Komikan (from the Mapuche kom ikan "to eat all") is a two-player

abstract strategy Abstract strategy games admit a number of definitions which distinguish these from strategy games in general, mostly involving no or minimal narrative theme, outcomes determined only by player choice (with no randomness), and perfect information. ...

board game Board games are tabletop games that typically use . These pieces are moved or placed on a pre-marked board (playing surface) and often include elements of table, card, role-playing, and miniatures games as well. Many board games feature a comp ...

of the

Mapuches The Mapuche ( (Mapuche & Spanish: )) are a group of indigenous inhabitants of south-central Chile and southwestern Argentina, including parts of Patagonia. The collective term refers to a wide-ranging ethnicity composed of various groups who sh ...

(known by the Spaniards as the

Araucanians The Mapuche ( (Mapuche & Spanish: )) are a group of indigenous inhabitants of south-central Chile and southwestern Argentina, including parts of Patagonia. The collective term refers to a wide-ranging ethnicity composed of various groups who sh ...

) from

Chile Chile, officially the Republic of Chile, is a country in the western part of South America. It is the southernmost country in the world, and the closest to Antarctica, occupying a long and narrow strip of land between the Andes to the east a ...

and

Argentina Argentina (), officially the Argentine Republic ( es, link=no, República Argentina), is a country in the southern half of South America. Argentina covers an area of , making it the second-largest country in South America after Brazil, th ...

. The same game is also played by the

Incas The Inca Empire (also Quechuan and Aymaran spelling shift, known as the Incan Empire and the Inka Empire), called ''Tawantinsuyu'' by its subjects, (Quechuan languages, Quechua for the "Realm of the Four Parts", "four parts together" ) wa ...

under the name Taptana, Komina, Comina, Cumi, Puma, or Inca Chess. In modern

Quechua Quechua may refer to: *Quechua people, several indigenous ethnic groups in South America, especially in Peru *Quechuan languages, a Native South American language family spoken primarily in the Andes, derived from a common ancestral language **So ...

, the language of the ethnolinguistic group that are the descendants of the Incas, Taptana means "chess". It is known by the Aymaras, a neighboring ethnolinguistic group to the Quechuan people, as kumisiña. Throughout

South America South America is a continent entirely in the Western Hemisphere and mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere at the northern tip of the continent. It can also be described as the southe ...

the game is known as El león y las ovejas which literally means "the lion and the sheep". The lion is actually a puma as there are no lions native to the Americas. The Mapuches also call it El Leoncito. J. I. Molina, in 1787, described it as ‘''el artificioso juego del ajedrez, al cual dan el nombre de comican''’ which translates to "''the ingenious game of chess to which they (the Mapuche) give the name comican''". Komikan may actually be the same game as

Adugo Adugo is a two-player abstract strategy game from the Bororo tribe in the Pantanal region of Brazil. It is a hunting game similar to those in Southeast Asia and the Indian subcontinent. It is especially similar to Komikan, Rimau, Rimau-rimau, ...

(Jaguar and Dogs) as played by the

Bororó people The Bororo are indigenous people of Brazil, living in the state of Mato Grosso. They also extended into Bolivia and the Brazilian state of Goiás. The Western Bororo live around the Jauru and Cabaçal rivers. The Eastern Bororo ( Orarimogodoge) ...

of Brazil. in 1898, Stewart Culin, the famed anthropologist, named a game played in Peru as Solitario. The same name was also used by the game historian, Murray, in 1952. The game may also be known in Peru as Kukuli. Komikan is a hunt game, and specifically a tiger hunt game (or tiger game) since it uses an expanded

Alquerque Alquerque (also known as Qirkat from ar, القرقات) is a strategy board game that is thought to have originated in the Middle East. It is considered to be the parent of draughts (US: checkers) and Fanorona. History The game first appears ...

