Mancala, the National Game of Africa

SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION. UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM.
BY STEWART CULIN, Director of the Museum of Archæology and Palæontology, University of Pennsylvania .
From the Report of the U. S. National Museum for 1894, pages 595-607, with plates 1-5 and figures 1-15.
WASHINGTON: GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE.
1896.
MANCALA, THE NATIONAL GAME OF AFRICA. BY STEWART CULIN,
Director of the Museum of Archæology and Palæontology, University of Pennsylvania .
By Stewart Culin,
Director of the Museum of Archæology and Palæontology, University of Pennsylvania .
The comparative study of games is one that promises an important contribution to the history of culture. The questions involved in their diffusion over the earth are among the vital ones that confound the ethnologist. Their origins are lost in the unwritten history of the childhood of man. Mancala is a game that is remarkable for its peculiar distribution, which seems to mark the limits of Arab culture, and which has just penetrated our own continent after having served for ages to divert the inhabitants of nearly half the inhabited area of the globe.
Fig. 1. MANCALA. From a figure by Lane.
Fig. 2. MANCALA BOARD. Jerusalem. Cat. No. 15296, Museum of Archæology and Palæontology, University of Pennsylvania.