When Was the Mancala Game Invented?

Introduction

Mancala is a traditional counting and strategy games where players move small seeds or stones around a board with a series of holes, aiming to collect more pieces than their opponent by planning ahead and anticipating each move. It is believed to be one of the oldest strategy games on Earth, originating long before written history. Its survival across continents and centuries shows how games can reveal the movement, imagination, and ingenuity of different civilizations. As you follow its timeline, you will see how a simple carved holes game became a global game that is still being played today.

The History of Mancala Infographic © BALIenJAVA, CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

Before 1000: The Earliest Clues of Mancala

6th to 7th century

Ethiopia: The First Strong Evidence

Archaeologists point to ancient Aksumite Ethiopia as the earliest solid evidence of mancala. Excavations uncovered carved holes in mud and stone resembling game boards used by both adults and children more than 1,300 years ago. The discovery paints a vivid picture of daily life in the Kingdom of Aksum, a flourishing civilization known for its trade routes, obelisks, and minted coins. The Aksumites resided in what is now northern Ethiopia and Eritrea from around 100 to 940 CE.

Ain Ghazal, Jordan: A Controversial Claim

Another hypothesis suggests that mancala may have roots in the Middle East: the Arab traders carried the game into Africa rather than the other way around.. A stone slab from ʿAin Ghazal in Jordan features rows of depressions dated to around 5870 BCE, although the certain date remains imprecise to confirm anything. 

Even with these conflicting theories, one truth remains: mancala is one of the oldest forms of board games and dates back to early civilization.

The Aksumite Mancala discovered in Ethiopia. © CC BY-SA 2.5

 

Neolithic game found in Ain Ghazal, Jordan. Courtesy of Gary Rollefson

 

10th century: Persia and Spain

Persian Literature Mentions Mancala

A famous Persian writer named Ali Abul al-Faraj al-Isfahani mentioned mancala in his book Kitāb al-Aghani. This is one of the earliest written proofs of the game.

The Princess of Córdoba’s Ivory Board

In Spain, a princess of the Emirate of Córdoba owned the earliest known European mancala board. Crafted from ivory and metal, the board resembles a folding pencil case with two rows of pits. It has two rows of five pits that are very close to the edge. The Emirate of Córdoba, and from the year 929, the Caliphate of Córdoba, was an Arab Islamic state ruled by the Umayyad dynasty, with its capital in Córdoba, Spain. Her mancala is still kept in a museum in Spain today.

A frontispiece illustration from Kitāb al-Aghani © Wikimedia, CC0 1.0 Universal

 

The Ivory Mancala Board of the Princess of Cordoba — Source: Glaire D. Anderson & Mariam Rosser-Owen, PDF, 2015

 

13th century: Mongolia and the Silk Road

Silk Road Expansion Helps Spread Mancala

When the Mongol Empire grew across Asia, the Silk Road helped spread mancala. The Silk Road became a meeting place for the exchange and collision of Chinese, Western, and North- South cultures. 

Mongolia’s Walking Sheep’s Nest

Mancala games spread to the steppes of northern China and gradually underwent adaptation and integration within nomadic cultures. In Mongolia, mancala evolved into a pastoral version called the Walking Sheep’s Nest. Children used sheep-dung balls as pieces and dug pits into the ground. The game features simple and widely known rules, combining the reality of sheep herding on the prairie with the aspiration of increasing sheep numbers for higher income. From here, merchants carried mancala into Southeast Asia, including Malaysia through the Strait of Malacca. The Strait of Malacca location between the Pacific Ocean and the Indian Ocean, at the crossroads of East-West trade.

The Silk Road Map — Source: Daniel C. Waugh, Emily Toner (map), The Silk Roads in History.pdf, 2010

A child playing the Walking Sheep's Nest in Mongolia — Source: Zhang, Liu, Yin, Abbas, Qin, PDF, 2023

 

14th century: Balkans and the Ottoman Empire

The Ottoman Empire, also known as the Turkish Empire, began to rule Balkan in the late 14th century. Two mancala boards were found in the Belgrade Fortress in Serbia. The empire's military and administrative presence, including the construction of fortresses and the replacement of armies, likely facilitated the game's movement from Anatolia and the surrounding areas to new regions. Mancala continued to thrive as a pastime activity aligned with Islamic cultural views on non-gambling recreational games.

Two mancala boards from the Belgrade Fortress in Serbia — Photo by S. Pop Lazić — Source: Bikić & Vuković, PDF, 2010


Before 1800

1500s: Across the Atlantic (Transatlantic Slave Trade)

During the mid-18th century, the intensification of the West African slave trade resulted in the transportation of numerous African slaves who brought Mancala games to the New World. The "New World" is a historical term for the Americas (North America, South America, and the Caribbean) as discovered by Europeans during the Age of Exploration. The term originated because these continents were previously unknown to Europeans, who considered the known regions of Europe, Africa, and Asia the "Old World". 

