomes a whole thing entirely, one with adults and gambling, which also appears to be as common to many groups of homo sapiens and taking as many forms. Gambling all around the world.

Got Games? Got Gambling

The Mesoamericans, for examples, had a board game called patolli, with ancient scratched boards found the time of the Toltecs on forward, 3-400 BCE. Patolli involved a dice and a board, and six stones (or poison beans as one researcher argued). Players would bring items to bet–each the same number of valuable things like, blankets, knives, or even people. The god Macuilxochitl would oversee the process. Gambling was lively and fluid, between those who had little and those who had a lot, often with those who had little losing what they had. Perhaps gambling might be called the oldest “game” of all.

But a board isn’t even always needed. What’s also common to so many cultures is dice.For instance, an 18-sided, carefully-carved die with symbols was found in a Han dynasty tomb. Some of the characters include “drink more wine” and “scared of your wife.” The die (or possibly dice) was used in conjunction with a drinking game. More simultaneous inventions: beer, dice, drinking games. As old as homo sapiens.

The Original Games of Kings

If adults were going to get into the act of playing, either gambling, drinking, or finding other ways to pass leisure time, then games of strategy might replace simple knucklebones or dice. Chess has long been called the game of kings, and chess comes from chaturunga, from ancient India. But board games played by the royals were even older.

The Royal Game of Ur dates back to 2600 BCE and was played on a 20-piece gameboard. Many such boards were found from sites in Sumeria, Egypt, and western Asia; the board is T-shaped, with players going from the smaller rectangle, around the bigger, then back home. It had no other name, so far as the archaeologist could tell, than Royal Game of Ur, named for where it’s thought to originate.

The game was styled like backgammon, strategic but with an element of combat. The goal was for players to get all their pieces from one side to the other. You win if you can bear your pieces off before your opponent, like with backgammon. Exact rolls are required to leave, while landing on an opponent sends them back to start. Given the shape of the board, the narrow pathway is likely a critical gauntlet that must be run,like a narrow pathway in a battle, ripe for an ambush.

The Egyptians had their own backgammon-like game for the royals, called Senet, dating back to @3100 BCE. Senet was a symbolic game related to the afterlife. Those who successfully pass off the board, similar strategy to backgammon, were said to pass into the afterlife with the same success. A queen’s tomb might be the most appropriate place to show a royal playing Senet, as painted on the tomb of Nefertari @1970 BCE.

Even queens might try their hand at Senet, using wits as well as any man, though they must have been careful to avoid bruising egos.

Board games like Senet or the Royal Game of Ur forged a way for the upper class to work out their aggression and battle strategies in a safe way. One can imagine rival kings challenging each other; one can imagine betting. One can imagine hurt feelings. One can imagine grudges that would then be worked out in real battles later.

Yet they played because play is one of the most natural things in the world.