The History of Playing Cards | World History | Extra History

[00:00:00]Oh my head. Where am I? Wait, where's my lect turn?

[00:00:04]>> Good evening, Mr. Croll. I'm pleased to see the serum has worn off. Now it's time for a little game.

[00:00:11]>> Okay, who are you? Look, if this is about Zoe's catnip business, I can explain with this.

[00:00:15]>> This has nothing to do with your cat, Mr. Croll. I've been watching you.

[00:00:21]>> A thanks. Wait, so you're subscribed on YouTube or over on Nebula? A creator owned and operated streaming.

[00:00:26]>> I'm not one of your regular viewers. I am your replacement.

[00:00:30]>> I'm sorry, what?

[00:00:31]>> You see, I am a man with a vision. A [clears throat] vision and a near infinite budget of tokens for creating loweffort AI generated history content.

[00:00:42]TM.

[00:00:43]>> Oh, why could I ever get kidnapped by cool villains?

[00:00:45]>> But to create my empire of slop, I must first deal with you.

[00:00:51]>> Ooh, nice double antandra transition to the episode topic. I'd like to see your AI do that, >> henchmen. The game is poker. Five cards, high stakes.

[00:01:01]>> The rules are simple. If I win, you shutter extra history, making way for my data centers to drink Earth's water and convert it into listicles scraped from your own scripts.

[00:01:13]>> Ooh, but what if I refuse to play and just turn this into an episode about the history of playing cards?

[00:01:18]>> Do not tempt me.

[00:01:19]>> into having A GOOD TIME. GREAT. LET'S GO.

[00:01:28]Real quick before I'm animated again, I got to tell you that the Kickstarter for our history happens everyday calendar is live now. And if you back it early enough, you'll get quite a deal. You'll see what I mean after the episode. That is if Zoe rescues me first. Zoe, >> your first hand, Mr. Crow.

[00:01:43]>> Thank you. Cards. Cards. Really curious things, aren't they? Take this hand.

[00:01:49]Aces and ace. The dead man's hand.

[00:01:51]Ominous. You're not supposed to show us your cards. Henchmen, RED DEAL.

[00:01:56]>> UH, NO THANKS. I like these ones. Say, do you know why it's called the dead man's hand? Well, it's because infamous cowboy Wild Bill Hickok was holding this hand when he was shot dead in a saloon, creating a name and tradition. And that's because even this common, unremarkable deck emerged from a millennium of cultural evolution, forming an interconnected story woven through the fabric of global history and lived human experiences that span centuries. Think about it. A deck of cards can fit into nearly any historical sense. Be it an old west saloon, medieval tavern full of boisterous peasants, a modern casino where a suave secret agent duels a less than scrupulous billionaire, or wherever the heck we are where an animated host is fighting against who are you like Darren Areronowski? Doesn't matter. But we even place superstitious meanings on these random number generators. I mean, they are related to tarot cards after all. We actually did a whole short about that a bit ago.

[00:02:46]>> Oh my claw on a cross.

[00:02:48]>> Uh, how do you make that thumbnail appear above us, boss? Never mind that.

[00:02:52]Make a wager, Mr. Croll.

[00:02:54]>> Okay. Well, I would wager that you've never thought just about how much this ordinary deck of cards with its numbers, faces, and jokers all got this way.

[00:03:03]Because these cards we're holding didn't just spring into existence fully formed and perfectly fanned. Rather, these suits we're playing with here are only the most recent incarnations of a developmental process that stretches hundreds of years and spans the entire globe from China and the Middle East to Europe and onto America. Please stop flashing your cards, henchmen, redee us again.

[00:03:23]>> But some scholars propose that the earliest evidence that we have for gaming cards can be found in 9th century China during the Tong Dynasty. Various sources reference a leaf game being played, but its specifics have been lost. Plus, the leaves themselves were probably only part of a system that also involved dice and a board. But then, Chinese drinking games also used cards that provided written rules and forfeits. And a game called Mandyo still makes use of money cards featuring various amounts of coins divvied into four suits. They acted as substitutes for actual currency. Kind of like how these poker chips we're using today do.

