XPost: sci.archaeology, sci.anthropology.paleo, uk.games.board
XPost: alt.archaeology
On 08/04/2016 09:23, Franz Gnaedinger wrote:
On Friday, April 8, 2016 at 6:31:34 AM UTC+2, M Winther wrote:
So called tectiforms are prevalent in paleolithic cave art. Below images
are from the Castillo cave in Spain. (From Prehistoric Cave Paintings by
Rebecca B. Marcus, 1968).
http://s14.postimg.org/8m63y6g69/abstractcave1.jpg
Designs such as these are found in all of the painted caves. Sometimes
rectangular patterns have been filled in with different earth colours.
Could it be board games? The lower image looks very much like a Ludo
board. The Aztecs played Patolli, which was very similar. The Indians
play Pachisi. The ancient Egyptians played Senet. People have always
incised board game structures onto walls, into the bedrock, onto temple
walls, etc.
"In the ancient temple at Kurna in Egypt (c. 1400 B.C.) there are more
than 70 board games painstakingly carved into the roofing slabs, dating
from different epochs in history".
http://www.two-paths.com/boardgam1.htm
People have always viewed board games as divine, because the dice follow
the will of the gods. Did paleolithic man play a version of Ludo?
Mats Winther
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I believe that tectiforms, and especially the beautiful ones in
the Castillo cave, indicate settlements, while dots accompanying them indicate life, existence. In my reconstruction of the Ice Age lingua
franca of shamans and shamanesses called Magdalenian the words are
connected: DAI for a protected area, and the comparative form SAI
for life, existence. Especially red dots indicate life, on cave walls
that often symbolize the sky they claim a second life in the heavenly
beyond, for example the oldest element of European cave art known
so far, a red ocher dot in the Altamira cave, some 42,000 years old.
Other ideograms, for example squares and rectangles, are calendar
figures (Lascaux), indicating patterns laid out with pebbles. And
then there certainly were board games, or games of laying out pebbles
on a clay bank.
Indeed, this really looks like settlement structures. (The question is,
why were they so heavily fortified?)
Since board games were extremely popular among Stone Age and Bronze Age peoples, we could expect that also hunter-gatherers played them. The
Bronze Age excavation site of Mohenjo-Daro is littered with gaming
artifacts.
"Play was a central element of people's lives as far back as 4,000 years
ago. This has been revealed by an archaeology thesis from the University
of Gothenburg, Sweden, which investigates the social significance of the phenomenon of play and games in the Bronze Age Indus Valley in
present-day Pakistan."
http://www.fravahr.org/spip.php?breve1109
It seems that Aztec nobles were obsessed with Patolli. They could often
be seen carrying a Patolli board under their arm. According to Murray,
"A History of Board-games other than Chess" (1951), the boardgame
Fanorona played an important part in the rituals of Madagascan culture.
At the storming of the capital by the French in 1895, the Queen and
people relied far more on the outcome of the official game that was
being played by the ritual professionals for victory, than they did on
their armed forces (cf. Murray, 1951, p.88).
Historian Johan Huizinga ("Homo Ludens") says that the game playing
element was once extremely important, especially in Chinese
civilization, where almost everything took the form of a ceremonial
contest. African Stone Age peoples played Mancala games.
Among Amerindians the zig-zag pattern, so popular in paleolithic
culture, is found on board game artifacts. The zig-zag pattern
represents the male principle whereas parallel lines represent the
female principle.
https://archive.org/stream/gamesofnorthamer00culirich/gamesofnorthamer00culirich_djvu.txt
Moreover, people notoriously depicted gaming boards on walls, and on the
floors of temples, etc. We must conclude that, if paleolithic man played
board games, then there must exist artifacts and depictions in cave
paintings and elsewhere.
Mats
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