10 OLDEST Board Games In History

1. Mancala (6000 BCE)

So, this is a tricky one, not least because despite some companies manufacturing specific games with the title, there’s one Mancala game. Think of the word ‘Mancala’ like the word ‘cards’, you play cards, but there’s no one specific game called ‘cards’. It’s a family of games played with a single unifying bit of equipment. Same with Mancala games, an ancient African family of games played by moving stones around rows of holes. The most popular and commonly depicted Mancala games might be two rows of six holes, games like Kalah, or Oware, or 4 rows of 8 holes like Bao or Omweso, but there’s hundreds of Mancala games and some are believed to be very very very very VERY old. I mean, it makes sense, it doesn’t require a board, just find some seeds or stones, dig some holes in the earth with your finger, you’ve got a Mancala game. While it’s certainly disputed, there are some historians that believe that stones found in present day Jordan with two rows of 6 holes were used to play Mancala games, and these stones date back to the Neolithic period, as far back as 8 thousand years ago. To give you an idea of how cult of the new the tabletop industry can be, some gamers call Settlers of Catan an old game. That came out in 1995. Mancala listens to those opinions and lets out a single weary sigh.