On The Historical Origin of Role Play

Journal of Russian & East European Psychology
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Chapter 2 : On the Historical Origin of Role Play
D.B. ELKONIN
To cite this article: D.B. ELKONIN (2005) Chapter 2 : On the Historical Origin of Role Play,
Journal of Russian & East European Psychology, 43:1, 49-89
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Journal of Russian and East European Psychology, vol. 43, no. 1,
January–February 2005, pp. 49–89.
© 2005 M.E. Sharpe, Inc. All rights reserved.
ISSN 1061–0405/2005 $9.50 + 0.00.
D.B. ELKONIN
Chapter 2
On the Historical Origin

of Role Play
From the history of toys
The central question that must be resolved to construct a theory of

role play is that of its historical origin—this is simultaneously the
question of the nature of role play.
In the course of his advocacy of a materialist understanding of
the origin of art, G.V. Plekhanov touched incidentally on the ques-
tion of play: “Determination of the relationship of work to play,
or, if you like, of play to work, is critically important to the under-
standing of the genesis of art” (1958, p. 336). In addition, Plekhanov
advanced a number of propositions that have proved to be funda-
mental to resolving the issue of play’s origin.
The most important of these was his assertion that in the history
of human society work is older than play. “First real wars, giving
rise to the demand for good wars, and only then war games as a
English translation © 2005 M.E. Sharpe, Inc., from the Russian text, “Ob
istoricheskom vozniknovenii rolevoi igry,” in Psikhologiia igry, 2d ed. (Mos-
cow: Gumanit. izd. tsent VLADOS, 1999), pp. 17–73. Translated and published
with permission of Boris Daniilovich Elkonin.
Translated by Lydia Razran Stone.
49
50 JOURNAL OF RUSSIAN AND EAST EUROPEAN PSYCHOLOGY
means of satisfying this demand” (1958, p. 342). This assertion,

as Plekhanov shows, makes it possible to understand why play
precedes work in the life of the individual. “If we had never gone
beyond the perspective of the individual,” he writes, “then we would
not have understood either why play precedes work in his life or
why he amuses himself with the particular play activities he does
rather than some others” (1958, p. 343). Play, as here conceived
by Plekhanov, represents an activity that originates in response to
the needs of the society in which children live and in which they
must become active participants.
In order to determine under what conditions and in connection
with which of society’s needs role play originates, a historical study
had to be conducted.
In Soviet psychology, E.A. Arkin was the first to state that a
historical study was needed if a complete theory of play was to be
constructed.
A correct, scientific theory of play and toys can be constructed only
on the foundation of factual material extracted from the past and
juxtaposed with the present. And only such a theory of play can pro-
vide the basis for developing healthy, productive, stable educational
practice. . . . The history of children’s play and children’s toys must
serve as the foundation for developing a theory of play and toys.
(1935, p. 10)
In his research, Arkin almost does not touch upon the issue of
the historical origin of play, particularly role play, but focuses
instead mainly on toys and their history. Comparing toys obtained
from archaeological digs and modern toys, Arkin writes, “Among
the toys collected by archaeologists and comprising museum col-
lections there is not a single one that does not have a double in
the nursery of today” (1935, p. 21). Arkin’s study was not lim-
ited to archaeological toys; he also studied the toys of the most
primitive ethnic groups. And these also led the author to analo-
gous conclusions.
Indeed, despite the diversity of the sources from which we have ob-
tained our material, ignoring differences in shape and detail, a single
JANUARY–FEBRUARY 2005 51
picture emerges. The toys of peoples living vast distances from each
other remain immortal and forever young; both their content and form
remain the same for Eskimos and Polynesians, Kafirs and Indians,
Bushmen and Bororos—this fact testifies to the amazing stability of
toys, and thus to the need they must meet and the energy that must
create this need. (1935, p. 31)
Citing additional facts to demonstrate that not only the toys but
also the play of modern children and children of more primitive
peoples are identical, Arkin concludes his comparison as follows:
The stability of children’s toys, the universality and unchanging na-
ture of their basic structure and of the functions they perform is an
obvious fact, and perhaps it is the very obviousness of this fact that has
caused researchers to consider it unnecessary to emphasize it. But if
this remarkable stability of children’s toys is an indisputable fact, then
it is difficult to understand why psychologists, anthropologists, and
natural scientists have never drawn any conclusions from it, and have
never sought an explanation for it. Or is this indisputable fact so clear
and simple that it requires no interpretation? Not at all! On the con-
trary, it should seem strange to us that children born and reared under
the conditions of twentieth-century culture would, for amusement and
as a tool of development and self-education, use exactly the same tool
that is given to a child born to a tribe that is close in its stage of devel-
opment to that of the cavemen and who is reared under the most primi-
tive conditions. Yet these children from such different human eras show
their profound human similarity by the fact not only that are they given,
or themselves fashion, similar toys, but also—and this is even more
remarkable— that they use them in the same way. (1935, p. 32)
We have quoted this long excerpt from Arkin’s work to show

how a supposedly historical study led its author to antihistorical
conclusions. Comparing the toys of children from primitive soci-
eties and archaeological toys of the relatively recent historical past
to the toys of modern children, the author found no fundamental
differences. All the children had the same toys and used them in
the same ways. Thus, toys have had no history and have under-
gone no development. The toy remains what it was at the dawn of
human culture. In Arkin’s opinion, the reason for this seeming
stability in toys is the fact that “a human child, like his toys, mani-
fests the universality of human developmental traits” (1935, p. 49).

Arkin felt compelled to assert the unchanging nature of toys
over history in order to prove the proposition that, from the time
homo sapiens arose, children in all eras—from the most ancient
times to the present—are born with the same capacities. And of
course this is true, without a doubt. But one of the paradoxes of
child development is the fact that, although they all come into the
world with the same degree of helplessness and the same capaci-
ties, in societies at different levels of production and culture,
they follow completely different developmental paths, and, via
these different paths, reach social and psychological maturity at
different times.
Arkin’s position on the unchanging nature of toys in the course
of society’s historical development leads to the conclusion that
toys correspond to some unalterable innate characteristic of chil-
dren and have no relationship to the life of society or the child’s
life in this society. This position radically contradicts Plekhanov’s
correct statement that toys in their nature relate to adult work. It is
completely natural that toys too can be nothing other than a repro-
duction of objects from the life and activities of the society, in one
or another simplified and generalized form, adapted to the capaci-
ties of children of a given age.
Arkin abandons the historical point of view and adopts, to use
Plekhanov’s words, the perspective of the individual. But this per-
spective cannot explain why children play particular games and
not others and use certain toys and not others in their play. Cur-
rently, it is generally acknowledged that the content of children’s
play is intimately associated with the life, work, and activities of
the adults of their society. How could it be possible for the con-
tent of play to be determined by the life of society, while toys—
the mandatory component of all play—have no relationship to
the life of society but instead answer some unalterable innate
needs of the child?
Most important, the facts contradict the conclusions that Arkin
draws from his comparative historical study. The nursery of the
modern preschooler is filled with toys that could not have existed
in primitive society and would have been incomprehensible to the
children of such a society. Is it conceivable that there would be
cars, trains, airplanes, lunar landers, satellites, materials for artis-
tic constructions, pistols, building sets, and the like among the
toys of such primitive children? Arkin, despite the facts, looks for
unity where differences are far more obvious. The change in the
nature of children’s toys clearly reflects the true history of toys
and its cause and effect relationship to the historical development
of society and of the child within society.
It must be acknowledged that Arkin is writing not about all toys
but about toys that he calls primordial, a category in which he
includes:
a. noisemakers—rattles, bells, clappers, spinning noisemakers;
b. toys that move—tops, balls, kites, primitive versions of ball
and paddle toys;
c. weapons—bows, arrows, boomerangs, and the like;
d. representational toys—toys in the shape of animals, dolls; and
e. string or rope used for games similar to cat’s cradle.
First, we must note that even these so-called primordial toys
have a developmental history. It is obvious that the bow and ar-
row could have become a toy only after it appeared in society as
a weapon used on real hunts. Before the appearance of an actual
tool that needed to be rotated in order to be used, there could
have been no toys utilizing such motions (e.g., spinning noise-
makers, tops).
In order to analyze the initial developmental process of each of
the “primordial toys,” one would have to conduct a special histori-
cal study, which would certainly make it clear that they are not
“primordial” and that their appearance as toys was preceded by
human invention of the corresponding tool for work. The history
of the origin of individual toys could have been presented in such
a study as a reflection of the history of human tools for work and
as cult objects.
All the tools that Arkin classifies as “primordial” are in actual-
ity the products of historical development. However, once they

