Cat's Cradle Game History

Sometimes a whole drama was played by means of the changing shapes.

Cat's cradle game history. In a literal sense a cats cradle is a game played with string in which each player must maneuver their fingers to create different images one of which is the cats cradle. String games like this one have a rich and varied history. Cats Cradle is one of the oldest games in human history.

The use of cats in the cradle to describe something dangerous appears to come from an old wives tale that if allowed into its crib a cat would kill an infant by sucking out its breath. It is well known in China Korea Japan the Philippines and Borneo. Haddon has pointed out the familiar game of cats-cradle probably had its origin in Asia whence it was introduced into Europe.

The best guess of most historians is that Cats Cradle got its start in a rudimentary form somewhere in Southeast Asia near China and Korea where the game is still played today. String figures are a storytelling tradition in many cultures around the world including among Arctic Indigenous Peoples Aboriginal. Cats cradle is one of the oldest games in recorded human history and involves creating various string figures either individually or by passing a loop of.

It is one of the oldest examples of human play and thus ties in with the idea that the book though grounded in a specific historical moment is principally concerned with the entirety of the human story. In the mid-80s David and the Penleys passed the torch to Frank HeathAs we all realized during two weekends of anniversary shows in December and January the rest is history. Variations of the game have been found in cultures across the world including Eastern Asia Africa the Americas and even the Arctic giving the game a significant amount of interest among anthropologists and ethnologists.

Cup and Saucer The Witchs Broom Cats Cradle and Jacobs Ladder as well as a brief history of string games. Hoenikker reportedly played it on the day the atomic bomb was droppedas opposed to expressing emotion about all of the people his invention had just killed. The question of who first played cats cradle the childrens game in which two players alternately take from each others fingers an intertwined cord so as always to produce a symmetrical figure is almost as contentious as the origin of its name.

String games such as Cats Cradle have been played around the world for thousands if not millions of years. According to Edward Tregear in The Maori race 1904 the Cats Cradle whai huhi or maui was known to the Maoris as to almost all the inhabitants of the Malay Archipelago and South SeasIt was played with the two hands and a piece of string assuming very complicated forms. Cats Cradle String Games by Camilla Gryski 1983.