A Hypothetical Study of the Origin of the Cups and Balls

For many years, I have been fascinated by the history of the cups and balls. However, the origins of the cups and balls, as simple and as culturally universal as the trick seems to be, is clouded in mystery.

Ron Wohl, who is one of the acknowledged masters of the three shell game, remarked to me at a gathering of magic collectors a few years ago that most of us think of magic as some kind of art that is almost of divine origins, whereas in reality its origins are mainly in the scams and deceits of the grifter and gambler.  This is especially true of sleight of hand.  The cups and balls very likely started as a gambling game similar to the shell game.

The earliest literary references to the cups and balls are in letters by Roman authors, specifically Seneca the younger (ca. 45 C.E.) and Alciphron of Athens, (ca.  200 - 300 C.E.).  The Romans called the people who performed the cups and balls "acetabularii" or vinegar cup workers, because they used small cups, similar to those used to hold vinegar at the dinner table.

I looked extensively for a drawing or photo of a vinegar cup, and finally found a drawing. A friend of mine, Tom Crecelius, made me a set of these cups, and I began to learn about the possibilities they had.

One of the first things I learned was that the small size of this kind of cup lent itself quite well to manipulations we currently consider part of the three shell game. They were also not suitable for nesting. Finally, being made of pottery, they were not really suitable for things like nesting or the cup through cup move. 

However, it would have been quite easy to perform fairly simple cup and ball routines or shell game routines with them. In fact, moving a cup forward caused the pebble or ball to pop right out the back, just like in the shell game.

Nevertheless, it bothered me that the earliest mention of the cups and balls was within the past 2000 years.

(As I have mentioned on the cups and balls museum web site, the painting on the wall of Tomb 15 at Beni Hasan was fairly obviously not a cups and balls routine. Recently, I discovered that the originator of this misinterpretation was probably Champollion or Rossellini, who were the first to open the tomb, about 1824. Other archaeologists simply parrotted what they had written. In context, the painting is probably a pair of bakers molding bread.)

We know that gambling goes back to the beginnings of the Neolithic revolution. i.e. from the earliest years of people setting down roots and building permanent settlements in arable areas. Hunter-gatherers had little time to gamble, and they didn't carry a lot of extra baggage with them when they moved about the countryside. On the other hand, when primitive man began to build cities and till the soil, they didn't spend as much time travelling, and they also began to hold markets. This may be one of  the keys to the development of the cups and balls.

Archaeologists have identified primitive "dice", such as "knucklebones," which have been found in many Neolithic settlements. They have also identified primitive board games of various types.  Why do they not have any evidence of people performing with cups and balls?

Perhaps it is because archaeologists aren't looking for gambling apparatus.

In one of my early articles on the history of the cups and balls, I stated that if an archaeologist found three cups of similar size and appearance, some small, round pebbles and a leather bag, he would probably not think of a conjuror or a grifter with a set of cups and balls. He would be more likely to think of a person who had some tableware.

That is part of the mystique of the cups and balls. The cups are everyday objects. The balls  are also everyday objects. Yet the conjurer apparently causes these small balls to move from one cup to another without any apparent effort.

So, what would the early conjurer or grifter have worked with? I believe that pottery or stone vessels would make more sense than anything else, although wooden vessels might also be a possibility. However, wooden cups don't hold up well over the millenia.

Most archaeologists agree that the earliest permanent settlements sprang up around an area that crosses from the Western Asian subcontinent, i.e., the Indus Valley, around through the area just north of the Persian Gulf to the Nile Valley. This western part of this area is often referred to as the Fertile Crescent. Sometime around 9000 BCE, the hunter-gatherers that populated this area settled down and started cultivating the soil. They formed city-states.

Shortly after that, they began to make pottery.
 
The earliest pottery the archaeologists have on record is fairly primitive, from an area near present day Hungary. It dates back to about 5000 BCE.  After that, we see low, cylindrical styles of pottery and small, round bowls that would have been very well-suited to the cups and balls. We also see a different style, a bell-like style, that surfaces in Europe. This latter style is called the Bell Beaker style.

Amazingly, both of these latter styles make their appearance roughly 3000 - 2500 BCE, although in areas that are separated by a great distance.

There is another culture that emerged about this same time, around the western part of Asia. This is the BMAC culture (Bactria-Margiana Archaeological Complex). They were located in present day Turkmenistan, basically along the Oxus river. Archaeological digs in this area have found items as old as 2500 or so B.C.E. They made much of their tableware from stone, such as alabaster, but they also knew how to make pottery.  These are the Bactrians.

So, why have I become interested in these areas recently?

A couple of months ago, a fellow in the DFW area alerted me to a small, Roman cup that was for sale on an antiquities web site. I looked at it, and discovered that it did not look anything like the acetabula I'd had made. It had a much different design. After a bit of soul-searching, I purchased it, and discovered that although it had been classified as a "patella cup," it would qualify as an acetabulum, partially because of its size.

I found other cups, much older ones at other web sites, and soon I had acquired 10 ancient cups. These are all viewable on the cups and balls museum web site. http://69.89.31.132/~cupsandb/museum/ancientcups.htm

I have NO evidence whatsoever that any of these particular cups were actually ever used for the cups and balls or the shell game. However, their size and shape lead me to believe that there may have been such a game played with similar cups in these old Neolithic towns.

In the parenthetical section about Tomb 15 at Beni Hasan, the reference to Champollion and Rossellini should read "who were among the first to document the tomb" rather than "who were the first to open the tomb." Belzoni may have visited the tomb earlier.

Discussion?

I have now changed the pages connected to the Standard Cups or Regular Cups master page. The first link is to Ancient Cups, and it contains a comprehensive review of the ancient cups in my collection, as well as the reproductions of ancient cups

http://69.89.31.132/~cupsandb/museum/ancientcups.htm

I'm loving some of these reproductions Bill.  Though a lot is guess work, I am surmising that a simple stone / pebble vanish was probably the first effect of this type, possibly followed by it re-appearing under some type of vessel?  I guess that probably the first type of effect linked to the cups may have been a simple "routine" with a few objects, seeds, pebbles etc, more akin to two in the hand, one in the pocket or 3 ball routine?

A common thread in "primitive" cultures has been the "guess where" effect, basically the shell game.

Frank "Black Fox" tells me that there is a version of the shell game that involves eight containers that is used for testling Native American children for psychic powers.

However, the hand to pocket is also a very old trick, so there is no reason that they should not be related.

Bear in mind that there are 10 genuine ancient cups on that web page. The single acetabulum, the Indus Valley cups, the Coptic Cup, the Bactrian Cup and the cup from Cyprus are all genuine ancient artifacts.

According to Alex Malloy, they are digging these things up every day.

I should add that I think the shell game, or at least something like it,  was the first of the routines. The routine that Alciphron briefly describes makes me think of this.

I think gambling came before entertainment. In fact, I believe that the structure of most of the Eastern routines hearken back to the older, simpler gambling-oriented material.