And the winner is...

The contest has come to a close now.  Thanks to all who follow, pass-by, lurk, comment and of course those who entered the contest.

There were many good and interesting answers to the question "What was the first Game played by Homo sapiens sapiens?" But since none of the answers were correct, it means there is a 12-way tie for first.
So like any good gamer I rolled a d12 to find the winner.

See? Poor neglected fellow comes in handy sometimes. 

So what did I roll? We'll get to that.  But first the Answer to the Question!

Our species' first game was...Stick in the Eye!  If you were playing along at home and guessed 'Stick in the Eye', then you were right! You should have entered the contest! 

History of Stick in the Eye.  

Like many games, Stick in the Eye developed out of a spiritual ritual.  Sometime around 60,000 years ago in central Europe, Cro Magnon man, to curry favor with the gods, would stand before the tribe with a sharp stick in one hand and induce a hive of bees to cover his body.  Should the gods reject him and tens of thousands of stinging begin, he could end contact with the gods by forcing the stick deep into his brain through his eye.  Neanderthals who happened to observe this behavior would shrug and console themselves in the belief that at least this unfathomable cousin species would surely die out and leave the planet to them. 

Prehistorical Reenactor: Not as popular of a hobby as you might think.

This continued on for thousands of years, though the Neanderthals did not.  As many rituals find their way into popular past-times, the bees were left behind and impatient as ever, the humans went right to the stick and the first game was invented.  To play stick in the eye, a group of people would sit in a circle, and one would take the stick, planted on the ground with the pointy bit in the air, spin it, and who it pointed to had to take the stick and jam it in their eye.  This scored the man a point.  Which is the origin of the common terms in gaming: "points" and needing the "most points to win", etc.  This man would then spin the stick and it would continue until all players were either blind, dead or suffered a momentary lapse in stupidity and quit.  

Many realized that this game was not very fun, but no one likes a quitter. Besides, there wasn't any other game to play.  After a few thousands years of this, people began to think of new games that didn't involve a stick in the eye. Sure, most of these early games were not much fun, and many still quite dangerous, but most people agreed they were better than 'Stick in the Eye', and thus humanity had a new useful phrase for evaluating the desirability of something. 

Which brings us back to our contestants.

Which contestant won?

The die roll was an 8. 

The 8th entry was Ray from Don't Throw a 1. 

Congrats Ray! 

You win one Internet Llama as well as a prize that must travel by standard post.

Send me an email to Laughingferret@yahoo.com with a shipping address and off it will go.

After you get the prize I'll put a picture for everyone else to see, but since it's your prize I'll wait so you'll be the first to see. 

Thanks again to all who entered, it was good fun and I'll have to think of things to do like this in the future.

Better than a Stick in the Eye after all.