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It occurred to me recently that tig/tag has probably been passed down through oral tradition from child to child for millennia. It's possible that it's older th
by sambeau 2y ago
It occurred to me recently that tig/tag has probably been passed down through oral tradition from child to child for millennia. It's possible that it's older than homo-sapiens, older than the taming of fire. Millions of years of tradition.
And it still being passed on orally, child-to-child.
- psychoslave 2y agoWhat is tig/tag?
- BurningFrog 2y agoMy parents failed me too on that!
- popol12 2y agoI guess https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tag_(game) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tag_(game)
- angstrom 2y agoMy three-year-old daughter plays this with cat. It's a cross-species thing that is possibly part of mammalian brain development in origin. The cat is less than one year old. Our 17 year old cat does not engage in this at all and hisses at the kitten for even trying to start a game of tag. This makes me wonder if that origin is more related to predator/prey.
- ViktorRay 2y agoIn regards to your 17 year old cat… All mammalian species have something in common. When mammals are young we all love playing. This is true for humans, dogs, elephants, primates, cats and so on. But play ends up disappearing as the mammal gets older. Compare a playful baby elephant to an adult elephant. The baby elephant loves playing. Not just with other elephants but with humans and dogs and so on. But older elephants are more likely to watch and less likely to play. This is why your 1 year old cat loves playing while your 17 year old cat doesn’t. It’s a very interesting phenomenon
- llamaimperative 2y agoPlay is a semi-structured way of learning important skills! Evolution really just has to make it engaging enough for you to learn the skills, not much of a reason for it to persist after that.
- fsckboy 2y ago>not much of a reason for it to persist after that for working out and keeping fit!... oh, hmmm, I guess that's glaring evidence that working out and keeping fit are not beneficial after all
- llamaimperative 2y agoI am clearly speaking from the perspective of evolutionary pressures. And you're right, there's very little evolutionary pressure on working out, staying fit, staying happy, etc. etc. beyond the bare minimum required to ensure propagation.
- ViktorRay 2y agoYou don’t need to play to stay fit. Adult lions don’t play like baby lions yet adult lions are still fit.
- ajuc 2y agoOnce you can't reproduce and can't help with reproduction evolution doesn't care if you stay fit.
- bongodongobob 2y agoWell that's not the point of play to begin with, it's learning motor skills, so your logic doesn't make any sense.
- triceratops 2y agoDogs seem to want to play until they're physically unable to.
- slibhb 2y agoYoung squirrels also play tag.
- astrange 2y agoThe cat might not want to move as much anymore if it has arthritis.
- jjtheblunt 2y agoPredator vs prey i thought too
- tivert 2y agoThe game tag, as in "Tag! You're it!"
- sambeau 2y agoIn parts of the UK it's often called 'tig'
- psychoslave 2y agoOk thanks to all that replied. I was misdriven by "through oral tradition", I was expecting something that was supposedly transmitted as a linguistic invariant. It actually has significantly different names, so nothing close to some diachronic international onomatopoeia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-linguistic_onomatopoeias https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-linguistic_onomatopoeias
- dark-star 2y agonever heard of it as well. Maybe he means the game of "tag"?
- walthamstow 2y agoA name so regional that it featured on the NY Times' UK & Ireland accent/dialect quiz https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/02/15/upshot/british-irish-dialect-quiz.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/02/15/upshot/britis...
- lawlessone 2y ago>What is tig/tag? the chain is broken..
- grimgrin 2y agoThe chain never grows without a “tag you’re it”
- fsckboy 2y agoyes it does: tig, you're it!
- qingcharles 2y agoWe just repaired the link :)
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- sambeau 2y agoIn parts of the UK it's often called 'tig' in the US and other parts of the UK it's called 'tag'
- mauvehaus 2y agoFittingly, it was a Yorkshireman who discovered you could use inert gasses other than argon for gas-tungsten arc welding.
- gpvos 2y agoI guess it's the game of tag ("tag, you're it!"). In Dutch it is called tikkertje ("tikkie, je bent 'm!"); as Old English and Old Dutch were very similar, this may explain the -i- in tig, or at least it made it easier for me to recognize the word. :-)
- notarobot123 2y agoNot quite as old but another example of an enduring child-to-child cultural transmission is the daring right of passage that is Chappy/Knicky-Knocky Nine Doors/Ding dong ditch[0]. [0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knock,_knock,_ginger https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knock,_knock,_ginger
- lamp_book 2y agoRing around the roses as well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_a_Ring_o%27_Roses https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_a_Ring_o%27_Roses