DREW VO: I'm Drew Scanlon.
I'm exploring the world through the lens of games, and I'm doing it with the support of
people like you on Patreon.
Help us out at Patreon.com/ClothMap.
The previous videos in our Mongolia series touched on the Naadam festival’s “three
games of men,” but there’s actually a fourth.
Known as "knuckle bone shooting," it’s more of a game than the other historical events.
After all, medieval soldiers training hard at horsemanship, wrestling, and archery eventually
needed some way to unwind.
Also called "ankle bone shooting," the game is somewhat similar to bowling.
DREW: Nice to meet you!
DREW VO: Sanjaasuren is the 2013 champion of knuckle bone shooting.
KHOSOO (TRANSLATING): Archery, in comparison to knuckle bone shooting, is more for battle,
for soldiers.
But this is a more peaceful game.
People can play it inside their home.
They shoot the targets from six meters away.
DREW VO: That distance being the diameter of the average Mongolian ger.
KHOSOO (TRANSLATING): They would sit on one side, and the target would be on the other
side, and they would play it inside their ger.
DREW VO: Using a wooden slide, which can be remarkably ornate, the shooter flicks a puck
made from deer antlers, which the animal sheds periodically.
The goal is to knock over as many of the targets as possible.
The target bones traditionally come from sheep, though the ones in this competition are artificial.
KHOSOO (TRANSLATING): They form a team of six people and they play three rounds.
They need to shoot 15 targets altogether, and if they finish the 15 targets first, they
take some targets from the other team, they start to shoot that.
DREW: Oh, they shoot the other team's targets?
KHOSOO: Yeah, and whoever has the most points would win the game.
DREW VO: Incredibly, in the midst of warming up for this national tournament, one team
offered to let me try.
KHOSOO: Try your hardest!
(LAUGHS)
DREW VO: True to form, none of my shots even reached the target.
DREW: It looks a lot easier than it is.
I kept wanting to flick it like you'd flick anything, but they're having me put my thumb
on my first knuckle and I feel like I can't flick it as hard.
It was going in the right direction, I just couldn't get the power.
KHOSOO: They actually said that you were very good, you were able to learn it.
They said you were getting close.
DREW: Yeah? Well, I'll take close.
KHOSOO: Yeah, that was close!
DREW (IN MONGOLIAN): Thank you.
KHOSOO (TRANSLATING): A few years ago, the knuckle bone shooting competition was represented
in UNESCO's Intangible Heritage list.
Even before that, people considered it the fourth "game of man."
DREW VO: Because of its status as the “fourth” game of Naadam, I didn’t really have a sense
of whether Mongolians cared about knuckle bone shooting as much as the other events.
Until the secret service showed up.
The man in blue is the president of Mongolia.
So yeah, knuckle bone games are legit.
And, as I’d soon learn, take many forms.
In a lot of ways, The capital city of Ulaanbaatar feels like any city.
But drive just a few minutes outside of it and you are presented with a never ending
sea of rolling hills.
This is the Mongolian steppe.
Just off the main highway sits the home of a family of farmers who had invited us to
spend the night in their extra ger.
Being welcomed into a Mongolian home involves a lot of things.
First, I accepted a bottle of snuff.
KHOSOO: Inhale it though your nose.
DREW: Okay.
(SNORTING SOUND) (LAUGHTER)
KHOSOO: And the other one.
DREW VO: It was like snorting incense.
DREW: It does sting a little bit.
KHOSOO: Yeah, it does, right?
But it's supposed to be healthy, though.
DREW: Okay, I'll believe you!
DREW VO: Next, a sip of a popular Mongolian drink: airag, or fermented horse milk.
DREW: It's like a sour yogurt, but it's got kind of a beer-y tang to it.
It's not bad, I kind of like it!
DREW VO: Then came some cookies made from cow milk, which varied from soft to hard and
sweet to sour.
DREW: That's like a cheese cookie!
DREW VO: With introductions out of the way, we got down to business.
When thrown, a sheep’s knuckle bone lands with one of four sides up.
Each orientation has a name.
“Camel” is the concave side opposite “horse,” the convex side.
“Goat” has two humps, indicating the head and rump, opposite “sheep” which is more
rounded, like a puffy white sheep.
The patriarch of the family rolled four bones to determine our fortune.
