ALCHIKS AND BONES: ANCIENT EURASIAN GAME

Shagapova Gulkai Rakhim’yanovna

DOI: 10.23951/2307-6119-2020-4-161-175

Information About Author:

Shagapova Gulkai Rakhimyanovna, candidate of historical science, employee of the scientific and educa-tional center of the history of the Bashkir people, associate professor of the department of Russian history, historiography and source studies. Bashkir State University, Institute of History and Public Administration. 3/4 Karl Marx st., corps I, Ufa, Russia, 450076. E-mail: shagapovanfbgu@mail.ru

In the culture of the peoples of Eurasia, there is a game of alchiki, also known as a game of dice, dice, etc. The purpose of the article is to study the geography of the distribution of dice games and its comparative analysis. The research materials were historical and ethnographic works, folklore collections, materials of painting and sculpture were used. Two methods of work were used — comparative-comparative and historical-geographical. To carry out a comparative analysis, the concept of a game plot is introduced — an element that forms the structure of a game and a sequence of rules for conducting. Game plot is a universal concept, and we make it a unit for comparing elements of culture. The historical-geographical approach identifies geographical boundaries. The game equipment consisted of the joint bones of small animals. The agreed number of dice was put on the game, the players knocked them out with the main dice — the bat. The bones that fell on the «right» side were taken by the winner. The earliest archaeological evidence goes back to the third millennium BC (Ur dynasty). The dice game was known throughout Eurasia from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean, from the Kola Peninsula to Asia Minor. One episode recorded in North America. The game was extremely popular among the pastoralists of Eurasia, as well as in the Caucasus; in Central Asia, children and adult men took part in it. The exclusively masculine character of the game and the punishment for losing allow us to assert the origin of the game from the ritual. It has been hypothesized that such a game plot could have appeared from a rite that appeared during the period of animal domestication. Recordings of the game among peoples living at a distance from the Eurasian belt of the steppes and not directly related to sheep breeding — allow us to trace possible contacts in antiquity, to the development of modern territories of settlement.

Keywords: game, game plot, dice game, mapping, semantics, ethnocultural relations

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Issue: 4, 2020

Series of issue: Issue 4

Rubric: ANTHROPOLOGY

Pages: 161 — 175

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