Cat's Cradle Game History

Using simply one string - alone in pairs or in groups - across times and cultures humans have created figures invented stories and let their imagination soar.

Cat's cradle game history. It is a type of string figure. 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. Rather it was developed independently by many cultures around the same time.

The cats cradle string game has been played since ancient times all over the world. It does not appear that this game has a particular origin. Cup and Saucer The Witchs Broom Cats Cradle and Jacobs Ladder as well as a brief history of string games.

It is well known in China Korea Japan the Philippines and Borneo. Its origin is unknown and it has been found in wildly diverse indigenous cultures from the Arctic to Europe to Indonesia. In the American colonies Cats Cradle or Cratch Cradle was one of the earliest and most popular of all known string games.

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. String games like this one have a rich and varied history. 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.

The cats cradle is a game played with string one of the oldest games in human history. String figures are a storytelling tradition in many cultures around the world including among Arctic Indigenous Peoples Aboriginal. 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.

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