have originated in a particular historical era in the development of
human society, they do not necessarily disappear when the tools
of which they are copies go out of use. Bows and arrows have long
disappeared as tools for hunting and have been replaced by fire-
arms, but they remain in the arsenal of children’s toys. Toys live
longer than the tools they reflect, and this makes it seem as if they
are unchangeable. Such toys, indeed, seem to have been frozen in
their development and have retained their original forms. How-
ever, these toys are only devoid of history in the external, purely
phenomenological consideration of them as physical objects.
If we look at the functions of toys, then we can say with com-
plete confidence that the so-called primordial toys have radically
changed their function over the course of the history of human
society and have taken on a new relationship to the process of
child development.
The study of historical changes in toys is relatively difficult.
First, archaeological toys can tell the researcher nothing about their
use by the child; second, at the present time, some toys, even those
of very primitive cultures, have lost their direct relationship to
work tools and objects of daily use and have thus lost their origi-
nal function.
We will cite a few examples. At early stages of society, people
started fires by rubbing one piece of wood against another. Con-
tinuous rubbing could best be achieved by rotation, which they
created in the form of various drill-like devices. The peoples of
the Far North had to drill numerous holes for attaching reins. Drill-
ing also required continuous rotation. According to A.N. Reinson-
Pravdin (1949), small wooden drills with primitive joinings—made
from sticks with a cord that children can cause to rotate—are still
used as children’s toys among the peoples of the Far North. Learn-
ing how to induce continuous rotation was essential because when
children had mastered it they could also easily learn to use work
tools requiring analogous skills.
Such learning does not require small model drills, but can also
be attained with various versions of the drill. Such versions include
tops, which are nothing more than a drill, set in motion by the
fingers rather than a bow. Thus if you remove the drill’s bow, you
will have a simple top with a rather elongated upper piece.
Other versions of the drill include hummers (a kind of yo-yo),
which can be induced to rotate by reeling in and releasing a wound
cord. Thus, various tops and hummers were versions of drills that
children manipulate, thus acquiring the technical skills of induc-
ing rotational motion needed to operate a drill. The toys and the
child’s manipulations of them at this stage were a version of work
tools and adults’ use of them and were directly related to the child’s
future work activities.
Centuries passed and tools and methods of starting fires and
drilling holes changed significantly. Tops and hummers were no
longer directly related to adult work and to the child’s future work.
To the child they no longer were miniature drills and did not even
look like them. Tops and hummers turned from “representational
toys” to “moving toys,” or “noisemaking” toys to use Arkin’s
terminology. However, their manipulation continues to be encour-
aged by adults and they are still found among children. Manipula-
tions of such toys have been transformed from training on particular,
almost occupational skills, into the acquisition of certain general
functional motor or visual motor skills.
It is interesting to note that, in order to encourage and maintain
manipulation of these toys, special tricks have to be used, and hum-
ming and musical tops have to be invented, that is, they have to be
given additional features. It might be hypothesized that the mecha-
nism that induces and encourages children to play with these toys,
which are identical only externally to those of the past, has funda-
mentally altered. These toys are always introduced to children by
adults who demonstrate how to work them. However, while previ-
ously, at the stage when these toys were smaller models of adult
tools, their manipulation was encouraged by the relationship “toy–
tool,” today, when this relationship no longer exists, their manipula-
tion is encouraged by the orienting reaction to novelty. Systematic
practice has been replaced by episodic use.
The developmental process involved in playing with a string is
analogous. At the stage of social development where tying knots

and weaving were essential elements in the work of adults, these
string games, which were played by both children and adults, were
encouraged by the needs of the society because they were directly
related, for example, to the weaving of nets. At the present time,
they have become a purely functional exercise that develops fine
motor movements of the fingers and is an amusement. They are
now encountered very rarely and are not directly associated with
adult work activities.
The process of change and development can be seen particu-
larly clearly in such “primordial” toys as the bow and arrow. To
hunting tribes and peoples at relatively primitive levels of devel-
opment bows and arrows are one of the major tools of the hunt. A
bow and arrows were given to children at very young ages. Be-
coming gradually more complex, they became actual weapons in
the child’s hands, adapted so he could use them himself to kill
small animals (squirrels, chipmunks) and birds, according to
Reinson-Pravdin (1948). The child, shooting small animals and
birds with his bow, was aware of himself as a future hunter, just
like his father; and the adults also perceived him as such. The child
mastered the bow and arrow and the adults were extremely inter-
ested in having him perfect this knowledge.
But then firearms came on the scene. The bow remained in the
hands of children, but now its use was not directly related to
hunting methods, and practice with it was used to develop quali-
ties such as aim, which a hunter needs and is applicable to fire-
arms as well. During the development of human society, hunting
yields its leading place to other types of work. Children use a bow
more and more rarely as a toy. Of course, in our modern society,
we may encounter bows and arrows and some children even be-
come quite involved in using them. However, the practice today’s
child gets with a bow does not occupy the same place in his life
that it did in the life of a child in a primitive hunting society.
Thus, the so-called primordial toys remain unchanged only
apparently. In actuality, they, like every other toy, originate and
change historically; their history is integrally tied to the history of

changes in the child’s place in society and cannot be understood
outside this history. Arkin’s error is that he isolated the history of
toys from the history of their owners, from the history of their
functions in the child’s development, and from the history of the
child’s place in society. Having made this error, Arkin came to
antihistorical conclusions that are not confirmed by the facts of
the history of toys.
Historical origin of the developed form of play
The question of the origin of role playing in the course of society’s

historical development presents one of the most difficult research
problems. To perform such an investigation one would need, on
the one hand, data on the child’s place in society at various stages
of social development, and, on the other hand, data on the nature
and content of children’s play at all of these historical stages. The
nature of children’s play can be understood only by relating play
to the child’s life in society.
Data on the development and life of the child and his play at
early stages of society’s development are extremely rare. No ethno-
grapher has ever attempted such a study. Only in the 1930s did
Margaret Mead begin to conduct special studies devoted to chil-
dren in the tribes of New Guinea, which contain material on
children’s way of life and their play. However, the works of this
researcher were focused on other special issues (children’s ani-
mism, sexual maturation in relatively primitive societies, etc.),
which, naturally, determined her selection of material.
The data scattered through innumerable ethnographic, anthro-
pologic, and geographic descriptions are extremely schematic
and fragmentary. Some contain hints about children’s way of life
without any mention of their play; others, on the contrary, speak
only of play. In some investigations, the colonialist viewpoint is
so pronounced and so associated with attempts to denigrate the
level of mental development of children of subjugated peoples,
that these data cannot be considered reliable. Comparison of the

existing data on children to the general life in their society is also
very difficult because it is hard to determine the stage of social
development of a particular tribe, family, or community during
the period it was being described. These difficulties are further
compounded by the fact that peoples at approximately the same
level of social development may live under completely different
physical conditions and these conditions in turn certainly influ-
ence the lives of children in society and their place among adults,
and thus the nature of their play.
With regard to the early developmental period of human society,
M.O. Kosven writes, “We cannot even speak of a true approach to
the initial point of development of humanity, the so-called zero point
of human culture. We can only offer more or less acceptable
hypotheses, more or less successful approximations of the mystery
of our past, which is hidden from us for all time” (1927, p. 5). This
is even more true of studies of the child and his life under the
conditions of a primitive society.
Our task is to answer at least two questions, even if they are
hypothetical. First, did role play always exist or was there a period
in the life of society when this form of children’s play did not
exist? Second, what changes in the life of society and the position
of the child within society may be associated with the initial ap-
pearance of role play?
We cannot directly trace the process by which role play origi-
nated. The very scant data that exist only allow us to outline in
very general terms a hypothesis on the first appearance of role
play and to establish, and here only approximately, under what
historical conditions the need for this unique aspect of children’s
lives appeared in society. In our research we have far from ex-
hausted all the existing material and we cite only what is sufficient
to allow us to formulate our hypothesis, neglecting the others in
all their diversity.
The issue of the historical origin of play is intimately linked to
how the younger generations were reared in societies at the most
primitive stage of production and culture. On the basis of exten-

sive materials, R. Alt (1956) suggests that initially work and child-
rearing were inseparable, that is, that child-rearing did not exist as
a special social function. In his opinion, during the early stages of
social development child-rearing had the following features. First,
all children received the same rearing and all members of the soci-
ety participated in the rearing of each child. Second, child-rearing
was comprehensive in that every child had to know how to do
everything that adults do and to participate in all aspects of the life
of the society to which he belonged. Third, the period devoted to
child-rearing was short. In early childhood, children had already
learned all the tasks that their life would present to them. They
became independent from adults early and their development ended
earlier than is the case at later stages of social development.
The main factor that has a formative effect on child develop-
ment, according to Alt, is the children’s direct participation in the
lives of adults: the earlier inclusion of children in productive la-
bor, associated with the low developmental level of productive
energy; and the participation of children along with adults in dances,
holidays, certain rituals, rites, and leisure activities.
Regarding play as a means of child-rearing, Alt notes that where
the child can participate in the work of adults without special pre-
liminary training and teaching, he does so. Where he cannot, the
child grows into the world of adults through play activities, which
reflect the life of society. (Here we already find a hint of the initial
appearance of play in history and its association with a change in
the child’s position in society.)
Thus, the position of the child in society at the most primitive
stages of development is marked mainly by early inclusion of
children in the productive work of adult members of the society.
The more primitive the society, the earlier children are included
in the productive work of adults and the sooner they become
independent producers. At the earliest historical periods in the
life of society, children lived a common life with adults. The
child-rearing function was not isolated as a separate social func-
tion and all members of a society engaged in child-rearing, the