PATRIARCH: Woah!
KHOSOO: Because this is four different types, this is the best fortune.
PATRIARCH: (LAUGHING)
KHOSOO: Because you have your goat, sheep, horse, and camel all together, this is one
of the best fortunes.
PATRIARCH: (LABELING BONES IN MONGOLIAN)
KHOSOO: Yeah, four different...
You'll have the best fortune.
DREW: Oh, fantastic!
DREW VO: First up was a game a lot like billiards.
After dropping the bones from your hands, any two bones showing the same side up can
be shot one against the other with a flick.
If you connect without hitting any other bones, you pick one up and keep going.
Sometimes, another bone will block your shot.
If the group lets you, you can attempt to pick up a bone using only your thumb and drop
it on your target.
If you’re good, your turn can last until there are no more moves.
The game ends when one person has collected all the bones.
DREW: Are these the same?
DREW VO: Discerning each one took some practice, but I eventually got it.
DREW: I didn't want to hit the other one!
DREW VO: Second was a game called “horse racing.”
A line of bones is arranged horse-up as a scoreboard.
Players take turns rolling four bones, moving one space for each “horse” they roll.
However, if a “great fortune” roll of all four sides comes up, the player moves
four spaces.
KHOSOO: That's four different bones, a great fortune!
DREW: Hey, look at that!
KHOSOO: So you move four.
One, two, three, four.
DREW VO: First to the finish wins.
KHOSOO: You get to keep your horse.
That's your reward.
DREW: Really? I get to keep this?
KHOSOO: Yeah, your prize.
DREW (IN MONGOLIAN): Thank you.
DREW VO: The third game was basically jacks, and was definitely the hardest.
It’s often played with a chain of some kind, like a necklace.
Each player throws the chain in the air and tries to separate a handful of bones from
the center pile before catching the chain.
On the second throw, the player then tries to pick up as many of those bones as possible.
DREW: (LAUGHS) They just went everywhere!
DREW VO: Dropping either throw results in a pass.
DREW: Okay, two! I'm on the board!
DREW VO: Finally came a game called “turtle,” the only game to include a more familiar six-sided die.
First, a turtle-shaped design is constructed.
Each segment of the turtle corresponds to a face on the die, depending on how many bones
make up that segment.
For example, each leg has five fingers, so if you roll a five, you get to keep those
five bones.
If there’s no segment to match your roll, you’ll have to replace a segment with that
number of bones, reducing your stash.
The winner is the player with the most bones when the turtle has been completely dismantled.
We played for a long time.
Most of the games take a while to conclude, which makes sense if your goal is to keep
yourself occupied indoors during, say, a brutal Mongolian winter.
Down the hill and across a road sits the family’s land, which, as it’s public land, is shared
with a number of other families.
We joined a picnic already in progress.
Naadam is more than a festival, it’s a weeklong national holiday.
People take this opportunity to visit family and friends.
Some from this group came from 500 kilometers away.
Others hadn’t seen the rest in five years.
Still, they invited us to share the giant plate of lamb.
DREW: Oh my gosh, that's good.
That was just carved off of a bone down here!
KHOSOO: Would you like to try some sheep's fat?
DREW: Some sheep's fat?
Creamy!
DREW VO: There were drinks, too.
DREW: What's "cheers?"
KHOSOO: "Toloo."
DREW: Toloo!
That's got a good burn.
And it's tasty!
DREW VO: Our host family owns a small herd of livestock.
Here they showed us the process of making the infamous airag.
KHOSOO: When you keep some of the airag for a long time, it ferments itself, so it can
be used as a base.
A little bit of already-made airag is added, and then they need to stab and jab it for
quite a long time to make it fermented.
DREW: So how long do they let it ferment before they drink it?
KHOSOO: About two to three days.
This is almost fermented, so I think it's ready to be tasted.
DREW: It's smooth.
It's tangy, but it's smooth.
KHOSOO: That's very freshly made airag for you!
DREW: Yeah, I mean, it was right out of that barrel!
(IN MONGOLIAN) Thank you.
DREW VO: It should go without saying that this is pretty different from the life I’m
used to.
But when playing games with the family, I felt right at home, like it was any other
holiday with my family.
The visual trappings of our cultures can be different, but it’s hard to deny that
everyone on earth just wants to eat, drink, and be merry.
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