Rock, Paper, Scissors was invented by the Chinese. In the late Ming period, warlords of Later Han played a game called shoushiling, which is considered to be Rock, Paper, Scissors. Shoushiling can be translated as "hand-command." There is no record of Rock, Paper, Scissors in the West before they had direct contacts with Asians. Western writers in the late 19th century only mentioned it as an Asian game. The Chinese and Koreans use Cloth along with Rock and Scissors, while the Japanese have somehow renamed it Paper. Game play. Two players each make a fist. They count together "1 ... 2 ... Shoot!", "Rock ... Paper ... Scissors ... Shoot!", "Rock ... Paper ... Scissors!", "Scissors... Paper... Stone!", or "Ro ... Sham ... Bo!" while simultaneously bouncing their fists. On "Shoot", "Go", or "Scissors", each player simultaneously changes their fist into one of three hands (or weapons): Rock (or Stone): a clenched fist. Paper (or Cloth): all fingers extended, palm facing downwards, upwards, or sideways (thumb pointing to the sky). Scissors: forefinger and middle finger extended and separated into a "V" shape. The objective is to defeat the opponent by selecting a weapon which defeats their choice under the following rules: 1. Rock smashes (or blunts) Scissors (rock wins) 2. Scissors simply cuts Paper (scissors win) 3. Paper covers Rock and roughness is covered (paper wins) If players choose the same weapon, the game is a tie and is played again. Often times, the short game is repeated many times so that the person who wins two out of three or three out of five times wins the entire game. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rock,_Paper,_Scissors#Game_play There are international variations of the game too. Edit - Wizardhat - you have to do the work to highlight copy and paste to see the source but clearly I've given one. Edit - A A - The game must have come to the Philippines from China or Japan, though one source on the Internet says Jak en Poy(Japanese) was known in ancient Egypt! The origins I chose were Chinese.

Rock, Paper, Scissors Rock, Paper, Scissors chartRock, Paper, Scissors (sometimes with the elements in its name permuted and/or Rock replaced with Stone and/or Paper with Cloth, but also known as Roshambo, Rochambeau, Row-Sham-Bow, Ick-Ack-Ock, Janken, Mora, Morra Cinese, Gawi-Bawi-Bo, JanKenPon, Ca-Chi-Pun, Farkle, Ken Ken Pa, or Kai Bai Bo) is a popular hand game most often played by children. It is often used in a similar way to coin flipping, Odd or Even, throwing dice or drawing straws to randomly select a person for some purpose, though unlike truly random selections it can be played with skill if the game extends over many sessions, because one can often recognize and exploit the non-random behavior of an opponent. Various sports, including ultimate frisbee and university debating, may use Rock, Paper, Scissors to determine which team gets the opening play (rather than a coin toss). Similarly, uncertain calls, or even the whole game in case of rain, may be decided by the game. It is also often used as a method for creating appropriately biased random results in live action role-playing games, as it requires no equipment. Game play Each of the three basic hand-signs (from left to right: rock, paper and scissors) beats one of the other two. Two players each make a fist. They count together "1 ... 2 ... 3 ... Go!", "Rock ... Paper ... Scissors ... Shoot!", "Rock ... Paper ... Scissors!", or "Ro ... Sham ... Bo!" while simultaneously bouncing their fists. On "Shoot", "Go", or "Scissors", each player simultaneously changes their fist into one of three hands (or weapons): Rock (or Stone): a clenched fist. Paper (or Cloth): all fingers extended, palm facing downwards, upwards, or sideways (thumb pointing to the sky). Scissors: forefinger and middle finger extended and separated into a "V" shape. The objective is to defeat the opponent by selecting a weapon which defeats their choice under the following rules: Rock blunts Scissors (rock wins) Scissors cuts Paper (scissors win) Paper covers Rock (paper wins) If players choose the same weapon, the game is a tie and is played again. Often times, the short game is repeated many times so that the person who wins two out of three or three out of five times wins the entire game. Australians often play the game as "scissors, paper, rock!" or "paper, scissors, rock!", with emphasis placed on the word "rock", or as "hammer, scissors, paper!", with similar emphasis. The throw is made on the final word (either rock or paper) so that players