Mancala game was played during funerals so the spirit of the deceased would have a game to enjoy. Their version is known as Warra or Warri. The game continued to be played to this day by their descendants from Louisiana, Haiti, Dominican Republic to Brazil to this day. 

The 1540 Map of America by Sebastian Münster, with the title translated as "The new islands, which lie behind Spain towards the Orient near the land of India" © Wikimedia, CC0 1.0 Universal

1620: West Africa Along the Gambia River

English explorer Richard Jobson watched people playing with stones on wooden boards under shady trees. He described how quickly and skillfully they played near the Gambia River in West Africa. His account was published three years later in London in his book “Golden Trade”:

"In the heat of the day, the men will come forth and sit themselves in companies, under the shady trees, to receive the fresh aire, and there passe the time in communication, having only one kind of game to recreate themselves withall, and that is a peece of wood, certaine great holes cut, which they set upon the ground betwixt two of them, and with a number of some thirty pibble stones, after a manner of counting, they take one from the other, untill one is possessed of all, whereat some of them are wonderous nimble."

Richard Jobson's boat aground in the Gambia, from 1892 book The Story of Africa and its Explorers by Robert Brown © Wikimedia, CC0 1.0 Universal

 

Around 1625: Central Africa (Kuba Kingdom)

In the Kuba Kingdom of Central Africa, a ruler named King Shyaam aMbul aNgoong changed the future of his people. Stories say that Shyaam traveled far from home, learning new ideas, customs, and technologies. When he returned, he used this knowledge to strengthen his kingdom. Under his guidance, the Kuba people built a stronger government, richer traditions, and a thriving society. Many remember him as a great founder-king.

During each king’s lifetime, the Kuba carved a special wooden statue called a ndop. They were royal portraits that captured the spirit of a king’s leadership. Each ndop had a personal emblem, known as an ibol, that represented something important about the ruler.

For King Shyaam, this symbol was a lele board, a type of mancala game. Lele is a thoughtful, strategic game that requires planning, patience, and sharp intelligence. Choosing this emblem signified him as a leader with strategic intelligence. Moreover, he shared the game with his people, turning it into a beloved pastime that encouraged everyone to sharpen their strategic thinking skills.

Ndop of King Shyaam aMbul aNgoong with lele board © The Trustees of the British Museum, CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

 

1699: Germany and the First Ethiopic Dictionary

A German orientalist named Hiob Ludolf published the first Ethiopic (Ge'ez) to Latin dictionary Lexicon Aethiopico-Latinum. The dictionary described a game, which was played in Ethiopia and closely resembled mancala:

“Qarqis: But according to Gregory, the Ethiopians have a kind of game in which, having made several shapes on a board, small balls are thrown; some people use this kind of game for fortune telling.”

What makes Ludolf’s story even more remarkable is that he never traveled to Ethiopia at all. Instead, his knowledge came from collaboration with Abba Gorgoryos, an Ethiopian monk who was visiting Italy, and a translator, António d'Andrade. Their scholarly partnership bridged cultures during an era when such exchanges were extraordinarily rare.

Portrait by Hiob Ludolf by Peter Schenk the Elder (between 1670 and 1713), Rijksmuseum Amsterdam

Frontispiece of Lexicon Aethiopico-latinum — Source: Antiquariat INLIBRIS Gilhofer Nfg.

 

1704: Europe and Arabian Nights

The rise of European fascination with the East was propelled by the publishing of The Arabian Nights in French, the translation of other European languages followed suit. One of its chapters even mentioned a game called mankalah.This interest, called Orientalism, often showed Eastern cultures in an exaggerated and not always accurate way. Many authors adopted the structure of the story and indulged in all kinds of Oriental fantasies, thereby generating the genre of the ‘Oriental Tale’.

“Moreover, I made him a mankalah cloth; and we played and ate sweetmeats and we played again and took our pleasure till nightfall, when I rose and lighted the lamps, and set before him somewhat to eat, and sat telling him stories till the hours of darkness were far spent..."

- The Arabian Nights, The Third Kalandar`s Tale

During this time, artists began including the mancala game in their artwork, some examples are: Giovanni Antonio Guardi, Johann Samuel Mock and Jean-Étienne Liotard and Jean Baptiste Vanmour. 

Frontispiece of The Arabian Nights, translated in French by Antoine Gallant © Wikimedia, CC0 1.0 Universal

 

“Game of Mangala”, painting by Johann Samuel Mock (between 1730 and 1735) © Wikimedia, CC0 1.0 Universal

 

1709: Baroque Mancala Tables and European Sightings

The cabinetmakers Sommer created elegant Baroque mancala tables for the noble von Hohenlohe family. Artists captured this growing fascination. One of the most charming examples is a painting by the Swiss miniaturist Jean-Etienne Liotard, titled Two Greek or Franconian Ladies Sitting on a Divan and Playing Mancala. In this scene, two women sit together on soft cushions, fully absorbed in their game. They are probably playing Mandoli, a version found on the Cyclades islands in Greece.

