It’s Friday night, you and your friends are watching a movie and demolishing a large pizza. Before long, a sad yet inevitable situation is upon you…there’s only one slice of pizza remaining. You don’t know how many slices your friends ate, and they don’t know how many you ate. There’s only one fair way to settle this. Without hesitation, everyone puts up a fist and the count begins “Rock! Paper! Scissors! Shoot!” You come away with the coveted last slice of pizza, and the taste of victory makes it all the better.
All around the world, debates are settled with this simple, yet decisive game. But where did it come from? How long has our species been playing this game?
The 2000-year-old game
As it turns out, people have needed a decisive way to claim the last scrap of food or otherwise settle a friendly dispute for quite a long time. The origins of Rock, Paper, Scissors can be traced all the way back to the year 200 BC. This means that the original game predates the construction of the Roman Colosseum (around 70 AD)!
A game of three hand gestures in which gesture 1 beats gesture 2, gesture 2 beats gesture 3, and gesture 3 beats gesture 1, was first mentioned in an ancient Chinese text. The author of the text talks about this game, then called Shoushiling, being played during the Han Dynasty, which spanned from 206 BC to 220 AD. The game also made its way to Japan, where it received the name Sansukumi-ken. Instead of rock, paper, and scissors, the game’s characters included a snake, a slug, and a frog (the order of operations being snake beats slug, which beats frog, which then beats snake).
A familiar game spreads around the world
The game was adapted to include our beloved rock, paper, and scissors characters in Japan around the 17th century and it continued to grow in popularity. As international commerce and trade with Japan increased into the 20th century, the game made its way out of Asia. In the 1920s and 30s, it started popping up in articles and magazines in Europe and the U.S., accumulating new names as it went: Jan-ken-pon (another Japanese variation), Zhot (Mediterranean region), Jeu Japonais (French), and of course Rock, Paper, Scissors.
Today, people still use different variations of the game’s name, for instance, in parts of Australia and New Zealand, the order is changed to Paper, Scissors, Rock. Others use the name Rochambeau. My personal favorite is the German name of Schnick-Schnack-Schnuck.
Throughout history, people have spent fortunes trying to promote their entertainment products around the world. Whether it was a new toy, a game, or a television show, building large-scale awareness of a product nearly always required a considerable amount of effort and resources. That’s why I find it so fascinating that something like rock, paper, scissors can organically spread around the world; no people in conference rooms strategizing, no advertising campaigns, just a common human appreciation for fun competition was enough to make rock, paper, scissors a worldwide phenomenon.
Other fun facts about rock, paper, scissors
The largest game of rock, paper, scissors ever played included over 10,000 people in China in 2019.
According to the World Rock Paper Scissors Association, scissors has the highest win rate at around 37%. While in theory, each option has a 33.3% chance of winning, humans don’t play randomly, leading to slight variations in win rates.
A game of rock, paper, scissors once decided the outcome of multi-million-dollar deal involving famous works of art.
Last week’s quiz:
It looks like the most popular answer was 15.1lbs. The correct answer was…10.9lbs! This record belongs to man from the UK who grew this record-breaking tuber.
NEW POLL
We are going to change things up a little bit this week. Instead of a quiz, it will be a competition in honor of our article. Simply choose rock, paper, or scissors and whichever one gets the most votes by next week wins!