‘Ancient arcade’ — with a familiar game — found in Kenya, archaeologist says. See it
Near grazing rhinos and blowing grasses, a patch of rocks jutted out of the Kenyan landscape. The rocky area seemed easy to overlook. But, as an archaeologist recently discovered, it was actually home to some unique ancient creations.
Archaeologist Veronica Waweru visited Lewa Wildlife Conservancy last summer, according to a Feb. 1 news release from Yale University. Years before, she received a tip that tourists were looting the nature reserve’s prehistoric sites.
Waweru contacted the nature reserve and eventually visited herself, the university said.
During the visit, a staff member and amateur archaeologist took Waweru to see the reserve’s ancient burial mounds.
Near the burial site, Waweru noticed several “rows of shallow pits drilled into a rock ledge,” the university said. She identified the carvings as an ancient version of Mancala.
Mancala is “a two-player, strategy-based board game still played across the world today,” the university said. The game originated thousands of years ago, with ancient examples found in Egypt and other parts of Africa.
The site in Lewa Wildlife Conservancy had “about 20 ancient Mancala game boards” with varying levels of erosion, the university said.
“It’s a valley full of these game boards, like an ancient arcade,” Waweru said in the release. “Given the erosion of some of the boards, I believe people were playing these games there a very long time ago.”
A photo shows one of these ancient Mancala-like game boards. Dozens of holes are carved in two parallel rows. Each hole is deep enough to hold several stones used as game pieces.
“Modern people in the region tend to play games like Mancala when they are out herding,” Waweru said. “That’s probably what they were doing here.”
The exact age of carvings is unknown. Waweru suspects the game boards vary in age with some being re-used or re-carved several times.
Waweru said the area has “been occupied over and over again throughout time. Within the last 10 thousand years, people played Mancala there … People tend to look at early life as brutish, nasty, and short. But perhaps life was not all about survival.”
Waweru hopes to study the site further in the future.
Lewa Wildlife Conservancy is about 110 miles northeast of Nairobi.
This story was originally published February 2, 2024 at 12:58 PM with the headline "‘Ancient arcade’ — with a familiar game — found in Kenya, archaeologist says. See it."