main objective of which was to make children participants in so-
cially productive work and to give them experience with this work;
the major method was gradual inclusion of children in whatever
types of adult work they were capable of doing.
Primitive nomadic gatherers, according to W. Volz (1925), in a
community of men, women, and children wandered from place to
place searching for edible fruits and roots. By the age of ten, the
girls became mothers and the boys, fathers, and they began to live
independent lives.
Describing one of the most primitive groups of people on Earth,
M. Kosven states that the major unit of the Kubu people is the nuclear
family; the major occupation is gathering fruits and roots; the major
tool is a stick, a peeled bamboo stalk with a naturally sharpened end
for digging up roots and tubers; the sole weapon is a wooden spear
with an end consisting of a sharp bamboo chip; the utensils are co-
conut shells and hollow bamboo stalks. Kosven writes:
Children remain with their parents and accompany them on the search
for food until they are age ten to twelve. Starting at this age, both boys
and girls are considered independent and capable of being responsible
for their own lives and futures. At this point, they start wearing strips
of cloth covering their genitals. During the tribe’s stationary period,
they provide themselves with a separate hut adjacent to that of their
parents. However, they already search for food independently and eat
separately. The bond between parents and children gradually weakens
and frequently the children soon separate themselves and start to live
independently in the forest. (1927, p. 38)
The earliest ethnographic and geographic descriptions by Rus-
sian travelers indicate that small children are taught to perform
work duties and are included in the productive work of adults.
Thus, G. Novitskii, in his description of the Ostiak people in 1715,
wrote, “Everyone participates in fashioning tools, shooting ani-
mals, and catching birds and fish to feed themselves. These skills
are taught to children at very early ages so they can shoot a bow
and kill animals, and catch birds and fish” (1941, p. 43). S.P.
Krasheninnikov, describing his travels in Kamchatka (1737–41)
writes about the natives: “The most praiseworthy thing about this
people is that although they love their children a great deal, they
get them accustomed to work from early childhood, treating them
no better than servants, sending them for wood and water, order-
ing them to carry loads, herd the deer, and so on” (1949, p. 457).
V.F. Zuev, who visited the Obsk peoples in 1771–72, wrote that
Ostiak and Samoed children,
from the earliest years, while they are still very small, children have
already learned to bear all sorts of hardship, as is evident from their
rough way of life, which never causes them to voice the least com-
plaint. Indeed, it could be said that this people is born to endure un-
bearable hardship and indeed if they had not gotten accustomed to this
from infancy, the parents would have had little hope of seeing their
children grow to be great helps to them in the bearing of their remark-
able hardships. As soon as a little boy begins to understand anything at
all, his mother or nurse provides his sole amusement by jingling a
bowstring and as soon as he starts to walk, his father makes him a bow.
In my travels through the Ostiak yurts, I rarely saw a child in the evening
playing without a bow, they were shooting at something either in the
trees or on the ground. Sometimes they would build paths or fences
around their yurts; and it seemed as if all their toys were forecasting
their future lives. And if an expedition was made across a river, then
the youngest children, rather than old people, stayed home to watch
the stock, while the older children swam in the water with the nets,
which the young children were either not strong enough or skilled
enough to do. (1947, pp. 32–33)
The well-known Russian expert on the Papuans, N.N. Miklukho-
Maklai, who lived with them for many years, writes about Papuan
children:
The children are generally cheerful, they rarely cry or scream. The
father and sometimes also the mother treat them very well, although
the mother tends to be less affectionate than the father. In general,
Papuans love their children a great deal. They even have toys, which is
not common among savages; in particular, they have a kind of top,
small boats that the children sail in the water, and many other toys. But
very early, little boys accompany their fathers to the garden plots, and
in their wanderings in the forest and on fishing trips. While still very
young, children learn their future practical tasks and when still boys
they become serious and circumspect in their behavior.
I frequently witnessed comic scenes in which a small child about
four years old, with extreme seriousness tended the fire, carried wood,
washed the dishes, or helped his father clean fruit, and then suddenly
jumped up and ran to his mother who was squatting at some sort of
work, and seizing her breast, despite her resistance, began to nurse.
Here the custom of nursing children for a very long period is wide-
spread. (1951, p. 78),
Miklukho-Maklai’s descriptions also contain indications that
children participate not only in household chores but also in more
complex forms of adult group endeavors. Thus, describing the
working of the soil, he writes:
The work is accomplished as follows: two, three, or more men stand
in a row and stab their long sharpened staffs deep into the ground and
then with a single motion raise a large clump of earth. If the soil is
hard, then they stab their staffs in twice, and then raise a clump of
earth. After the men come the women, who on their knees, holding
their spades in both hands, break up the dirt the men have raised. After
them come the children of various ages, who rub the earth between
their hands. In this way the men, women, and children prepare the soil
on their entire garden plot. (1951, p. 231)
It is clear from this description, that in Papuan society there was a
natural age- and gender-based division of labor, in which all mem-
bers of society, including children, except for the very youngest,
participated.
Remarking on the native’s very widespread fondness for teach-
ing other people, which was obvious even in the children,
Miklukho-Maklai explains its origin as follows.
This can be seen even in children; many times small children of six or
seven showed me how they did something or other. This habit comes
from the fact that the parents begin to teach their children practical life
skills very early, so that, while they are still very small, they have
already observed and even learned more or less all the skills and op-
erations of the adults, even those that are not at all appropriate to their
age. The children scarcely play; little boys play by throwing sticks as
if they were spears or shooting with bow and arrow, and as soon as
they achieve some small success, they apply it in practical life. I saw
very small boys spending hours on end at the sea attempting to shoot
fish with a bow. Something similar happens with girls, and in fact to a
greater extent because they begin to do household chores even earlier
and become their mothers’ helpers. (1951, p. 136)
We have considered Miklukho-Maklai’s data in such detail be-
cause the evidence of this prominent Russian humanist is espe-
cially valuable to us in view of its undoubted and complete
objectivity.
Analogous indications of the early participation of children in
adult work can be found in the studies of a number of other authors.
Thus, in his work on the history of the Aztecs, G. Vaillant writes:
Education started almost immediately after weaning, that is, at age
three. The goal of education was to make the child able as soon as
possible to deal with the skills and duties that comprised the routine of
adults. Because everything was done by manual labor, the children
could participate in adult work very early. The fathers oversaw the
teaching of their sons, and the mothers taught their daughters. Up un-
til age six, education consisted only of lectures and advice, children
learned to care for household utensils, and performed small tasks around
the house. . . . This education directly introduced the rising generation
to the daily life of the household. (1949, p. 87)
A.T. Bryant, who lived among the Zulus for nearly a half cen-
tury, also mentions the early involvement of children in produc-
tive work alongside adults. “Anyone who has ceased to be a small
child, that is, has reached age six, whether boy or girl, is sup-
posed to work and do whatever is asked of him without objecting;
boys under the direction of their fathers and girls under that of
their mothers” (1953, p. 123) Bryant mentions a whole series of
tasks that are the responsibilities of children. “Six- to seven-year-
old boys drive the goats and calves to pasture in the morning, and
somewhat older boys drive the cows” (p. 157). When spring comes
“the women and children wander the fields in search of edible
wild plants” (p. 184). During the period when the corn is maturing
and the crops are in danger of being eaten by birds, “the woman
and children are compelled to spend the whole day—from sunrise
to sunset—in the field, driving away birds” (p. 191).
Many who have studied the peoples of the Far North have men-
tioned the early involvement of children in the work of adults and
their special training for this work. Thus, A.G. Bazanov and N.G.
Kazanskii write:
From very early years, Mansi children participate in fishing work. When
they can scarcely walk their parents are already taking them out in the
boat. And as soon as they begin to grow up, little paddles are often
fashioned for them, they learn to steer the boat, and become accus-
tomed to life on the river. (1939, p. 173)
In another work, Bazanov writes:
A soon as the Vogul child reaches the age of five or six, he is already
guarding his yurt with bow and arrow, hunting for birds, and develop-
ing marksmanship. He wants to be a hunter. Starting at seven or eight,
Vogul boys are gradually taken into the forest. In the forest, they learn
how to find squirrels and wood grouse, how to handle the dogs, where
and how to set various types of traps. When a native cuts the poles for
one sort of trap, his son lays down the device that activates the trap,
breaks up the soil, sets up the bait, and lays down sand, reeds, and
berries. (1934, p. 93)
The children, even the very smallest, are passionate hunters, and
by the time they start school, they have already hunted down doz-
ens of squirrels and chipmunks.
Bazanov, describing fishing, did a fine job of noting the basic
principle of child-rearing under these conditions.
There were four of us adults, and the same number of little boys. We
went out on a sand cape that stuck out like a tongue, and standing in two
rows began to haul the net up onto the boat. The little boys stood in the
middle between us. They also hauled at the edge of the net with their
little sunburned arms and helped to bring it into the boat. . . . My Zyrian
guide yelled to one of the boys, “Don’t get in the way.” The old Vogul
looked at him angrily and shook his head. And then he remarked,
“That’s not the right way to do it at all. Let the boys do everything we
do.” (1934, p. 94)
G. Startsev remarks that, “By the age of six or seven, children

