Article suitable for older students

Going Round in Squares: Monopoly’s (Ancient) Mexican Square Root

31st Aug 2024

Inventor of The Landlord’s Game, Elizabeth ‘Lizzie’ Magie

NOTE: If you just want the bare bones, scroll down to KEY POINTS at the bottom...!
This is the final chapter in our exploration of the claim that in the late 19th century a museum curator ‘saw in the Liverpool Codex [right - recently renamed the Tonalamatl de los Pochtecas or Merchants’ Almanac from ancient Mexico] the most complex ritual circuit of repeating cycles, and thus the world’s most complex board game’ - which would eventually lead to Monopoly. Here, we try to summarise our results, explain some of the background - and obstacles to finding the truth - and acknowledge with gratitude the generous help and guidance we’ve received on the way... (Compiled by Ian Mursell/Mexicolore)

First, just what kind of a board game was The Landlord’s Game - Elizabeth Magie’s creation, now known (thanks to the tireless campaigning in the ‘70s and ‘80s of Ralph Anspach) to be the precursor of Monopoly?
Her patent for the game was approved on January 5th. 1904; not only was it extremely rare at that time for a woman to register a patent for an invention in general, she was the first person in American history to apply patents to a board game (Parlett 2019: 10). It was, in its way, revolutionary: her game was ‘one of the first board games in modern times to bring about the looped continuous play design with no beginning or end space, or goal in movement after the start position’ (Tom Forsyth, personal communication 10/6/15). This has puzzled board game historians - ‘researcher colleagues and I have long wondered whether Magie’s concept of continuous circuits around the gameboard was used before her 1904 game’ (Bruce Whitehill, personal communication 4/5/09). She didn’t supply a model for her patent – ‘which suggests her idea existed only on paper at the time’ (Parlett 2019: 9). Ralph Anspach believes she may have ‘claimed that she invented the endless track in her patent application’ (personal communication, 11/8/07). As we saw in an earlier chapter, somewhat like Pachisi (later known as Parcheesi), ‘Lizzie’s game featured a path that allowed players to circle the board – in contrast to the linear-path design used by many games at the time’ (Parlett 2019: 32).

No-one doubts that Lizzie Magie invented a unique and highly original game. David Parlett spells out some of its special features:-
• conversion of the established pattern of a linear race game (such as Game of the Goose) ‘into a closed loop in which players’ tokens circulate till the game ends by depletion of resources’
• novel feature that players can purchase the rights to spaces and then charge others landing on them
• introduction of a role-playing element ‘in which much of the player interaction took place off the board and between the personalities involved’
• (first ever?) inclusion of a ‘meta-rule’: ‘Should any emergency arise which is not covered by the rules of the game, the players must settle the matter between themselves…’).
Parlett concludes: ‘Thus the mechanics of play derived naturally from the narrative theme of the game itself, which is the ideal way of inventing games’ (2019: 101).
It’s even possible, as David Sadowski suggests, that ‘Magie developed Landlord’s first as a card game, and only later added a board to make play easier. The only evidence of this is internal, in the game itself. Financial card games were hugely popular in the 1890s and sold in the millions’ (personal communication, 23/8/19).

We should remember, at this point, that her intention was to create an educational tool in support of her Georgist beliefs. In her own words ‘It is a practical demonstration of the present system of land-grabbing with all its usual outcomes and consequences’ (Magie 1902: 30). Far from being a commercial ‘entertainment’, it was a bold attempt to encourage players to experience for themselves, through play, the ‘evils’ of monopolisation of the land, and to give them the option of choosing and campaigning for an alternative. The game’s educational heart can be sensed in the Specification supporting the Patent (visible in picture 1), and is given physical prominence by naming the ‘Home’/’Start’ corner space ‘Labor Upon Mother Earth Produces Wages’ (picture 3). Each player collected US$100 every time they completed a circuit of the board.
In her Rule Book to the 1906 edition of the game Lizzie wrote: ‘The Landlord’s Game is based on present prevailing business methods. This the players can prove for themselves… the logical outcome… the land monopolist has absolute control of the situation [and] is… monarch of the world. The remedy is the Single Tax.’ Players could choose by majority decision to play the game again but using The Single Tax Rules, including ‘All land rent is paid into the public treasury to be used for public improvements’.