board. Like all hunt games, there are two unequal forces at play. In Komikan, one player has only a single piece, usually called a "puma" or "jaguar", or "''kom ikelu''" (in Mapuche language "the one which eats all"), or "leon" (Spanish for lion), which can move one space at a time or capture the other player's pieces by hopping over them. The other player has twelve pieces (usually called a "sheep" or "goat" or "dogs"), or perros or perritos which is Spanish for "dogs" and "little dogs" respectively, that can only move one space at a time, but not capture, and attempts only to surround and immobilize the puma or jaguar. Pieces must move and/or capture following the pattern on the board. The expanded Alquerque board consist of an Alquerque board and a triangular patterned board attached on one of its side. There are different triangular patterned board designs attached to the Alquerque board, and therefore Komikan has several variants. The standard triangular board (with one horizontal line across the breadth of the triangle, and one vertical line along the length of the triangle) described by Stewart Culin in 1898 (as Solitario) is only one of them. In 1918-19, Matus Z. described a Komikan board with a triangular board with two horizontal lines across its breadth, a single vertical line along its length, and two shorter vertical lines where the shorter horizontal line (the one closest to the Alquerque board) intersects with the triangle's two sides. Another board described in 1980 by J. Alcina Franch described a Taptana board with a heart-shaped triangular board with a curve line connecting to a little circle that touches the Alquerque board. This board was found at Chinchero, Peru near the capitol,

Cuzco Cusco, often spelled Cuzco (; qu, Qusqu ()), is a city in Southeastern Peru near the Urubamba Valley of the Andes mountain range. It is the capital of the Cusco Region and of the Cusco Province. The city is the seventh most populous in Peru; ...

, scratched on a

Pre-Hispanic In the history of the Americas, the pre-Columbian era spans from the original settlement of North and South America in the Upper Paleolithic period through European colonization, which began with Christopher Columbus's voyage of 1492. Usually, th ...

wall. This board has been used as an argument that Komikan or Taptana is a Pre-Hispanic or

Pre-Columbian In the history of the Americas, the pre-Columbian era spans from the original settlement of North and South America in the Upper Paleolithic period through European colonization, which began with Christopher Columbus's voyage of 1492. Usually, th ...

indigenous game of South America. The last Inca emperor

Atahualpa Atahualpa (), also Atawallpa (Quechua), Atabalica, Atahuallpa, Atabalipa (c. 1502 – 26-29 July 1533) was the last Inca Emperor. After defeating his brother, Atahualpa became very briefly the last Sapa Inca (sovereign emperor) of the Inca Empir ...

is shown on an illustration to play taptana in the Cajamarca jail with his Spanish guard (from Waman Puma de Ayala in his book written in 1615 pgs. 388, 390) before his death in 1533. The Taptana board, however, is missing a triangular board attached to it, and therefore, it looks to be a standard Alquerque board. Whether or not Komikan or Taptana is indigenous to South America, all other sources so far are after Columbus' discovery of the Americas. Another early description of the Mapuche (Araucanian) game was described by J. I. Molina in 1787. It described that the sheep or goats step forward. The puma or jaguar (or leon) was allowed to make multiple short leaps in capturing the sheep or goats.

Related Games

Rimau Rimau is a two-player abstract strategy board game from Malaysia. It is a hunt game, and specifically a tiger hunt game (or tiger game) since it uses an expanded Alquerque board. One tiger is being hunted by 24 men. The tiger attempts to eat the ...

Rimau-rimau Rimau-rimau is a two-player abstract strategy board game that belongs to the hunt game family. This family includes games like Bagh-Chal, Main Tapal Empat, Aadu puli attam, Catch the Hare, Sua Ghin Gnua, the Fox games, Buga-shadara, and man ...

Bagha-Chall ''Bagh-Chal'' ( ne, ''bāgh cāl'', new, धुँ कासा ''dhun kasa'' meaning "tiger game") is a strategic, two-player board game that originated in Nepal. The game is asymmetric in that one player controls four tigers and the other pla ...

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* Main Tapal Empat

External links

* http://www.universalis.fr/media-encyclopedie/87/V18N0003/encyclopedie/Komikan.htm{{Dead link, date=February 2020 , bot=InternetArchiveBot , fix-attempted=yes * https://web.archive.org/web/20080602053847/http://www.boardgamestudies.info/studies/issue1/article.shtml?depaulis.txt * http://www.draughtshistory.nl/chapter06.htm * https://web.archive.org/web/20110721185913/http://www.boardgamestudies.info/pdf/issue1/BGS1Depaulis.pdf
Play Kukuli online
Abstract strategy games Mapuche culture Traditional board games Chilean culture