Cat's Cradle Game History

Our Cats Cradle and Other String Games 3014 uses the Haddon and Rivers terminology for defining the strings on the fingers and features jumbo yarn.

Cat's cradle game history. 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. Cup and Saucer The Witchs Broom Cats Cradle and Jacobs Ladder as well as a brief history of string games. 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 is thought that this particular game traveled to Europe in the early seventeenth century with the tea trade from Asia. 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. 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.

Rather it was developed independently by many cultures around the same time. Is a chamber orchestra that takes its name from one of the oldest games in recorded human history - the cats cradle. The art of making pictures or telling stories with string and your hands or sometimes feet.

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. It is probably one of the oldest games.

It is a type of string figure. 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. Cats Cradlegets its name from the childrens game.

Back when I was in middle school I went through a phase where I was really into cats cradle. 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. I had to look up the history of Cats Cradle and was surprised to find that this clever game is played by children EVERYWHERE.