African Folklore: An Encyclopedia - Marshalls University

African folklore 474
certain position is reached, and, for instance, the contents of neighboring holes are
captured. Captured counters are taken from the game or, as in some four-row games, are
spread back in the rows of the player who captured them.
Both the materials, the boards and counters, and the rules of Mancala have provided
insight into the history of this group of games. Material evidence has so far provided the
earliest evidence of Mancala. Museum collections of predominantly wooden boards date
back to the beginning of the nineteenth century. The data on boards in museum files only
indicate the date they entered the collections and sometimes stipulate the purpose of the
object or the name of the game. They rarely identify the owners, former players, or dates
of making or using the board, which would predate the acquisition of the board by the
museum. If these factors are taken into account, it would date these wooden boards back
to perhaps the late eighteenth century.
The game known as Owela, which is
popular in Namibia, is one of the
largest mancala games and often is
played with two teams. Photo © Alex
de Voogt.
Archaeological evidence suggests that the occasional terracotta and stone Mancala
boards date back to the first centuries CE. In these cases, it is not always clear that the