There were written reports too. A Scottish writer named John Galt described a game that he saw during his travels in the Levant. The Levant was a subregion along the Eastern Mediterranean which connected three big areas of the world: Africa, Europe, and Asia. Because it sat in the middle, it was like a giant crossroads where travelers and traders often passed through, bringing many new ideas, stories, and objects including the mancala.

Galt traveled widely across Europe in the early 1800s, spending time in Sicily, Malta, and the Greek islands. On one of these islands he noticed locals gathered in a coffee house, leaning over a wooden board game. His writing preserves one of the earliest descriptions of mancala played in everyday European life:

“I saw there to-day a game, which, not having seen elsewhere, I will give you a description. The Idriots call it Mandoli, or the Almonds, and it is played at a board by two persons. Twelve hollows are scooped in the board, in two rows of six each: in each hollow six balls are placed and the opponents take each a row.”

John Galt (Portrait by Charles Grey,1835) — Artwork photographed by Antonia Reeve, National Galleries of Scotland

 

Two Greek or Franconian Ladies Sitting on a Divan and Playing Mancala by Jean Étienne Liotard (1740-1742) — Source: The British Museum Collection

 

Late 1700s: Cape Verdean Sailors in New England

Cape Verdean sailors crossed the Atlantic to work in the New England whaling industry. They brought their skills and a favorite game from home called Ouril. As these sailors settled in coastal towns like New Bedford, Massachusetts, they carried with them a piece of their island culture.

In the nineteenth century, American whaling ships often stopped at the Cape Verde islands to gather supplies and recruit crew members. The islands became an important part of global whaling, and the men who joined these voyages became known as skilled and dependable whalers. Although whale hunting is now protected by strict laws, the history of Cape Verdean seafarers remains a powerful reminder of how people, goods, and games traveled across oceans.

Across the world, many versions of mancala developed, each with its own name and rules. Instead of having a large store pit for collecting captured pieces, Ouril is made of two rows of six small pits, twelve in total. The players will keep the seeds outside the board. Players pick up a handful of counters and drop them one by one into the pits as they move around the board, trying to capture their opponent’s pieces through strategic planning. Traditionally, the game uses smooth seeds called ouris, taken from the Caesalpinia bonduc (nickernut/fever nut) shrub.

 Cape Verde ouril board game with nickernut seeds © Wikimedia, CC BY-SA 3.0

 

1800s

Around 1830: Egypt and the Word “Mancala”

Mancala Game in Cafés

When the English traveler E. W. Lane visited Cairo, he often stopped in the lively cafés where locals gathered to talk, drink coffee, and play a game they called Manqala. He wrote about what he saw in his 1836 book "An Account of the Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians", which helped introduce the word mancala to Europe for the first time.

Lane described the Egyptian version as L'ab al-'Aqil, or “The Game of the Wise,” played on a simple two-row board. The game captured the curiosity of many readers, and artists took notice too.

Egypt Through an Artist’s Eyes

The British painter Walter Tyndale later created an illustration called “A Cairene Café,” showing Egyptians gathered around a game board, deep in concentration and surrounded by the warm bustle of the city. The illustration was part of his book “An Artist in Egypt" which can be accessed here

“The more primitive mankaleh is still played in Cairo, and is still universal in the villages where tric-trac has not yet found its way. […] It is played on an oblong board with twelve hollows in two rows of six each, each row forming an opposing camp. There are seventy-two cowries, or, failing these, small pebbles, and it is according to the manner in which these are distributed into the hollows that makes the game.”

In his book, Walter Tyndale guides readers through Cairo with the curiosity of an artist. He highlights the city’s bustling markets and striking buildings, while sharing the stories and customs of the people he met.

Edward William Lane portrait (from the private collection of Catherine Lane Poole Dupré) © Wikimedia, CC0 1.0 Universal

 

A Cairene Cafe by Walter Tyndale (from An Artist in Egypt, published 1912) — Source: Project Gutenberg 

 

Around 1864: England’s First Commercial Mancala

In nineteenth-century England, a well-known toy and game company named John Jaques & Son Ltd. (now Jaques of London) began introducing a new board game called Mangola, the first commercial version of mancala in Britain. The game was advertised in the Illustrated London News on December 23, 1865.

Jaques and Son had already found great success with another game, Squails, released in 1857. Squails came from the creative mind of Wolrych Whitmore Jones, who shared his ideas with the company in exchange for a royalty. The Whitmore Jones family continued to be a source of clever inventions, and before long, Jaques and Son took up Mangola, adapted from the ancient mancala games and published around 1863 or 1864.

