Clap hands!

When we were little, in a long gone century, my sisters and their friends used to play these games that involved all sorts of rhythms: hopping and skipping games, and a complicated rhythmic leaping game, almost a little dance, which involved a loop of elastic string.
I am not really all that well informed about the origins of children's games - I have the impression that not much effort has been put into scientific research into the matter by others either. It would appear that these games have been taught almost exclusively by children to children over the course of generations. I could guess that the origins of this ritualized kind of play go a very long way back - they may be the most ancient form of culture that we have left, possibly dating back to prehistoric times.
Maybe today's children in our western societies still play the same games as my sisters all those years ago - not having any offspring of my own I can't tell. But I would assume that this style of playing is much less common now than it was then. Kids have so many other stimulants in this day and age, after all - computers, the internet, game consoles - that they just have less and less time to spend on neolithic gameplay.
All this is just an excuse to share this short video of my two little friends from Cameroon, Jordynie, who is 8, and her aunt Lolita, who is 7. They play an ancient little hand-clapping game that reminded me of some games my own sisters used to play. It is accompanied by a song about 'coca cola' and 'fanta', which is obviously of much more recent origin. I have seen them do similar games with lyrics about sick grandmothers and wedding days whose origins date back probably a lot further.
Their almost surreal singing reminded on me of the lyrics of 'The Clapping Song', an old Shirley Ellis hit:
Three, six, nine
The goose drank wine
The monkey chew tobacco on the streetcar line
The line broke, the monkey got choked
And they all went to heaven in a little rowboat.