have learned to herd the deer and catch them with lassos” (1930,
p. 96). Describing the lives of Koriak children, S.N. Stebnitskii
writes:
Children’s independence is particularly clear in the life of the house-
hold. There are a whole series of household areas and tasks, that chil-
dren are completely responsible for. . . . Children are also responsible
for wood. No matter how cold the temperature and bad the weather, a
boy must harness the dogs at home and sometimes go ten kilometers
for wood. . . . The girls are introduced to all their work through play.
First they are given, scraps, a dull serrated knife, and a broken needle,
and start without knowing what to do at all, then they gradually develop
the skills and imperceptibly are drawn into the age-old servitude of
women’s work. (1930, pp. 44–45)
We will not further multiply examples since the material cited
is sufficient to show that in societies at relatively primitive levels
of development, with primitive-communal organization of work,
children are included in adults’ productive work very early and
participate to the extent of their abilities. This occurs in the same
way in the patriarchal peasant family, in which, in the words of K.
Marx:
The difference in gender and age as well as natural work conditions
that change with the season regulate the distribution of work among
family members and the work schedule of each individual member.
But expenditure of individual work resources, measured in time, from
the very beginning acts here as a social definition of the work itself,
insofar as individual working resources from the very beginning func-
tion only as an agency of the families joint work resources.1
The fact that mothers are so busy and the early inclusion of
children in adult work leads to a situation where, first, in primitive
societies, there is no sharp distinction between adults and children,
and, second, children begin to be truly independent very early.
This has been stressed by virtually everyone studying this issue.
Thus, S.N. Stebnitskii writes, “It must be said that in the Koriak
tribe there is no sharp distinction between children and adults.
Children have equal rights and are equally respected members of
society. In general discussions, their words are listened to with as

much attention as to words of adults” [source omitted on original].
The prominent Russian ethnographer, L.Ia. Shternberg, also
mentions the equality of children and adults among the peoples of
North East Asia.
A civilized person would find it hard even to imagine the feeling of
equality and respect for young people that holds sway here. Adoles-
cents of age ten to twelve feel themselves to be completely equal mem-
bers of society. The oldest and most respected elders listen to what
they say with the most serious attention and answer them just as seri-
ously and politely as they do their peers. No one is aware of differ-
ences in age or position. (1933, p. 52)
Other writers have also noted that early independence is a char-
acteristic trait of children living in primitive societies. These traits,
characteristic of children’s lives in a primitive society, their early
independence and the lack of a sharp boundary between adults
and children are the natural consequence of the conditions under
which these children live and their actual place in society.
Did role play exist in children at this stage of societal develop-
ment, when work tools were still relatively primitive, division of
labor was based on natural age and gender differences, and children
were full-fledged members of society, participating in common la-
bor in accordance with their capacities? There are no accurate data
on children’s play at this level of societal development. Ethnogra-
phers and travelers who describe the lives of people living close to
this level of development suggest that children do not play much,
and, if they do, then they play the same games as adults and do not
engage in role playing.
Thus, D. Livingstone, describing the daily lives of an African
tribe—the Bakalakhars, notes, “I never saw children playing”
(1947, p. 35). Miklukho-Maklai also says that the Papuan children
“scarcely play” (1951, p. 136). Bryant (1953), who lived among
the Zulus for fifty years, describes the role of play among Zulu
children, but not a single role-playing game is mentioned. Mead
(1931), describing the life of children in a society of primitive
fishermen in Melanesia, on one of the islands of the Admiralty
Archipelago, tells how children of the Manus people are permit-

ted to play for days on end, but their play is like that of puppies
and kittens. In her opinion, these children do not find models in
the lives of adults that they admire and make them want to imitate
them. She emphasizes that in the social organization of the adults,
children find no interesting models for their play. Only by chance
and very rarely, once a month, did she ever observe imitative play,
in which children played out scenes from adult life, for example,
payment of a dowry for a bride at a wedding or distribution of
tobacco during funeral rites. Mead observed such games a total of
three or four times. She points out the lack of imagination in these
games. Although, in the author’s opinion, these children had every
opportunity for role play (much free time, opportunity to observe
the life of adults, rich vegetation providing a great deal of material
for play, etc.), they never played out scenes from adult life, never
imitated in their games the successful return of hunters, nor their
ceremonies, nor their dances.
Thus, as this material shows, children living in a society at a
relatively low developmental level do not engage in role playing
games. This should not lead to the conclusion that these children
show a low level of mental development or lack imagination, as
some researchers have asserted. The lack of role play is a function
of the special position of children in society and does not indicate
low levels of mental development.
Children living in primitive societies are as far behind their
peers—children in modern societies—in the development of role
play as they are ahead of them in independence and participation
in adult work and the associated mental capacities. Kosven writes:
The general conditions of primitive child rearing and the independence
of children must explain the remarkable capacity for rapid development
and the special gifts that children of backward tribes and peoples show
in colonial schools. The leap out of the primitive life into civilization
has proved very easy for them. (1953, p. 140)
Primitive tools and work tasks that a child can master give him
the opportunity to develop early independence and to participate
directly in the work of adult members of the society in accordance

with the needs of this society. Of course, the children are not
exploited, rather their work is perceived as the satisfaction of a
natural, social need. There is no doubt that children bring their
specifically childlike qualities to performance of their work. Per-
haps they even enjoy the very process of work and they certainly
derive satisfaction and pleasure from performing work along with
adults and like adults.
This is even more likely since, as noted by the majority of re-
searchers, child-rearing in primitive society, which is strict in con-
tent, is relatively gentle in form. Children are not punished and
everything is done to encourage them to be outgoing, cheerful,
and pleased with life. However, the fact that they are involved in
the process of work, their happy mood, nor their feelings of satis-
faction and pleasure do not transform these, albeit very simple
and primitive, forms of child labor into play.
In a primitive society, with its relatively primitive means and
forms of work, even small children, starting at the age of three or
four could participate in simple forms of everyday work, in gath-
ering edible plants, leaves, grubs, snails, and so forth, and in primi-
tive fishing with simple baskets or even with their hands, in hunting
for small animals and birds, and in primitive forms of agriculture.
Their society’s requirement that they be independent was realized
naturally through their joint work with adults. The direct associa-
tion between children and the entire society, realized in the pro-
cess of common labor, excluded all other forms of association
between the child and society. At this stage of societal develop-
ment, and given the position of the child in society, a child had no
need to imitate work and the relations among adults in special
activities, that is, there was no need for role play.
The transition to higher forms of production—agriculture and
animal husbandry, the increased complexity of methods of fish-
ing and hunting, their shift from passive to increasingly active
forms—was accompanied by the displacement of gathering and
primitive forms of hunting and fishing. Along with the change in
the nature of production, a new division of labor appeared in

society. Kosven writes:
The development of production, as expressed in the shift to plow-based
agriculture, and the development of animal husbandry led to the ex-
tremely important social and economic result that Engels called the
first major societal division of labor, namely, the division between those
working in agriculture and those working with animals, with all the
consequences entailed, in particular, the development of cottage in-
dustry and regular barter. These very profound changes led to the
social and economic result expressed in the new division of labor by
gender and the change in the roles of men and women in social pro-
duction. Division of labor according to gender grew up and existed,
as Engels said, with a “purely natural origin” as early as the time of
matriarchal societies. Now it became incomparably more profound
and had a more profound social and economic significance. Animal
husbandry became the purview of men. The changes that occurred
in the overall economy led to the identification of a special area of
production—maintenance of the household, “which became prima-
rily the realm of women.” (1951, pp. 84–85)
Thus, concurrently with changes in the nature of production,
there also occurred a new division of labor in society. The increased
complexity of the tools and methods of labor and its redistribution
were accompanied by a natural change in children’s participation
in various types of work. Children stopped taking direct part in
complex forms of work that were beyond their capacity. Young
children were left with only a few areas of domestic everyday work
and the simplest forms of production. At this stage of develop-
ment, although the children remained full-fledged members of
society and participants in adult labor in some areas, new features
began to be noted in their position. Some of the material we have
already cited (studies of people of the Far North) belong to just
this period of development.
With regard to the more important areas of work that could not
be performed by children, the children were required to learn to
master the complex skills in these tasks as soon as possible. Min-
iature tools specially adapted to children’s capacities, with which
the children practiced under conditions approximating the condi-

