String Figure - History

History

According to Camilla Gryski, a Canadian librarian and author of numerous string figure books, "We don't know when people first started playing with string, or which primitive people invented this ancient art. We do know that all primitive societies had and used string—for hunting, fishing, and weaving—and that string figures have been collected from native peoples all over the world."

"Of the games people play, string figures enjoy the reputation of being the most widespread form of amusement in the world: more cultures are familiar with string figures than with any other game. Over 2,000 individual patterns have been recorded worldwide since 1888, when anthropologist Franz Boas first described a pair of Eskimo string figures (Boas 1888a, 1888b, Abraham 1988:12)." String figures are probably one of humanity's oldest games, and is spread among an astonishing variety of cultures, even ones as unrelated as Europeans and the Dayaks of Indonesia; Alfred Wallace who, while traveling in Borneo in the 1800s, thought of amusing the Dayak youths with a novel game with string, was in turn very surprised when they proved to be familiar with it, and showed him some figures and transitions that he hadn’t previously seen. The anthropologist Louis Leakey has also attributed string figure knowledge with saving his life and described his use of this game in the early 1900s to obtain the cooperation of Sub-Saharan African tribes otherwise unfamiliar with, and suspicious of, Europeans, having been told by his teacher A.C. Haddon, "You can travel anywhere with a smile and a piece of string."

The Greek physician Heraklas produced the earliest known written description of a string figure in his first century monograph on surgical knots and slings. This work was preserved by republication in Oribasius' fourth century Medical Collections. The figure is described as a sling to set and bind a broken jaw, with the chin being placed in the center of the figure and the four loops tied near the top of the head. Called the "Plinthios Brokhos", the resulting figure has been identified by multiple sources as the figure known to Aboriginal Australians as "The Sun Clouded Over". The Inuit are purported to possess a string figure representing the extinct Wooly Mammoth.

String figures were widely studied by anthropologists like James Hornell from the 1880s through around 1900, as they were used in attempts to trace the origin and developments of cultures. String figures, once thought to have proven monogenesis, appear to have arisen independently as an entertainment pastime in many societies. Many figures were collected and described from south-east Asia, Japan, South America, West Indies, Pacific Islanders, Inuit and other Native Americans. Figures have also been collected in Europe and Africa. One of the major works on the subject is String Figures and How to Make Them, by Caroline Furness Jayne.

The International String Figure Association (ISFA) was formed in 1978 with the primary goal of gathering, preserving, and distributing string figure knowledge so that future generations will continue to enjoy this ancient pastime.