An archaeoastronomical and Africanist excursion into Palaeolithic world-views
Wim van Binsbergen
with the astronomical collaboration of Jean-Pierre Lacroix
|
Cupmarks,
stellar maps, and mankala board-games (4) An archaeoastronomical and Africanist excursion into Palaeolithic world-views Wim van Binsbergen with the astronomical collaboration of Jean-Pierre Lacroix |
How could I make sense of the Francistown
geomantic tablet oracle which I learned as a sangoma? In the
Arabian form of Âilm al-raml, classic geomancy revolves
on pairs and foursomes. For while patterns of single and double
dots (arranged in four horizontal lines one over the other, e.g. 
) are the standard
notional units in later geomantic divination; its notational
symbolism initially, among Islamic writers as from the 9th
century CE (third century AH), consisted of dots and lines, e.g. 
— in close
reminiscence of the I Ching symbolism of broken and
unbroken lines, e.g. 
)
from which the Arabian geomancy partly derived. Here, and in the
geographical and historical patterns of distribution and the role
of Islam of a major vehicle of spread, lies the link with the
mankala board-game. Pairs, threesomes and foursomes constitute
the basis of mankala; the board consists of two to four rows of
cavities (cup-holes) along which counters (pebbles, beans,
grains) travel according to fixed rules. Both geomancy and
mankala are prominent and intercontinentally distributed formal
systems, characterised moreover by a remarkable constancy over
time and an amazing power to cross social, cultural, linguistic
and political boundaries. One cannot study geomancy without
realising its close structural, distributional and historical
association with mankala.
Since cup-holes are the hallmark of mankala (as the instances of mankala boards in Chapter 1 demonstrate), one is tempted to try and understand mankala in the context of the earliest cupmarks known to scholarship: those of the Middle and Upper Palaeolithic. It is this what triggered the research and the argument of the present book.
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