tions of actual work by adults but not identical to them began to
appear. The nature of these tools depended on the form of work
that was the most important in the given society.
We will cite certain relevant materials here. For peoples of the
Far North, the knife is an essential tool for deer herders, hunters,
and fishermen. Use of the knife is taught to children starting in
early childhood. N.G. Bogoraz-Tan writes:
Among the Chukchi people, childhood is very happy. Children are not
restricted and not frightened. As soon as a small boy begins to be able
to hold things firmly, he is given a knife and from this time on it is
never out of his possession. I saw one boy trying to cut wood with his
knife, which was only slightly smaller than he was. (1934, p. 101)
A.N. Reinson-Pravdin writes:
Like the adult hunter, each little boy has a belt to which a knife is
attached with a chain or strap—not a toy knife, but a real one, some-
times of very persuasive size. Accidental injuries only accelerate the
learning of how to handle the tool most essential to life. The boy needs
the knife to eat with—to cut off a piece of meat—to make himself a
toy, to make an arrow, to skin an animal he has killed, and so forth.
Another tool a boy must have is the ax. . . . A little knife, the first step
on the boy’s road to adulthood, is usually a gift from his mother. Later
he receives a larger knife with a skillfully carved handle from his fa-
ther. It is easy to understand that given these conditions, one is hard
put to find a toy knife or ax among the toys of these children. Toys
made out of board, such as one frequently sees among the toys of
other cultures, are found only where children are not introduced early
to the real tools. (1948, p. 196)
The case is similar with skis. Tiny, “doll-sized” skies are very rarely
found as toys. There is no need for them when the child is given skis
literally from the time he starts learning to walk. . . . Adults consider
skis to be the best toy for children. Children set up ski races and play
many hunting games on skis. Mothers decorate the skis of little ones
with designs and put a colored cloth under the straps, sometimes they
even paint the skis red. This emphasizes the toy-like function of the
skis. When he gets older, a boy learns to make skis himself, and as he
prepares to do this, he wraps the underside of his skis with the hide
from the forehead or legs of a deer, as adults do for hunts over long
distances. At this moment, skis cease to be toys. (1948, p. 198)
It is very hard to understand why Reinson-Pravdin classifies
children’s knife and skis as toys. The fact that the knife and skis
are adapted to the children’s capacities—that is, that they have
been made smaller—and are decorated does not justify calling them
toys. The fact that the children use the knife to make themselves
toys and play racing games on skis also does not demonstrate that
they are toys. They are not toys, but objects of use, which the child
must, and does, master as quickly as possible, using them virtu-
ally the way adults do.
To the tools common to all peoples of the Far North that chil-
dren must master, we should add bow and arrow for the hunting
peoples, fishing rods for fishermen, and the lasso for deer herders.
S.N. Stebnitskii writes:
Homemade bows, arrows and crossbows of the ancient Russian type,
never are out of children’s hands all year long. If one breaks, the chil-
dren set to work to make a replacement. . . . They achieve very high
levels of workmanship here. We should also include the slingshot, a
strip of leather used to propel stones. You can be sure that you will not
meet a single Koriak boy age five to fifteen who does not have such a
slingshot around his neck, and he is sure to make use of it at every
opportune, or even inopportune, occasion. Crows, magpies, partridges,
mice, rabbits, ground squirrels, and minks provide inexhaustible ma-
terial for the hunt and it should be said that little boys are very danger-
ous enemies to beasts of this type. I have watched a small boy using
his Koriak bow to down a crow in its flight or his slingshot to hit a sea
duck or loon riding the waves twenty or thirty meters from shore. (1930,
p. 45)
“When a Vogul boy reaches five or six,” writes A.G. Bazanov, “he
can already be found near his yurt hunting for birds with his bow
and arrows and developing marksmanship” (1934, p. 93).
“Generally a child’s first bow is made from one layer of wood.
But as the child grows, the bow is refashioned several times to
accord with his skills,” writes Reinson-Pravdin. “Gradually it gets
more complicated and becomes a real weapon in the child’s hands,
suited for independent hunting and enabling him to bring down

small animals and birds” (1949, p. 113).
Stebnitskii writes:
To the three listed types of primordial tool, a fourth must be added for
children of nomadic tribes—the lasso, which, like the slingshot, ac-
companies its owner everywhere. Children of these tribes cannot pass
a peg rising above the ground or a bush with its very top poking out
above the snow without testing their aim. This is how they develop the
astonishing marksmanship displayed by Koriak shepherds, who
errorlessly rope the precise deer needed for a journey or for meat from
among the constantly moving herd. (1931, p. 46)
Reinson-Pravdin writes:
The skill of quickly and skillfully lassoing does not come at once, it
must be mastered gradually. You must practice working with a lasso
from earliest childhood. Thus, among the toy tools that introduce chil-
dren to deer herding, the lasso is the most important. The size of
children’s lassos can vary a great deal: from 0.5 meter, to 1 meter, 2
meters, or more. Lassos, like bows, grow along with the child as he
acquires skill and dexterity. Lassos for the younger children are made
from bast, while older children are given leather ones like adults. Las-
soing games are no less interesting and realistic to the children than
are games with bows and arrows. Little ones first lasso long narrow
stumps and then progress to moving targets, attempting to lasso a dog
or to catch young deer calves. (1948, p. 209)
Among peoples whose main occupation is fishing, children are
given fishing rods just as early and use them to catch small fish,
gradually moving on to catching food fish along with the adults
with other, more complex fishing gear.
Thus, knives and axes, skis, bows and arrows, lassos, and fish-
ing poles—all on a smaller scale, adapted to children’s hands—
are given to children for their use very early, and children, under
the supervision of adults, master the use of these tools.
From the standpoint of the question in which we are interested,
the analysis of the function of dolls given to little girls of virtually
all peoples at this stage of development is of particular significance.
N.G. Bogoraz-Tan, describing the dolls of Chukot girls, remarks:

Chukot dolls represent people, men and women, but most of all chil-
dren, especially infants. Their size is almost as variable as that of dolls
in civilized cultures. They are sewn to be rather realistic and are stuffed
with sawdust, which a mishap may cause to leak. These dolls are con-
sidered not only toys but also, in particular, the guardians of a woman’s
fertility. When she gets married, a woman brings her dolls with her
and hides them in a sack in the corner under the head of the bed so
their influence will cause her to bear children as soon as possible. No
one would ever give away a doll to someone else because that would
be giving away one’s guarantee of fertility. However, when a woman
has daughters, she gives them her dolls to play with, trying to divide
them up among her daughters. If she has only one doll, she gives it
to her oldest girl and new ones are made for the others. Thus, there
are dolls that have been passed down from mother to daughter for
several generations—each time in repaired and renewed condition.
(1934, p. 49)
Here, Bogoraz-Tan identifies one special function of dolls—to
protect family: dolls are supposed to ensure that a girl will be fertile
and will bear children successfully in the future. Thus doll-making
becomes a special type of craft. P.M. Oberthaller describes doll-
making work as follows:
The process of doll-making is unique. Usually every woman in a fam-
ily, and, starting from a certain age, each girl as well, has a fur, nicely
decorated bag or a birch-bark box where she keeps rags, scraps of
leather, beads, and the like. All this material is for the sewing of dolls.
Doll-making is considered a pleasurable activity and is mainly done
during the summer, typically in the afternoon or evening when girls
have completed their housework. If the family is large, the mother is
joined by her daughters and they all work on the dolls. Sometimes the
girls of one family are joined by others and then doll-making becomes
a group effort. (1935, p. 46)
According to Oberthaller’s data, dolls are made primarily by girls
of varying ages, from preschoolers to adolescents.
With regard to the significance of dolls as toys for girls, Reinson-
Pravdin identifies an additional function to that of being the guard-
ians of childbirth, one that is work related. By sewing dolls clothes,

