Morabaraba

Morabaraba is a traditional two-player strategy board game played in South Africa and Botswana with a slightly different variation played in Lesotho. This game is known by many names in many languages, including mlabalaba, mmela (in Setswana), muravava, and umlabalaba. The game is similar to twelve men's morris, a variation on the Roman board game nine men's morris, which was based on the Egyptian game. The earliest known diagram of Morabaraba was found in an Egyptian temple in Kurna, Egypt, dating back to around 1440 BC. Other boards have been discovered in Ceylon / Sri Lanka (c. AD 10).

While some believed that morabaraba was introduced to Southern Africa by British settlers, morris variants exist in many parts of the world, e.g., India (char bhar), Ghana (achi), Kenya (shisimia), Somalia (shax), Zimbabwe (tsoro yemutwelve), Iran(dooz), the Philippines (tapatan) and Mongolia (gurgaldaj). It is claimed that morabaraba boards carved in rock are dated to be at least 800 years old, which would exclude a European origin. As Nine Men’s Morris and later 12, uses the term Men for the game pieces and Marabaraba uses the term "cows" for the stone pieces, both use the term "mill" for the line of three stones. It is reasonable that both games derived from the Egyptian game, one via the Roman and one directly. The mancala-type game of moruba (using of cupules) is yet another Egyptian game that is played historically throughout Africa, not merely in the South.