String figure

",[6] but actually string figure instructions already feature in several 19th century European books on children's games prior to that.

[7] String figures are probably one of humanity's oldest games,[citation needed] and are 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.

[8][9] The anthropologist Louis Leakey has also attributed string figure knowledge with saving his life[10] 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,[8] having been told by his teacher A.C. Haddon, "You can travel anywhere with a smile and a piece of string.

"[10] The Greek physician Heraklas produced the earliest known written description of a string figure in his first century monograph on surgical knots and slings.

[15] String figures were widely studied by anthropologists like James Hornell[17] from the 1880s through around 1900, as they were used in attempts to trace the origin and developments of cultures.

Many figures were collected and described from south-east Asia, Japan, South America, West Indies, Pacific Islanders, Inuit and other Native Americans.