[00:03:58]>> Correct. Like the ones you're supposed to be wagering right now. I don't think you understand how dire your situation.

[00:04:05]>> See, around this time, card decks used in games such as Ganjifa were developing in Persia. The Ganjifa deck consisted of eight suits of 12 cards. And each suit's 12 cards consisted of 10 number cards featuring motifs such as swords, cups, coins, and polo sticks, as well as two court cards, the king and his adviser, the vazier. See, now this is a hand that's starting to look a little more familiar, right?

[00:04:28]>> Would you stop showing me? Wait, how did you change the cards?

[00:04:31]>> I show my turf, my man. Anyway, Egyptian cards, sometimes called Mamaloo cards after the ruling dynasty, followed a similar pattern, probably descending from the Persian style. And one deck actually survived from the 15th century and consisted of, what do you know, 52 cards and four suits. These were cups, swords, coins, and polo sticks. The sport of polo originated in Persia. As well as the 10 pip cards, there were now three court cards consisting of a king, his deputy, and his underd deputy.

[00:05:00]Though these cards didn't usually depict the personages on their faces.

[00:05:04]Intriguingly though, traces of the influence of the earlier Chinese money cards can be found on Mamalu cards. They actually used their own version of the Chinese word for the highest number coin cards, myriad, meaning 10,000. So, you're saying there's a link all the way back to Chinese paper cards? Don't encourage him.

[00:05:23]>> Exactly, henchmen. Everything's connected somewhere down the line. And given the steady westward travel of playing cards, it should then be no surprise that they began to appear in medieval Europe. In Barcelona in 1380, there was mention of a man described as a painter and playing card maker. And 3 years earlier, in 1377, records in the Italian city of Florence detailed a playing card ban. And more such bands start to appear throughout cities across Europe over the next four decades, which does a really good job charting their spreading popularity. Of course, these bans were due to cards pretty quickly becoming associated with vice as people like combining playing, drinking, and gambling.

[00:06:02]>> You are gambling with your very existence, Mr. Croll, if you don't cease this stalling.

[00:06:07]>> Hold on there, boss. Maybe we should uh let him speak. I mean, this is way more interesting than your pudding face Teddy Roosevelt videos. A thanks, Henchie. Now the same year as the Florentine ban, a German monk named Johannes living in a monastery in Switzerland left a record describing playing cards and their various uses. The cards sometimes described as coming from Soros or Moors were clearly descended from the Mamaloop deck and divvied into four suits.

[00:06:33]Swords, cups, coins, and clubs. Yeah, apparently Europeans weren't really familiar with polo, so they swapped the polo stick for a club. and a single pip card became known as an ace after the old French ass meaning one. The Mammluke court cards were also given a more European flavor consisting initially of a king knight and page. These styles first seen in Italy and Spain are still popular in southern Europe and are sometimes called the Latin suits. Oh, like you said in your perod deck short.

[00:07:04]>> Don't make him do the thumbnail thing again. That was spooky.

[00:07:07]>> Precisely. By the mid- 15th century, Germany was a prominent playing card manufacturer using processes linked to the woodcutting industry in cities like Nuremberg. Now, card decks back then were expensive, handpainted, and larger than their modern versions. Actually, a 1379 entry into the financial records of the Duke of Luxembourg noted an expense for purchasing decks of playing cards with the same value as 8 and a half sheep. Don't know why they were cutting the sheep in half for value propositions, but you know what? To each their own. Plus, German manufacturers also began to stamp their own styles on the decks. Swords, cups, clubs, and coins were replaced with Germanic pastoral depictions like leaves, hearts, falcon bells, and acorns, though exact designs could vary, like in Switzerland.

