Mancala
Mancala is one of the oldest known games to still be widely played today. "Mancala" is a generic name for a family of two-player turn-based strategy board games played with small stones, beans, or seeds and rows of holes or pits in the earth, a board or other playing surface. The objective is usually to capture all or some set of the opponent's pieces. Versions of the game date back to the 7th century, and evidence suggests the game existed in ancient Egypt.
Card game
The first playing cards appeared in the 9th century during Tang-dynasty China.
The first reference to the card game in world history dates no later than the 9th century, when the "Collection of Miscellanea at Duyang", written by Tang Dynasty writer Su E, described Princess (daughter of Emperor Yizong of Tang) playing the "leaf game" with members of the Wei clan (the family of the princess' husband) in 868 . The Song dynasty statesman and historian Ouyang Xiu has noted that paper playing cards arose in connection to an earlier development in the book format from scrolls to pages. During the Ming dynasty (1368–1644), characters from popular novels such as the "Water Margin" were widely featured on the faces of playing cards. A precise description of Chinese money playing cards (in four suits) survived from the 15th century. Mahjong tiles are a 19th-century invention based on three-suited money playing card decks, similar to the way in which Rummikub tiles were derived recently from modern Western playing cards.