the little girl masters the skill of sewing clothing, which is ex-
tremely important among the women of the Far Northern peoples.
Stebnitskii mentions that Koriak girls begin learning how to sew
very early. Reinson-Pravdin writes:
Do not forget that girls of the Obsk people have a very short child-
hood, ending at age twelve or thirteen when they are married off, and
that during this short period of childhood, they must acquire a whole
set of skills: preparing deerskin beds, shoe leather, suede, animal and
bird skin, fish skins, sewing clothing and shoes, weaving grass fabric,
making birch-bark utensils, and in many regions also weaving cloth.
(1948, p. 281)
It is not surprising that training in all these skills starts very
early and is conducted in two ways. On the one hand, as a number
of authors note, little girls start helping their mothers work very
early; they help them prepare food, care for infants, and partici-
pate in purely female tasks, such as preparation of berries, nuts,
and roots; on the other hand, by making dolls and doll accessories
(which a potential husband will use to judge how well this poten-
tial wife and mother has mastered all the female skills and how
ready she is for married life), which serves as a school for learning
to sew. Children’s dolls of Far Northern peoples are displayed in
museums and they clearly demonstrate the mastery that little girls
gain in producing their doll’s wardrobes and thus how well they
will produce real clothing and shoes, that is, their mastery of knife
and needle. Thus, the doll is an object of constant care on the part
of little girls, as the guardian of her future childbirth, serves to
teach girls from their earliest childhood how to run a household
and to sew.
Thus, the development of means of production and the increased
complexity of work tools have led to a situation where, before
participating jointly with adults in the most important and respon-
sible work tasks, children have to gain mastery of the tools associ-
ated with these tasks, that is, to learn how to use them. It is
completely natural that the age at which girls are included in the
social and productive tasks of adults has gradually increased. When

children are included in an adult productive work task depends
first and foremost on the difficulty of the task. Bogoraz-Tan writes:
Among coastal Chukchi tribes, little boys begin to perform various
tasks significantly later than they do among the deer herders. When
they are taken on sea hunts, they are more likely to hinder than to help.
A youngster does not participate in a serious hunt until he is sixteen or
seventeen. Before that, he may shoot at a seal with a rifle, but only
from the shore, or help lay out seal nets on the ice fields of the coastal
sea ice. (1934, p. 103)
The deer herders and other tribes whose economy is based on
herding include children in the adult role of adult herder some-
what sooner. G. Startsev states that
Starting as early as age six or seven, boys learn to manage deer and
catch them with lassos. Starting at age ten, boys may manage whole
herds of deer and catch partridges and other game in traps. Starting at
age thirteen to fifteen, they become real workers. (1930, p. 98)
Knives and axes, bows and arrows, fishing rods, needles, scrap-
ers, and similar tools must be mastered before a child can partici-
pate in adult work. Children, of course, cannot discover the ways
to use these tools by themselves; adults teach them, showing them
how to use the tools, indicating what sort of practice is necessary,
and monitoring and assessing the children’s progress in mastery
of these highly essential tools.
Here there is no school with a system, organization, and curricu-
lum. The adults set the child the task of mastering these essential
tools. The children try to learn to shoot with a bow, toss a lasso, use
the knife and ax, needle and scraper, and so forth, just as their fa-
thers, mothers, and older brothers and sisters do. Of course, such
teaching is not like systematic instruction in “all the subjects,” but
instead is targeted instruction, engendered by the needs of society.
Children may introduce some aspects of play into the process of
mastering the use of these tools for adult work—they may, for
example, become carried away by the process, by their joy at their
own success and achievements, and so forth, but this in no sense

transforms this activity, which is directed at mastery of working
with tools, into play, nor the scaled-down tools into toys, as
Reinson-Pravdin seems to think.
Unlike the mastery of the tools for a task that occurs when a
child directly participates in the productive work of adults, here
this process is made into a special task that is performed under
conditions that differ from those of real work. The little Nenets,
a future deer herder, does not begin learning to use the lasso on
the herd of deer for whose care he is responsible. The little Evenk,
a future hunter, does not first practice shooting his bow and ar-
rows in the forest through participation in an actual hunt with the
adults. These children first learn to throw the lasso and shoot the
bow with an inanimate object as target, and then gradually learn
to aim at moving targets, and, only then, begin to hunt birds or
animals or lasso dogs or fawns. The tools gradually change from
scaled-down models adapted to children’s abilities to those used
by adults and practice conditions begin to approach those of ac-
tual work. Once they have mastered the use of tools and have
developed the adult capacities required for participation in adult
work, the children are gradually included in the productive work
of the adults.
It might be hypothesized that this practice with scaled-down
tools contains some elements of a play situation. First, the prac-
tice situation is, to some extent, arbitrary. The stump that sticks
out above the tundra is not really a deer; the target at which the
boy shoots is not a real bird or animal. These arbitrary elements
are gradually replaced by the actual targets of hunting or lassoing.
Second, when a child manipulates scaled-down tools, he performs
actions similar to those performed by adults and there is thus a
basis to suppose that, in his mind, he likens and even identifies
with adult hunters or herders, with his father or older brother. Thus,
such practice may implicitly contain elements of role play.
Here it might be noted that, in general, any action involving
an object that the child masters on the basis of adult models has
a dual nature. On the one hand, such tasks have an operational-

technical aspect, with orientation to the objects, properties, and
conditions under which actions should be performed. On the other
hand, children are learning a socially developed way of perform-
ing the action as embodied in the adult, and this leads to the child’s
identifying with the adult.
The demands that society makes on children with regard to
mastering the use of essential work tools and the closely associ-
ated capacities needed by future hunters, herders, fishermen, or
farmers lead to a whole system of practice. This lays the founda-
tion for all sorts of competitions. There is no fundamental differ-
ence in the content of such competitions, whether they occur among
adults or among children. A number of authors have pointed out
that the play of adults and of children are identical in nature, here
meaning by play contests or athletic games with rules. For ex-
ample, N.N. Kharuzin says, “Children play the same games as
adults” (1890, p. 33). Startsev, describing the daily live of the
Nenets, cites examples of such common and identical games.
A favorite game is racing. Adult men and woman stand in a row and
must run a distance, most often more than half a kilometer to an agreed
upon goal. The one who gets there first is considered the winner and
he is spoken of as a good runner. Children in particular like to talk
about him and they themselves, in imitation of the adults, have similar
races. . . . Shooting competitions are another game and both men and
women participate. A good marksman is admired. The children imi-
tate the adults but practice using a bow and arrows. (see 1930, p. 141,
and elsewhere)
Startsev also mentions the popular game of “deer” in which both
adults and children participate. One of the players must catch the
others using a lasso.
E.S. Rubtsova also notes the popularity of such practice games.
The harsh natural conditions in Chukotka, as well as the difficult win-
ter hunt on ice with extremely primitive weapons required the Eski-
mos to be extremely hardy. The older generation strongly insisted that
young people train to develop their strength, running speed, endur-
ance, and agility. Some physical exercises developing strength and

agility were even performed by preschool children. Typically the fa-
ther or whoever was acting as father, showed the boys some kind of
training exercise. When they had mastered it, they were taught the
next one. Some training exercises were performed by girls as well.
During the long winter evenings the children trained in their dwell-
ings. To develop running speed the Eskimos set up running competi-
tions (in a circle) in the summer on days when they were not fishing.
Both adults and children participated. Typically, the children exercised
separately from adults. In the winter they ran not in a circle but in a
straight line between markers set up for this purpose. The person who
remained on the running course the longest was considered the victor.
I have observed how the children trained to develop strength. I will
describe one instance here. A group of children gathered in the front
part of the yaranga. There was a large, very heavy stone lying there.
The participants stood in a line and took turns carrying the stone from
one wall to the other. Each of them carried the stone back and forth
until they could no longer do so. After all the children had done this,
they took turns carrying this stone around the yaranga and then along
a straight course to a stipulated place.
Because the Eskimos’ main activity is hunting, the adults begin to
train the children to shoot a rifle very early. It was not infrequent that
a ten-year-old boy showed excellent marksmanship. (1954, p. 251)
“Anyone who has been in the Far North and has observed the lives
of the people who inhabit it cannot help but notice the great inter-
est the adults as well as children show in various types of athletic
activities and group games,” writes A.G. Bazanov. Describing the
“Deer Day” holiday, this author writes, “On that holiday the hunt-
ers and deer herders, adults and children, competed at running,
fighting, throwing a lasso, throwing the ax as far as possible, hit-
ting a deer’s horn with a disk, and throwing a lasso over a horn”
(1934, p. 12).
The isolation of certain aspects of tasks and human qualities
(strength, agility, endurance, marksmanship, etc.) from the over-
all performance of work, which fosters successful performance of
not just one type of work, but a whole series of productive pro-
cesses, was an important step in the whole enterprise of educating
the rising generation. It may be assumed that, on this basis, certain

