Playing rock/paper/scissors is part of an old tradition

From Oct. 28, 2015:

What is the origin and history of the rock/paper/scissors game?

There are several stories about the origin of the game, only a few of which I find plausible.

Most people who think very much about such matters seem to think rock/ paper/scissors originated in China around 200 B.C., but so many cultures play the game it is hard to say for sure.

It was very popular in Japan under the name “jan-ken-pon.” It came to Europe sometime in the 1700s. It was popularized in France by one Jean Baptiste Donatien de Vimeur, Comte de Rochambeau, who helped George Washington defeat the British at Yorktown. The game is sometime known as Rochambeau.

It doesn’t seem to have caught on in the United States until the 1930s.

It seems to be nearly universal, probably because it is a very useful, peaceful method of settling a dispute. In Japan, it involved a village chief, a tiger and the chief ’s mother. (Go with the mother.) In Indonesia, it’s elephant/man/ant. (The ant beats the elephant by getting inside its ear and driving it nuts.)

There are organized rock/paper/scissors tournaments, academic studies on strategies and even a World Rock Paper Scissors Society, founded and patronized by people who have way too much time on their hands.

How did the middle finger come to be called the “bird?”

The use of the middle finger as an obscene gesture is very old and goes back to ancient Greece.

In “The Cloud” one of the characters gives Socrates the finger, to which he replies, “You are a crude buffoon.”

“Flipping the bird,” comes from the 1860 slang expression “give the big bird.” That meant to hiss like a goose, such as an audience hissing at a bad actor. It seems to have moved on to the middle finger gesture at some point in the 1960s.

As far as the “flipping” part, that seems obvious.