That option was highly original. ‘The players could... vote to do something not officially allowed in Monopoly: cooperate. Under this alternative rule set, they would pay land rent not to a property’s title holder but into a common pot – the rent effectively socialised so that, as Magie later wrote, “Prosperity is achieved”’ (Ketcham 2012: 2).
Up until this moment, all game boards had a start and a finish. Where did her concept of a continuous-path game model come from?
It’s my contention that Lizzie attended the World’s Columbian Exposition (WCE) (see Chapter 6) in 1893, saw and heard experts enthuse about ancient Mesoamerican calendar systems and board games, interacted with them (picture 4), studied pictures and artefacts on display, and went on to conceive her own board game, inspired by what she had witnessed in Chicago. This did not happen overnight, but during the late 1890s, and we know that she tested her new game out with members of the Quaker community at Arden - founded by Frank Stephens, who attended the Second Single Tax Conference at WCE in 1893.
Do we have any direct evidence? No. Why are we resorting to an artist’s impression of Lizzie ‘talking shop’ with experts at WCE?

The answer is simple: Lizzie’s personal journal was ‘nobbled’ many years ago by a researcher - who shall remain nameless - and has been kept inaccessible for DECADES, something bemoaned not only by Yours Truly but by a string of serious board game historians trying to research her story. In the words of one disgruntled enthusiast: ‘I wish so much I could access Lizzie’s personal diary! Ralph [Anspach], myself, and Mary [Pilon], even some of Lizzie’s family line have all tried. Unfortunately, it resides with a person who refuses to make any part public and the Magie family patriarch who gave it to this person said it will go to no one else’ (personal communication, June 2015).
What of the original article that sparked our quest in the first place - the chapter by Bonita Freeman-Witthoft in Irving Finkel’s splendid British Museum book Ancient Board Games in Perspective (2007) - does she not provide evidence for the claimed friendship between the 19th century’s world board games supremo Stewart Culin (see Chapter 5) and Lizzie Magie?

Sadly, no she doesn’t! Not a scrap. I contacted her directly myself - back in 2007 she was Director of Ethnic Studies in the Department of Anthropology of West Chester University of Pennsylvania - only to discover that her health was steadily deteriorating. She referred me to some of her colleagues who were supportive but equally unable to help. I followed some red herrings, hoping for instance to link her and Culin to living in Philadelphia at the same time. All in vain.
So I resorted to slowly gathering circumstantial evidence - of which there is plenty - linking Lizzie to WCE/Chicago (see Chapter 6); first I needed to find out when and how Culin might have come across the Codex Fejérváry-Mayer (with its complex and key first page) (see Chapter 1) in 19th century USA. I researched the known story of what Culin called ‘The Liverpool Codex’ in Europe and its journey (back) to the Americas where it was born, thanks to the monumental work of Lord Kingsborough (it was reproduced in volume 3 of his great Antiquities of Mexico) (see Chapter 2). Sure enough, it was being referred to in published American scholarship by the 1880s.
At the same time I looked for early studies of Patolli - it was closely studied by Culin, William Holmes, Cyrus Thomas and other scholars, often being referred to alongside the calendrical circuit (see main picture, above) of the Codex Fejérváry-Mayer (see Chapter 4).

Next, I studied the life and work of pioneering archaeologist Zelia Nuttall (see Chapter 3), and was amazed to discover that she was given a set of the huge Kingsborough volumes as a child, which sparked her lifelong interest in ancient Mexican cultures and led to a dazzling career, one highlight of which was her popular presentations on ancient Mexican calendar systems at the WCE in Chicago in 1893. We know she also displayed in Chicago an illustration of Patolli from the Codex Magliabechiano, which she herself had brought to the attention of the scholarly world in Europe. Sadly it seems she was in debt in later life and all her papers were disposed of when her Mexico City house was sold. I discovered that an eminent Mexican archaeologist had personally seen Nuttall’s Kingsborough set containing her own hand-written annotations: but it had ended up in the hands of the wealthy and long-established book publishing company Porrúa in Mexico and, despite my best efforts (including literally pleading in person with their Mexico City staff in 2022), they flatly refuse to divulge any information about its whereabouts, let alone to let anyone see it... Shades of Lizzie’s diary.