exercises are picked out to specially target the formation of these
qualities.
Here we are not concerned with considering the issue of the
historical origin of athletic games and competitions, nor will we
touch on the connection between the content of such games and
the productive work characteristic of one or another people or tribe.
All that is important for us here is to note the association between
children’s mastery of work tools and competitions involving how
well they use them. Such contests act with relation to tool mastery
as a kind of frequently repeated examination in which success in
mastering the use of one or another tool and the formation of the
physical and mental skills associated with it are subjected to so-
cial evaluation and confirmation.
As we have noted, at the very earliest stages of the develop-
ment of human society, the early inclusion of children in adult
work leads to the development of children’s independence and
directly satisfies the social requirement for independence. At the
next stage of development, as a result of the increasing complex-
ity of tools and the associated work operations, there arises a
special type of activity to ensure children master the tools used
by adults in their work.
Throughout the evolution of the primitive-communal way of life,
adults had been unable to spend a great deal of time on the social
rearing and education of their children. The requirement for inde-
pendence to occur as early as possible remains the major require-
ment that society made of children. Thus, A.T. Bryant states:
Mothers had to perform extremely laborious tasks and did not have
time to play nursemaid to their children. . . . Starting at the age of four,
and even earlier, little girls and boys, especially the latter, were left to
themselves. In the Kraal and the adjacent land, little children played
freely and took care of themselves. (1953, p. 127)
Such evidence that children are given full independence regarding

how they spend their time and even getting their own food from a
very early age are very common in the ethnographic literature.

Armed with scaled-down work tools similar to those adults use,
and left to themselves, children spend all their free time practicing
with these tools, gradually learning to use them under conditions
approximately the work conditions of adults.
Margaret Mead says that the children she was observing were
left to themselves for whole days and were able to care for them-
selves. They had their boats, oars, bows, and arrows. For whole
days they wandered the shores of the lagoon in groups, older and
younger ones together, competing at throwing spears and shoot-
ing their bows, at swimming, rowing, engaging in mock fights,
and so on. The older boys frequently went off fishing among the
reeds and taught the younger ones accompanying them how to go
about this occupation (see Mead, 1931, pp. 77–78).
In the Marquis Islands, N. Miller observed how, as soon as a
child was able to get along without outside help, he would leave
his parents and build himself a hut of branches and leaves at a spot
of his choosing (1928, pp. 123–24).
Arkin cites a communication from Displain that “on the banks
of the Niger he often saw children six to eight years old, who,
having left their parents’ houses, lived independently, building huts
for themselves, hunting and catching fish, and even performing
some crude types of rituals” (1935, p. 59). Drawing conclusions
about the ethnographic material on this issue, Kosven writes:
Starting at an improbably young age, children, and especially boys,
become independent to a significant degree. Starting as early as age
three or four, boys spend the majority of time with their peers, begin to
hunt after a fashion, set traps for birds, can steer a boat, and so forth.
At age six to eight they often live almost completely independently,
frequently in a separate hut, hunt in a more sophisticated way, catch
fish, and so on. Children show remarkable restraint and creativity in
hunting. Here are two examples from the hunts of boys of the Congo.
Lying on their backs, they waited patiently until a bird flew up to peck
and then seized her in their hands. Another example: they would tie a
rope to a tree branch on which monkeys used to play. The end of the
rope was held by one of the boys hiding below. Picking his moment,
when the monkeys were about to jump to the branch with the rope, the
boy jerked it down, and a monkey plummeted to the ground where the
small hunters captured it. (1953, p. 139)
The requirement for independence that society makes on chil-

dren at this stage of society’s development is met through their
participation in productive work along with adults and through
independent living, which, although separate from that of the adults,
is still identical with it in nature and initially involves practicing
with scaled-down work tools, and then in their use under condi-
tions as similar as possible to those under which adults work.
Almost all writers on this subject suggest that this sort of inde-
pendent life is common primarily for boys. This indirectly indi-
cates that here we are dealing with societies moving toward
patriarchy, where women are left to do all the domestic work in
which little girls can directly participate and thus learn to per-
form women’s work. The independence of girls is thus engen-
dered by their direct participation in the work of their mothers,
which uses more primitive tools and thus is easier for children to
master. The boys at this stage of society’s evolution cannot par-
ticipate directly in their father’s work and thus it is they who are
required to practice independently so as to master the work tools
used by their fathers.
The independence of children’s lives during this period of so-
cial evolution involves independent mastery of work tools. Adults
fashion scaled-down work tools for them and show them how to
use them. The children are left to practice independently and gradu-
ally master the tools. It may be hypothesized that it was precisely
during this period in the life of society that initiation rites, which
still survive in many peoples at relatively primitive levels of de-
velopment, were born to simultaneously serve the function of
elementary schools, tests of independence, and ability to use work
tools, and as coming-of-age ceremonies.
The data we have cited on the lack of role play in children grow-
ing up in societies at more primitive levels of development are
also relevant to this period. At this stage, too, children either do
not engage in elaborate role playing at all or do so very rarely.

There is no social need for such activities. Children join in the life
of society under the direction of adults or independently; and if
practice in the use of adult work tools assumes the character of a
game, then these are athletic or competitive games rather than role
playing ones. Recreation of adult work under specially set up play
conditions would not have any purpose here because the tools chil-
dren use are identical to those of adults and the conditions of their
use gradually approach actual working conditions. Although chil-
dren do not participate alongside adults in work, they lead the same
life as their elders, under somewhat simplified, yet completely re-
alistic, conditions.
At this stage of societal evolution we may encounter, although
rarely, role playing per se. Kharuzin, describing the life of the
Lopars, writes that children play the same games as adults, but
that there are two additional, imitative, children’s games. One of
these involves imitating wedding ceremonies: a little boy takes a
girl and walks with her around a post (if the game is played out-
side) while the rest of the group stands and watches and those who
can sing, sing the words “Your time has come, the deed is done.”
Then they put two sticks crosswise on the couple’s heads, in lieu
of wreaths. After the couple has completed three circles the sticks
are removed and the bride is covered in a shawl. The boy leads the
girl aside and kisses her. Then they are led to the table and seated
in the place of honor. The bride sits with bowed head still cov-
ered by the shawl and the groom embraces her. They sit there for
a while and either the game proceeds to the wedding of another
couple, or the newlyweds lie down to sleep together. This game
is played by five- to six-year-olds, primarily before someone’s
actual wedding, and it is always kept secret from the parents,
who forbid the children to play it (see Kharuzin, 1890, p. 339).
In the work already cited, Mead provides a description of cer-
tain games that may be described as role playing.
Thus, sometimes six-year-old children would build houses out
of sticks and play house. Very infrequently they would gather and
play “romantic” games, pairing up, building houses, pretending to

pay a bride’s price and even, in imitation of their parents, lying
down together cheek to cheek. Mead states that little girls do not
have dolls and do not play mother and baby. When the children
were offered wooden dolls, only the boys took them and began to
play with them, rocking them and singing lullabies in imitation of
their fathers who are very loving to their children.2 In describing
these games, Mead, several times emphasizes that they are ex-
tremely uncommon and that she only observed a very few instances
of them.
It is important to note that there are no games among those de-
scribed representing the work lives of adults, rather they tend to
represent those aspects of the lives and relationships among adults
that are inaccessible to children’s participation or are forbidden.
It may be assumed that the role-playing games that appear at
this stage of societal development are a special means of achiev-
ing direct participation in aspects of the lives and relationships of
adults that are inaccessible to children.
During the late stage of the primitive-communal system, pro-
ductive capacities undergo further development, and work tools
and the closely associated division of labor become even more
complex. The increased complexity of work tools and associated
work relationships certainly would have impacted the position of
children in the society. Children were, in effect, gradually excluded
from the complex and more responsible areas of adult work. What
remained was an increasingly narrow set of areas of work in which
they could participate with and alongside the adults.
At the same time, the increasing complexity of work tools led
to a situation where children were unable to master them through
practice with scaled-down versions. Work tools that were scaled
down lost their basic functions, retaining only a superficial simi-
larity of appearance to those used by adults. For example, a scaled-
down bow retains its primary function—it can still be used to shoot
arrows and hit an object—but a scaled-down rifle becomes only a
nonworking model of a rifle—it does not really shoot but can be
used only to represent shooting.3 When agriculture was based on