[00:07:52]Shields sometimes replaced the heart and roses the leaves. And the oldest surviving complete set of European playing cards. The Flemish hunting deck created in the Netherlands in the 1470s depicts hunting paraphernalia like dog collars and horns. Hey boss, you could get cards made with all your favorite stuff on them. Like piranha tanks, krypto, SAMMAN, DAMES TIE THE railroad tracks.

[00:08:15]>> Now that's an exciting idea. Wait, no.

[00:08:18]Stop distracting me.

[00:08:19]>> I mean, what could be distracting about learning that court cards also varied in style while the king remained, the knight was sometimes replaced by a queen, and the third card was sometimes a prince, the English word often used for the card nave, originally meaning male child. Then in the 17th century game all fours, a point was awarded for a winning trick that included the nave of trumps. This point was called a jack, which could also be a nickname for a common man. Later, it became awkward to have both the king and the nave start with K. So the name Jack replaced nave.

[00:08:54]Moving down the timeline, France was next to begin mascard manufacturing, synthesizing Latin and Germanic styles.

[00:09:01]The most common motifs there from the mid- 15th century onward were clovers, pikes, hearts, and tiles. While the king, queen, and still nave became standard court cards. Wait a minute.

[00:09:12]Pikes are LIKE BIG SPEARS. THAT'S GOING TO be where the spade came from, right?

[00:09:16]Looks like a spearhead >> again. A+ henchmen. You want a job after I escape here? You just hit me up. But let's not get ahead of ourselves. French card makers then simplified the designs of the pip symbols and habbd the four suits between red and black. This made cards easier to stencil, allowing mass production on the new printing presses.

[00:09:34]And it's in this late medieval period that cards transitioned rapidly from luxury handcrafted item to a widely available gaming accessory. And even as design simplified, people did start giving court cards elaborate backstories. In the late 16th century, for example, people began associating historical and biblical figures with different suits. like King David was the king of spades, Alexander the Great the King of Clubs, Jon of Arc the Queen of Hearts, and Lancelot the nave of clubs.

[00:10:04]We would also be remiss if we didn't mention that colonialism also played a role in the spreading of playing cards.

[00:10:09]Native Americans received Latin suits from the Spanish in the 16th century, and the Portuguese traded them to the Japanese, eventually leading to the founding of Nintendo as a Hanafuda card manufacturing company in 1889. No way.

[00:10:24]So, you're telling me Queen Victoria could have been playing Nintendo technically? Yep. And it was during this steady process of migration that playing cards continued to evolve. And in the 16th century, they were thoroughly embedded into everyday European life.

[00:10:39]France then introduced a tax on the manufacturer of playing cards. While in England, an organization called the Mystery Makers of Playing Cards of the City of London received royal approval in 1628 with the objective of regulating playing card importation and manufacture. And that company, yeah, that still exists today, which is a prime example of how England had its own impact on the development of the modern deck. After France taxed card makers, some moved to neighboring Belgium, where they began selling across the channel, meaning English cards followed the French model, but with innovations.

[00:11:12]Clubs, hearts, diamonds, and spades were popularized in England, with the latter two being transformed from the French tiles and pikes.

[00:11:20]>> Huh, if I were playing with this old deck, I could cheat with ease.

[00:11:24]>> Excellent point, Slotmonger. And actually a few modifications in the 19th century helped out with that. Since players might recognize specific cards from a dogeared corner or a mark on the back, manufacturers increasingly used rounded corners and elaborate designs or lithographs on the backs of the cards themselves. Numbering the edges also enabled cards to be more easily held one-handed in a fan.

[00:11:45]>> Yeah, but like what about this ace? It's all fancy.

[00:11:48]>> WHAT? YOU'RE THE DEALER. DON'T SHOW IN THE DECK. AH, see British law required that boxes of cards be stamped before leaving the factory to prove the tax had been paid. You know, this stamp took the form of the ace of spades and the commissioners for stamp duties created an elaborate version of the symbol to foil forggers. Now it's just traditional. And with card making becoming bigger business than ever, you can actually start tracing much of this growth back to one man, Thomas Daroo.

