Pictures: Are These Prehistoric Game Boards?

Evolution of the Game?

Image courtesy Barbara Voorhies

Tarahumara people of northern Mexico used a scoreboard and stick "dice" to play games (as seen in a 1907 illustration). (Read about modern-day Tarahumara barefoot-running skills.)

When Voorhies read the 1907 book Games of the North American Indians, she discovered the Tarahumara scoreboards resembled the strange Chantuto semicircles.

After that, her previous ideas about the Chantuto holes' purpose—for example that they may have been marks left by an animal pen's fenceposts—became "preposterous," she said.

Published December 13, 2010

"Enigmatic" Holes

Photograph courtesy Barbara Voorhies

The Chantuto semicircles (example pictured) most closely resemble 19th-century scoreboards of Arizona's Walapai people—"even though they're separated by 4,000 years," Voorhies said.

The Walapai dice board is made up of stones, not holes, arranged in a crescent. The Chantuto would have had no access to stones, which were scarce on the outer Mexican coast, Voorhies said.

To play a game two Walapai players would sit in front of the opening in the c created by the holes, Voorhies said.

A player would throw a stick with one flat side—the Walapai "die." The flat and round sides each had a number value.

Based on the number he or she had rolled, the player would move his or her stone a certain number of spaces around the crescent. The person whose stone first reached the opposite end of the crescent would win the game.

(See "'Second Life,' Other Virtual Worlds Reshaping Human Interaction.")

Published December 13, 2010

Tarahumara Today

Photograph by Robb Kendrick, National Geographic

Tarahumara people rest amid northern Mexico's rugged terrain (file picture).

Games—and gambling on their outcomes—have been widespread throughout Native American cultures for centuries, especially during "raucous" ceremonial gatherings, Voorhies noted.

(Related: "Ancient Olympics Mixed Naked Sports, Pagan Partying.")

In general "Native Americans played gambling games to come into harmony with their universe," writer Kathryn Loving wrote in the 2003 book Gambling: Who Wins? Who Loses?, edited by Gerda Reith.

For instance, games were thought to please the gods and thus increase fertility, cause rain, give or prolong life, expel demons, or cure sickness, among other benefits, according to Games of the North American Indians.

Published December 13, 2010

Gaming God

Image courtesy Barbara Voorhies

A deity of games for the Nahua, an Aztec people of central Mexico, is pictured in a 16th-century illustration.

The Aztec played games of chance and skill, including bowling and checkers.

(See "Aztec Math Decoded, Reveals Woes of Ancient Tax Time.")

"The Indian casino thing, in a way, is not anything new—this has always been a popular activity," noted John Johnson, curator of anthropology at the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History in California, who was not involved in the Chantuto-holes research.

Published December 13, 2010

Unrelated Game Pieces

Photograph courtesy Barbara Voorhies

Voorhies also found ceramic gaming pieces (pictured), dated to between 300 B.C. and A.D. 250, in the Tlacuachero shell mound.

She also hopes to find dice the same age as the scoreboards, though the pieces were likely made of wood and so wouldn't have survived the millennia, she said.

More mysteries about the Tlacuachero site persist—especially the purpose of the large clay floors, which Voorhies doubts were built solely for game playing. Scientists are currently analyzing the clay's chemical contents, which may give the team some clues.

(See "Mexico's Unconquered Maya Hold Tight to Their Old Ways.")

Published December 13, 2010

Digging In

Photograph courtesy Barbara Voorhies

Surrounded by jungle, workers excavate part of the shell mound site at Tlacuachero in 2009.

The Chantuto people set up temporary fishing camps, collecting seafood from the wetlands and cooking it during large "clambakes," Voorhies said.

Thousands of years of such feasts have left behind shell piles that dominate the landscape even today. (Test your Mexico knowledge.)

Published December 13, 2010

Prehistoric Parcheesi?

Photograph by Kenneth Garrett, National Geographic

Mexican archaeologist Rodolfo Cid sits near mysterious circles carved into stone not far from the pyramids of Teotihuacan, Mexico (file picture). The circles may have been surveyor's marks, calendars, or scoreboards for a Parcheesi-like game of chance called patolli, according to National Geographic magazine.

(See "New Digs Decoding Mexico's 'Pyramids of Fire.'")

Though Voorhies will likely never know the purpose of the Chantuto circles, the new theory has already changed how she sees the prehistoric foragers, she said.

"I've spent a great deal of my life thinking about these particular people," she said, and the unexpected insight into their amusements "makes them seem more real to me."

Published December 13, 2010