hoes, a smaller hoe was still a working hoe that a child could use
to break up small clumps of earth; it was identical to a child’s
parents’ hoes in both shape and function. When plows came into
use, a miniature plow, no matter how similar to the real thing in all
its parts, lost the major function of the plow; a bull could not be
harnessed to it and it could not be used to plow the earth.
It is possible that at this stage of societal evolution, toys began
to appear that were really toys in the true sense, an object that only
represents a work tool or object in daily use in adult life.
There are many indications in the ethnographic literature con-
cerning the nature of role play during this period. We will cite
only a few descriptions, taking this material from the work of N.
Miller (1928).
Miller writes that the children of West Africa make a replica of
yam fields out of sand. They dig holes in the sand and pretend they
are planting a yam in each. In South Africa, they build little houses
in which they spend whole days. The little girls put small light
pebbles between two larger hard stones and rub them as if they
were grinding flour. The boys armed with little bows and arrows
play war, hiding, and attacking.
Children of a different people build a whole village with houses
forty to fifty centimeters high, light cooking fires in front of them,
and use them to cook fish they have caught. Suddenly, one of them
will shout, “It’s night,” and everyone will immediately go to bed.
Then someone will imitate the crowing of a rooster and everyone
will get up and the game continues.
Among the people of New Guinea, little girls build temporary
shelters out of dead leaves. Around them they place plates with
miniature pots made of clay. Small stones are used to represent a
baby. They lie him down on the seashore, bathe him, and then hold
him over the fire to dry him and hold him up to his mother’s breast,
so he will go to sleep.
We will not further multiply examples. The examples cited are
sufficient to make clear that these are role-playing games in which
the children reproduce not only the areas of adult work that they
are too young to perform but also those areas of daily life in which
they do not directly participate.
It is not possible to determine exactly at what historical mo-
ment role play first appeared. This point may have been different
for different peoples depending on their living conditions and the
way in which their society made the transition from one stage to a
higher one.
For our purposes it is important to establish the following. At
early stages in the evolution of human society when productive
energy was still at a primitive level, society could not feed its chil-
dren, and the type of work tools used permitted children to partici-
pate directly in adult work, there were no special training exercises
needed to master the use of work tools, and certainly there was no
role playing. Children entered adult life having mastered work tools
and all relevant relationships and took direct part in the adults’
work. At a somewhat higher developmental stage, inclusion of
children in the most important areas of work required special train-
ing in the form of mastery of simple work tools. This mastery of
work tools began very early and used scaled-down versions of tools.
Special practice exercises were contrived using these scaled-
down work tools. The adults demonstrated to the children how to
work with them and observed their progress toward mastery. Both
the children and the adults treated this practice very seriously, since
they saw a direct connection between the exercises and real work
performance. After the mastery acquisition period, the length of
which depended on the complexity of the tools involved, the chil-
dren were included in adult productive work. These exercises can
be described as play only in a very broad sense.
The further development of means of production, increasing
complexity of work tools and the development of some aspects of
cottage industry, occurring as a result of more complex forms of
labor division and new productive relationships, led to a situation
where it became even more difficult to include children in produc-
tive labor. Exercises with scaled-down tools lost their significance
and mastery of the ever-more complex tools was postponed to a

later age.
At this stage of development two changes in the nature of edu-
cation and rearing of the child to be a member of society occurred
simultaneously. The first of these involved identification of cer-
tain general capacities necessary for mastering the use of any tools
(development of hand-eye coordination, fine motor movements,
agility, etc.) and society developed special objects for developing
and practicing these skills. These were either degraded, simplified
versions of scaled-down work tools that had been used in the pre-
vious developmental stage for direct training but that had now lost
their original functions, or even special objects that the adults made
for the children. Exercises with these objects, which can be called
toys, were shifted to an earlier age. Of course, the adults showed
the children what to do with these toys.
The second change involved the appearance of symbolic toys.
The children used these to recreate the areas of life and production
in which they were still not included, but to which they aspired.
Now we can formulate the most important proposition for the
theory of role play: role play develops in the course of society’s
historical evolution as a result of changes in the child’s place in
the system of social relationships. It is thus social in origin as well
as in nature. Its appearance is associated not with the operation of
certain internal, innate, instinctive energy, but rather with well-
defined social conditions of the child’s life in society.
At the same time that role playing appeared, so did a new pe-
riod in the child’s development, which by rights could be called
the period of role play, but in current child psychology and educa-
tion is called the preschool period of development.
We have already cited facts that demonstrate quite persuasively
that the increasing complexity of work tools inevitably led to the
postponement of children’s inclusion in productive work. Child-
hood lengthened. Here it is important to underscore that this length-
ening did not occur through the addition of a new developmental
period following the existing ones, but through insertion of a new
period of development, causing the period during which produc-

tive tools were mastered to be displaced to an older age.
A situation developed in which it was not possible to teach a
child to master work tools because of their complexity and also
because increasing division of labor made it possible to choose
one’s future occupation, which was no longer unambiguously
determined by the profession of one’s parents. A unique period
began to occur during which children were left to themselves.
Children’s communities (peer groups) began to appear, in which
children lived free of worries about feeding themselves but in a
way organically connected to the life of adult society. In such peer
groups, play began to have a dominant role.
Analysis of how role playing originated has led us to one of
the central issues of contemporary child psychology—that of the
historical origin of the periods of childhood and the nature of
psychological development in each of these periods. This issue
ranges much further than the topic of the present book. Only in the
most general form can we state the hypothesis that the stages of
child development, evidently, have their own history: they arose
in the course of history and altered the processes of psychological
development occurring at various periods of childhood.4
Role playing, as we have already indicated, has its own unique
play techniques: the substitution of one object for another and per-
formance of arbitrary actions using these objects. We do not know
with any precision how children mastered these techniques at the
stages of societal development when play appeared as a special
aspect of children’s lives.
It is completely obvious that these unique play techniques could
not have been the result of the independent creative invention of
children. Most likely they borrowed these techniques from the
theatrical arts of adults, which were relatively highly developed at
this stage of societal development. The ritual dramatized dances
in which arbitrary depictive actions were widely represented was
common in these societies and children were either the direct par-
ticipants in, or the audience for, such dances. Thus, there is every
reason to hypothesize that play techniques were taken by children

from the initial forms of dramatization.
Ethnographic literature contains a hint that adults directed these
games. It is true that this hint pertains to games of war, but it can
be assumed that models and other forms of group activity were
also provided by adults.
The hypothesis we have advanced on the historical origination of
role play and about the adoption of its forms has major significance
for criticism of ideas that children’s play is a biological phenom-
enon. The facts cited demonstrate quite clearly that play is social
in its origin.
In addition, this hypothesis has heuristic significance for us, point-
ing out the direction in which we should search for the sources of
role play in the course of the development of individual children.
Notes
1. K. Marx and F. Engels, Sochineniia, vol. 23, p. 88.

2. Play with dolls, widespread in our society primarily among little girls, has
always been cited in the literature as an example of manifestation of the maternal
instinct. The facts cited here argue against this viewpoint and show that this
classic game of girls is not a manifestation of the maternal instinct, but repro-
duces the social relationships in a given society, in particular, the social division
of labor with regard to child care.
3. Firearms sometimes entered primitive society by way of colonization or
in the process of trade with Europeans.
4. We have considered the problem of developmental stages in a separate
work (see Voprosy psikhologii, 1971, no. 4).
References
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Journal of Russian & East European Psychology

ISSN: 1061-0405 (Print) 1558-0415 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/mrpo20

Chapter 2 : On the Historical Origin of Role Play

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On the Historical Origin

From the history of toys

The central question that must be resolved to construct a theory of

means of satisfying this demand” (1958, p. 342). This assertion,

We have quoted this long excerpt from Arkin’s work to show

fests the universality of human developmental traits” (1935, p. 49).

ity the products of historical development. However, once they

analogous. At the stage of social development where tying knots

change historically; their history is integrally tied to the history of

Historical origin of the developed form of play

The question of the origin of role playing in the course of society’s

that these data cannot be considered reliable. Comparison of the

primitive stage of production and culture. On the basis of exten-

tion and all members of a society engaged in child-rearing, the

G. Startsev remarks that, “By the age of six or seven, children

society. In general discussions, their words are listened to with as

Archipelago, tells how children of the Manus people are permit-

directly in the work of adult members of the society in accordance

the nature of production, a new division of labor appeared in

the children practiced under conditions approximating the condi-

suited for independent hunting and enabling him to bring down

N.G. Bogoraz-Tan, describing the dolls of Chukot girls, remarks:

ians of childbirth, one that is work related. By sewing dolls clothes,

social and productive tasks of adults has gradually increased. When

own success and achievements, and so forth, but this in no sense

a dual nature. On the one hand, such tasks have an operational-

ance, and agility. Some physical exercises developing strength and

the rising generation. It may be assumed that, on this basis, certain

Such evidence that children are given full independence regarding

very early age are very common in the ethnographic literature.

The requirement for independence that society makes on chil-

not engage in elaborate role playing at all or do so very rarely.

play “romantic” games, pairing up, building houses, pretending to

used only to represent shooting.3 When agriculture was based on

and mastery of the ever-more complex tools was postponed to a

period of development, causing the period during which produc-

reason to hypothesize that play techniques were taken by children

1. K. Marx and F. Engels, Sochineniia, vol. 23, p. 88.

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