Mancala board in the form of a wheelbarrow

From Sierra Leone, Africa, 20th century AD

Mancala is an ancient game still played across Africa, Asia, the West Indies, parts of South America and the Middle East. The games popularity may partly stem from the fact that it is easy to play anywhere. The pieces are seeds, shells or whatever comes to hand, and the boards can be dug into the sand or dirt, or even carved into rock. Wood is a popular material, partly because of the satisfying noise that 'sowing' the pieces into the holes makes. Unlike chess, mancala is not a quiet game, and the noise of play is often accompanied by the shouts of the players.

Two players or teams take it in turns to drop their pieces into the holes, moving them around the board in a set direction; the name 'mancala' comes from an Arabic verb meaning 'to move'. The aim is to capture as many of their opponent's pieces as possible.

Two-row mancala is the most popular version of the game and the easiest to play, but there are also three- and four-row boards. The name mancala is a generic term - the game actually goes by numerous different local names, and has a wide variety of playing rules. The two best-known versions are ayo, played in Nigeria, and wari, which is played across West Africa and the Caribbean. This example is an elaborate two-row wari board, each row having six holes and with two larger storage holes at either end. There is a central columnar storage compartment for the 36 cowrie shell 'seeds'. The board is supported upon four fixed wheels and is painted a blue-green colour. Boards from Sierra Leone are noted for their decorative openwork bases. These are clearly more time-consuming to make and more expensive to buy and may be regarded as prestigious objects owned by people of high social status.

The Department of Ethnography in the British Museum has 119 mancala boards - the largest collection in the world.