Cat's Cradle Game History

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.

Cat's cradle game history. 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. Included are directions for four classic string games. Is a chamber orchestra that takes its name from one of the oldest games in recorded human history - the cats cradle.

WORDS RECITED DURING STRING GAMES. Known as fan sheng in China and Jack in the Pulpit in the UK its a simple game that requires teamwork and offers a great sense of satisfaction when mastered. As Vonnegut says For maybe a hundred thousand years or more grownups have been waving tangles of string in their childrens faces to form nothing but a bunch of Xs between somebodys hands 165-166.

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. It has also spread to some extent among the Asiatic islands. 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.

Sometimes a whole drama was played by means of the changing shapes. Whale and fox. The art of making pictures or telling stories with string and your hands or sometimes feet.

Cup and Saucer The Witchs Broom Cats Cradle and Jacobs Ladder as well as a brief history of string games. Rather it was developed independently by many cultures around the same time. It is well known in China Korea Japan the Philippines and Borneo.

Im one of those people who like to have something to fiddle with in their hands and it was easy to carry a loop of string in my pocket. Included are directions for four classic string games. 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.