Should we dismiss Freeman-Witthoft’s Culin-Magie story? Actually, no. In subsequent discussions with Dr. Simon J. Bronner, Dean of the College of General Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and editor of the classic Folklife Studies from the Gilded Age: Object, Rite, and Custom in Victorian America, it turns out that Bonita ‘Bonnie’ Freeman-Witthoft and her partner John were serious scholars and ‘I would be surprised if either one of them made a claim without evidence’ (Bronner, personal communication 30/8/19). Bronner not only knew them personally but did himself research the work of Culin. He went on: ‘I am sure that their interest in Culin – and others such as Daniel Brinton and Frank Hamilton Cushing – fit in with their passion for Philadelphia and its legacy of anthropological/folkloristic work of which they were a part… Bonnie, and John, wanted to promote the work of these early anthropologists/folklorists to boost the significance, and continuity, of cultural work in Philadelphia that they rightly felt was invisible or underappreciated by post-War trends in the disciplines’.

Has anyone else come to the same conclusion? As far as I know, only one person has come close to my own hypothesis - Philip Winkelman, in his 2016 article in Board Game Studies Journal ‘Board to Page to Board’. He concludes that Lizzie Magie must have read Culin’s 1898 classic Chess & Playing Cards and took her inspiration not from Patolli (which, oddly, isn’t mentioned a single time in his text) but from the Native North American (Kiowa) game Zohn Ahl, which Culin describes, but specifically in relation to the ‘gaming arrows’ employed in the game, that Culin notes are similar to the staves of the ancient Korean game Nyout. Whilst both Zohn Ahl and The Landlord’s Game boards have 40 squares, no attempt is made to associate Zohn Ahl with calendrical circuits. Interestingly, in his exhaustively detailed study of ancient American board games, Thierry Depaulis noted that ‘A careful examination of zohn ahl shows that it has kept the basic features of an ancient game that came - in Spanish times - from Mexico and may have been popular in Teotihuacan times. Its spread northward - through the Tarascan country - is, hopefully, well documented’ (2018: 30)

IMHO, Zohn Ahl would not have received a fraction of the attention at WCE compared to that given to Patolli - and the ancient Mexican calendrical circuits that we have already outlined. What’s more, as just mentioned, Zohn Ahl appears itself to have evolved from the board games of ancient Mesoamerica. If you compare Winkelman’s diagram (picture 9) to our own based on the ‘square’ patolli board from Codex Vindobonensis (picture 10), we sincerely feel ours is more convincing...
Does any of this matter? No, but if, through telling this story, we can play a small part in paying tribute to ancient Mesoamerican cultures and showing just how many creative ideas we take for granted today - such as the ‘world’s favourite game’ - that may first have been inspired by advanced Indigenous civilisations, our quest may not have been in vain. At a time when the modern world is looking more and more to Indigenous societies to see just how much we have already learnt and can learn from them, we’re keen to support initiatives now coming from Mexico to ‘rediscover’ fascinating old traditions (suppressed for centuries since the Spanish invasion), such as the Mesoamerican ritual ballgame... and Patolli.

Here’s a summary of where to find our project ‘chapters’ (links follow below):-
• Chapter 1: ‘The story of the Codex Fejérváry-Mayer’ in our ‘AZTEC WRITING’ section (two parts)
• Chapter 2: ‘Kingsborough’s Antiquities of Mexico goes west...’ in ‘AZTEC WRITING’
• Chapter 3: ‘Zelia Nuttall’ in ‘AZTEC INSPIRATION’ (two parts)
• Chapter 4: ‘Calendars and board games’ in ‘AZTEC CALENDAR’
• Chapter 5: ‘Stewart Culin and ancient Mesoamerican board games’ in ‘AZTEC INSPIRATION’
• Chapter 6: ‘¡Xicágo!’ in ‘AZTEC INSPIRATION’
• Chapter 7: ‘Going Round in Squares: Monopoly’s (Ancient) Mexican Square Root’ in ‘AZTEC INSPIRATION’.

