Shortcut Navigation:  African Ethnology   Dr. Alex de Voogt,
Curator of African Ethnology  Dr. Alex de Voogt's research
interests are diverse but concentrate on the dispersal of board
games and the development and history of scripts.  The dispersal
of mancala board games, a group of games characterized by rows
of holes and a proportionate number of identical playing
counters, extends from South East and South Asia to Africa, the
Middle East, the Caribbean and parts of South America. Their
distribution is related to historical human migration and trade
routes. Despite the wide variation of rules, some mancala games
have dispersed across cultural, linguistic and geographic
borders without a significant change in playing rules for
several hundreds of years. Research has concentrated on the
history of the games as well as on the expertise of some master
players.  The study of language and writing systems goes back to
Alex de Voogt's training in linguistics. The complexity and
adaptive ability of scripts is a cent