John Jaques — Source: www.mysteriousplanchette.com

 

Jaques and Son Mangola Advertisement in The Illustrated London News (December 23, 1865) — Source: Internet Archive (The Illustrated London News Vol. 47 July-Dec 1865), The Lincoln Financial Foundation Collection

1894: Stewart Culin’s Landmark Research

Researcher Stewart Culin was one of the first people to take games seriously as a way to understand different cultures. He wrote a famous paper called “Mancala: The National Game of Africa”, which helped introduce the game to more readers.

Even with a packed schedule of his job at the museum’s curatorial department, Culin always made time for his special fascination with games of skill from various countries and cultures. He wrote many articles and organized exhibitions to share his discoveries, especially about chess and mancala.

Excerpts from “Mancala: The National Game of Africa”:

“It is with the continent of Africa that the game of Mancala seems most closely identified. It may be regarded, so to speak, as the African national game.”

“The game is, in fact, distributed among the African tribes from the east to the west and from the north to the south.”

Stewart Culin, circa 1920. Brooklyn Museum Archives, Culin Archival Collection © Wikimedia, CC0 1.0 Universal


1900s to Present: Mancala Continues to Evolve

1940s: Kalah Is Introduced in the United States

William Julius Champion Jr. created his own version of the game called Kalah. He began making wooden game sets in a small workshop in Mystic, Connecticut, and later moved his growing business through several towns in Massachusetts. By 1944, he was selling Kalah, and in the 1950s he even patented the rules. In 1958, he opened the Kalah Game Company. The  board has two neat rows facing each other, and each row carries six small round pits. At the end of the rows lies a larger pit called the store, where players collect their captured seeds.

Children across the United States quickly fell in love with the game. Schools, museums, and libraries began using it to teach strategy and math skills, and soon more than fifty Kalah tournaments were held for kids every year. Thanks to Champion’s passion, Kalah became the version of mancala that many children learn today.

William Julius Champion Jr.  — Source: www.findagrave.com (Photo by Daniel Blake)

 

The Original Kalah Game — Source: dedhamtales.com

 

Kalah Game Company Original Patent Design — Source: Gettysburg College Department of Computer Science

 

1959: The First Computer Versions of Mancala

The first computer version of Kalah were created by MIT students who fed the game into one of the earliest computers, the DEC PDP-1. To everyone’s surprise, the machine picked up the game so quickly that it eventually became strong enough to beat skilled human players.

By the late 1960s, programmers such as Alex Bell helped make Kalah a popular testing ground for early computer game strategies. Kalah became became an early milestone in computer intelligence, because it allowed researchers to try out new ways of teaching computers how to think ahead in games.

One of the most important ideas was the minimax method. Think of it as the computer checking many possible futures at once, like following branches on a growing tree, and choosing the move that left it in the safest position. This gave the program a basic sense of precaution and planning.

Speed was another challenge, so researchers used a technique called alpha-beta pruning. Instead of exploring every single branch, the computer learned to ignore options that were clearly weak. This kept the search focused on choices that actually mattered, which made the machine feel quicker and more confident.

Mancala-style games like Awari can produce thousands of different board situations, so programmers relied on heuristics, a set of simple rules that acted like shortcuts. These taught the computer to look at the most promising moves first. It learned that collecting more seeds in its store was valuable, earning extra turns gave it momentum, capturing an opponent’s seeds shifted control, and limiting the opponent’s scoring opportunities tilted the game in its favor.

Their success also revealed something interesting about the game itself: in standard Kalah rules, the first player usually holds a natural advantage.

DEC PDP-1 Computer — Source: Computer History Museum

 

Present Day

A Global Game With Many Names

Mancala is played in many countries and known in various names: pallanguzhi (India), congkak (Malaysia and Singapore), kalah (United States), sungka (Philippines), owari/warri (Africa), bao (East Africa), gabata (Ethiopia), ouril (Cape Verde), mak khom (Thailand), among many other names. 

Mancala’s Role in Learning Today

Teachers introduce mancala into the classroom because it turns math into a fun tactile activity. Students practice basic arithmetic skills and pattern recognition while moving small stones across the board. The game also strengthens strategic thinking, planning, and problem-solving. Players also learn character-building skills, such as patience, turn-taking, and sportsmanship. All of this makes mancala a powerful tool for learning in many different subjects. 

Kalah is often used as an example game in computer-science courses to study strategy and logic, and the way machines can be taught to “think” through a series of choices. A game that began thousands of years ago now helps teach the ideas behind modern technology, showing just how far its journey has taken it.

Mancala played in a classroom in Portugal — Source: Mancala World (mancala.fandom.com) © Miceu Tavares, CC BY-SA 2.5

 

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Content from Mancala World is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.5.




 

 

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