KEY POINTS:-
• Monopoly not invented by Charles Darrow in 1934 but by Lizzie Magie some 35 years earlier
• Her Landlord’s Game was created to support the Single Tax movement led by Henry George
• It was the first board game to feature a continuous-path circuit
• No-one ever looks at where Lizzie got HER idea from
• Her journal has been kept secret for decades
• A researcher claimed years ago that she was a friend of Stewart Culin, who showed her the ancient Mexican board game Patolli, and the famous calendrical circuit on page 1 of the Codex Fejérváry-Mayer
• Impossible to prove (without her diary) BUT loads of circumstantial evidence points to her attending the World’s Columbian Expo in Chicago in 1893, and being inspired by the world games displayed there
• It looks like it was a particular form of Patolli board (the oldest, sometimes known as ‘Type 1’, the ‘square with loops’) which she would have seen, very similar to her board design
• I believe Monopoly has hidden ancient Mexican roots! ¡VIVA PATOLLI...!

References:-
• Depaulis, Thierry (2018) ‘Ancient American Board Games I: From Teotihuacan to the Great Plains’, Board Game Studies Journal, 12, 1, 29-55, October 2018
• Ketcham, Christopher (2012) ‘Monopoly is Theft’, The Harper’s Blog, Harper’s Magazine, October 19, 2012
• Magie, Elizabeth (1902) article on The Landlord’s Game The Single Tax Review, Autumn 1902
• Parlett, David (2019) ‘Lizzie Magie: America’s First Lady of Games’, Board Game Studies Journal, 13, 99-109; talk for BGS XXII, Bologna, May 2019
• Winkelman, Philip M. (2016) ‘Board to Page to Board’, Board Game Studies Journal, vol. 10, 1, September 2016.

Picture sources:-
• Main: image source still being sought
• Pix 1, 2, 3, 6, 7, 8 & 12: photos by Ian Mursell/Mexicolore
• Pic 4: illustration by Daniel Parada © Mexicolore
• Pic 5: image from The Philadelphia Inquirer, 29 December 1895 (online via philly.newspapers.com)
• Pic 9: image downloaded from https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Zohn-Ahl-to-The-Landlords-Game-Hypothetical-transformation-A_fig3_345839831
• Pic 10: graphic composite © Mexicolore
• Pic 11: photo by, thanks to and courtesy of Elizabeth Graham
• (Pic 12): original artwork by and thanks to Steve Radzi/mayavision.com; animation by Mexicolore
• Pic 13: illustration by Jorge Enciso.

Acknowledgments:-
So many friends, scholars, games historians, librarians and others have kindly and patiently helped me, but special thanks are due to:-
• Manuel Aguilar-Moreno
• Alexandra (Allie) Alvis
• Ralph Anspach
• Alex Bartlett
• Marshall Becker
• Elizabeth Boone
• Chrisso Boulis
• Simon J. Bronner
• Tara Cuthbert
• Elin Danken
• Ellie Dix
• Irving Finkel
• Tom Forsyth
• David Freidel
• Liz Graham
• Merilee Grindle
• John Hallwas
• David Hook
• Ira Jacknis
• Chris Jones
• Timothy Kendal
• Leonardo López Luján
• Mary Miller
• Barbara Mundy
• Kathy Nichols
• Jerome Offner
• Julia Papp
• Angie Park
• David Parlett
• Alex Pezzati
• Mary Pilon
• David Sadowski
• John E. Staller
• Emma Stuart
• David Szewczyk
• Minaluaztekatl Vázquez Hernández
• Khristaan Villa
• Barbara Voorhies
• Daria Wingreen-Mason
• Bruce Whitehill

Read Chapter 1...Read Chapter 2...Read Chapter 3...Read Chapter 4...Read Chapter 5...Read Chapter 6...Tom Forsyth’s website on the history of The Landlord’s Game and of Monopoly Bruce Whitehill’s website - ‘the history, the products, the companies and the people involved with board games’David Parlett’s Games and Gamebooks website

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Inventor of The Landlord’s Game, Elizabeth ‘Lizzie’ Magie

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Going Round in Squares: Monopoly’s (Ancient) Mexican Square Root

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