In bagh-chal, "moving tigers" in Nepali, one player has four tigers and the other twenty goats. The tigers win by jumping over and capturing five goats; the goats win by hemming the tigers in so they cannot move.
📍 Southsea (Portsmouth), England
Divers of the Southsea Sub-Aqua Club in Portsmouth invented it in 1954 to stay fit through the winter. They called it Octopush: eight players a side, pushing the puck with a 'pusher' stick.
📍 Japan
Hanafuda's 48 cards come in 12 suits, one flower for each month. They grew out of Portuguese cards in Edo-period Japan, redrawn to slip past bans on card games, and Nintendo began in 1889 in Kyoto by making them.
📍 Lisses (near Paris), France
Parkour took shape in Lisses, near Paris, where David Belle and friends trained together. They called themselves the Yamakasi, from a Lingala phrase meaning “strong man, strong spirit”.
📍 Fertile Crescent (Zagros & Taurus mountains)
Goats were domesticated about 10,000 years ago in the hills of the Fertile Crescent. The oldest known herded goats come from Ganj Dareh in Iran's Zagros Mountains, where their wild ancestor, the bezoar ibex, still lives.
📍 Guangzhou (Canton), China
Dim sum, Cantonese for 'touch the heart', grew up in the teahouses of Guangzhou, where travellers stopped for tea with a few small bites. The custom, called yum cha ('drinking tea'), later flourished in Hong Kong.
📍 China
Garden chrysanthemums were bred in China for many centuries before they reached Japan. There the flower became the emperor's emblem, which is why the Japanese monarchy is called the Chrysanthemum Throne.