Cat's Cradle Game History

Its origin is unknown and it has been found in wildly diverse indigenous cultures from the Arctic to Europe to Indonesia.

Cat's cradle game history. Whale and fox. 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. That certainly sounds far-fetched today but it was a commonly held superstition back in the 1600s and 1700s.

Is a chamber orchestra that takes its name from one of the oldest games in recorded human history - the cats cradle. Cats Cradle String Games by Camilla Gryski 1983. The art of making pictures or telling stories with string and your hands or sometimes feet.

I had to look up the history of Cats Cradle and was surprised to find that this clever game is played by children EVERYWHERE. 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. 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.

Some sources say that children played Cats Cradle in England as early as 1782. 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. Cats Cradle has moved a few times in its 50 years including to locations on Franklin and Rosemary streets in Chapel Hill.

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. It does not appear that this game has a particular origin. 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.

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