Ross - Gamish : A Graphic History of Gaming

GA

M

isH

a graphic history of g a M ing

Where did gaming begin?

May be its alw ay s bn with us.

Before the microchip

before the game board

before writing

before art its elf

there was the human animal.

Walking upright , adep t with t oo ls and armed with earl y speech, the first humans lived as precarious an existence as any animal.

And like many animals, we play ed .

Throughout the animal kingdom, we s widespread evidence of animal pla y. prima tes swing and chase, Cubs st alk and wrestle, and birds dance.

And as instinct drives animals t o play , so t did it drive humans. Like the wrestling of apes or wolf cubs, games like T ag or Hide- and-S k simulat e a life-or -d eat h stru l e.

in our earliest pla y we hunt . We fl . We hide. We fight .

T yo ung t o join the hunt or defend our kin, pla y o ers us a training ground where laughter and ha y screams mask a deadl y serious purpose.

While our instinct for play helped us survive in a violent world, its clear tha t play has had a far larger role in human development .

For the hist or ian Johan Huizinga , our nat ural drive t o play was the crucial fact or in our development as a species.

in play we experiment and explore, cha e nge and compete. We test out ideas, stra te gies and philosophies, and s if they work. We impose rules t o limit oursel ves, or transgre rules t o s wha t ha ens.

Play is painting a legendary hunt on a ca ve wa .

Play is ru i ng two sticks t og ether t o observe the resul t s.

Play is dance, and

song, and music.

Play is the spark of crea ti vity and experi ment ati on tha t has a o wed us t o develop and expand so su e fu y as a species.

Without pla y, we would sti be living as animals.

As Huizinga s s it , a human cul tu re and creat ivit y stems from the pla y instinct . it is in pla y that we first moved bey on d m t ing our basic n d s, t o think about things more profound than surviva l.

Jordan, 1974.

Road construction on the outs kirts of Aan aident a y ploughs through th e buried remains of a human selement ,

9,000 years old.

Much is destroyed, but amongst the ruins, the decorat ed skus and amaz ing ceramic sta tu es, archaeologists discover wha t aears t o be the first known game board .

sma hoows carved int o a sto ne slab, the board could be easil y mist aken for something else.

But t o the archaeologist s examining it , these holes bear a striking similarit y t o Mancala - a famil y of games seen in the archaeological record acro Africa, the Mile East and South Asia, and still pla yed t oda y .

What ever this game was, it was crea te d during a crucial period in humanit y s development . Around 12,000 years ago, as the ice age retrea te d, humankind entered a period of unprecedented growth and development .

With agricul ture and the domestica tion of animals came the forma tion of more permanent selement s, and with tha t came more fr time.

in selements like the one in Jordan, human crea ti vity and experiment ati on flourished. Our pla yful na ture led t o an explosion of art , cul tu re, technology , and of course the emergence of the first games.

in the prehist or ic world, what ever came t o hand could be turned int o a pla ying piece.

Game boards were scra t ched int o the dirt .

Seeds, shells and pebbles acted as rudiment ary p a wns and t okens.

Knuckle bones, tusks and tth were roed like dice.

And with human societ y moving swiftl y a wa y from its hunter- gat herer origins, social skis were becoming as import ant as phy sical ones.

Decept ivel y simple on the surface, games like Mancala gav e play ers a chance t o compete with friends and famil y , and test skis of blu and social intuition a wa y from the high st akes of dail y life.

As great civiliza ti ons emerged from seled societ y , acro the world gaming continued to thrive and spread .

invented in Ancient Egypt around 3300 BCE, the game of Senet was play ed by peasants and Pharaohs alike.