[00:12:15]Born in Gernie in 1793, Dearoo founded a printing company that in 1831 was given the right to print playing cards. With the industrial revolution well underway, Dearoo produced cards like never before.

[00:12:30]He drove smaller rivals out of business with high production runs, reducing variety and leaving his card designs as the dominant ones. And by the 1860s, we were left with a deck of cards very similar to those that we still play with today. Oh, and dear Laroo's company is actually also still around as the world's largest commercial paper maker.

[00:12:49]>> A huge corporation putting small artists out of business. Now you're speaking my language.

[00:12:55]>> Ew. Though on that note, the US actually did leave its own stamp on cards based off of English decks. It was an American Lewis I Cohen who secured the patent for first introducing the corner indices that streamlined gaming. Plus, Americans also introduced the Joker. Shocking. I know. See, in the 19th century, a card game called Uker became popular in the US, but it required an additional trump card that outranked the two jacks used as the highest and second highest trump.

[00:13:25]Thus, the Joker came into being, though we don't exactly know why it's called the Joker. Some claim it's a bastardization of the name of the game Uker or the European game it may descend from, Jucker. Then this may in turn have its roots in the German word junker, meaning young nobleman or squire, like the nave. It kind of all loops into itself. Oh, but you know, speaking of jokers, I think that sound I'm hearing means you two better duck and cover.

[00:13:53]>> MY RIDE'S HERE, CHUCKLEHEADS.

[00:13:55]>> NO. ENJOY playing 52 card pickup.

[00:13:57]>> My precious historically significant deck of common playing cards.

[00:14:00]>> Huh. Looks like you'll have to deal with that mess. Later, slot merchants. Punch it, Zoe.

[00:14:06]>> Curse you, Mr. troll and your team of human creatives and animated cat that are hellbent on crafting educational videos from your human minds.

[00:14:14]>> Well, extra historians, if there's one thing I'd like you to take away from my kidnapping today, it's this. AI slop sucks. But if there's two things, I think I just want us all to remember that a lot of what we think of as modern commodities have roots running deep into our shared past. And most everyday objects that we use are part of a long historical evolution. And you know, since we're talking about cards evolving through history, why not some that have evolved into extra history? That's right. This episode inspired us to become part of this playing card legacy with our own Extra History playing card deck. Illustrated by EH artist Ali Arthm. This deck features an awesome extra history inspired card back and is flush with historical figures from our series, allowing you to bring even more history into your home as part of our 2027 History Happens Everyday calendar Kickstarter. That's trip calendars, baby. Because all the things you love from the last two calendars are back and better than ever, such as brand new, gorgeous, historically inspired art reimagined by longtime eh artist David Huo and our latest addition to the calendar team, Voodoo Val. A bunch of daily historical happenings regular calendars usually omit. And the scannable QR codes return again to link you to our extra history videos on these specific dates with graphics to help you learn more about what happened on specific days. Plus, we've got cool new stuff in our deluxe tier for you to check out. What up, fridge magnets? And since we've learned a ton about shipping over the past two campaigns, we are now working with multiple fulfillment partners to ensure that you get your pledge in time for the holidays. So, to help us once again make some history, go check out the new calendar, playing cards, tiers, exclusive perks for yourself at our Kickstarter page in the link below, or you can scan the QR code right here because the only way to ensure that this 2027 history happens everyday calendar, you know, happens is with your support. Once again, to lock in your 2027 historical calendar and get your extra history playing cards, click or scan here. And actually, you know what? I'M SO PUMPED I FORGO my right to pitch the next video here. So you can head to our Kickstarter right now. You know, you'd think I'd run out of ways to thank Lu Reer, Zelad's Architectures, Mirthth, Joseph Bla, Hunter Z, Dominic Valenciana, and Angela Valenciana for being legendary patrons, but nope, I haven't yet.