only have two calls to synchronize the play. Due to the influence of the Japanese-Brazilians, Brazilians prime the game as "jan ... ken ... po!", with emphasis placed on the "po". The throw is made as "po" is called, so that as with the Australian variation, only two calls are made before the play. In Taiwan, there is commonly no priming. Both players simultaneously throw the hands after a count of three, with no hand-bouncing. This is often confusing to visitors—seeing that the fist-bouncing can be interpreted as rock, most Taiwanese start with paper when playing foreigners. Strategies Strategy between human players obviously involves using psychology to attempt to predict or influence opponent behavior. It is considered acceptable to use deceptive speech ("Good old Rock, nothing beats that!") to influence your opponent. Mathematically optimal play (according to game theory) is a simple matter of selecting randomly, and so the game may be considered trivial in that sense when played in a way that eliminates psychology, as with a computer. But "optimal" in this sense means only "incapable of being defeated more than expected by chance", while it does not imply that the random strategy is best at taking advantage of a suboptimal opponent. In fact, if the opponent is human or a non-random program, it is almost certain that he plays suboptimally and that a modified strategy can exploit that weakness. This is easily demonstrated by Roshambot, a computer program that easily defeats some human players (as does its author Perry Friedman, who won an $800 competition against seven opponents including former world poker champion Phil Hellmuth in August 2001). Poker player Darse Billings of the University of Alberta organizes a computer Roshambo competition to explore these possibilities, and their application to computer game play in other fields (notably poker, in which exploiting an opponent's non-random behavior is an important part of strategy). One high-profile strategic opinion came in 2005 from Alice Maclean, age 11. When rival auction houses Christie's and Sotheby's agreed to play rock-paper-scissors to determine the rights to a highly valuable art collection, Maclean's father Nicholas, a Christie's employee, asked her for advice. As later told to reporters, her strategy was summed up thus: "Everybody knows you always start with scissors. Rock is way too obvious, and scissors beats paper." Cheating One of the first tricks learned by a Roshambo novice is to hold back a throw of paper until the last possible moment to dupe an opponent into believing that you may actually be throwing a rock. This allows you the extra few milliseconds for fine-tuning your approach and delivery. Both paper and scissors also have this ability; however, unless you are employing a "double-back" strategy, cloaking a paper throw is likely to draw an instinctive paper from your opponent. The opening ritual before the actual throws are made ("1 ... 2 ... 3 ... Go!"), called "priming", is intended to get both players in sync so as to ensure simultaneous delivery of throws. This can be used to an advantage when two players are meeting for the first time, since it is often unclear as to what the priming speed will be. The tendency is to default to the priming speed of the faster player. This allows the faster priming player the luxury of dictating the flow of play and causes their opponent to dedicate more energy to "catching the prime" rather than concentrating on delivering an effective throw. I got the above from http://www.answers.com/rock%2C%20paper%2C%20scissor

"Rock, Paper, Scissors", originally known as "Jan Ken", is a "ken" or hand game that is believed to have come from Japan or China. It is believed it was originally a competitive game or form of gambling. "Ken" came from China to Japan in 1642. "Jan Ken" appears to be a variation of that game, however, and that game was known as "Hon Ken" and was played with 5 fingers and was played similarly. "Hon Ken" was played by 2 people putting out 0 to 5 fingers simultaneously and calling out a guess of how many fingers the total will be. Whoever guesses correctly was the winner. This was often a drinking game where the loser would take a drink when they lost. However, the common variation known as "Rock, Paper, Scissors" or "Jan Ken" was believed to be created in Japan. It's believed it was based off of the Sansukumi way of thinking, which was that the snake feared the slug, the slug feared the frog, and the frog feared the snake. "Rock, Paper, Scissors" is also known by the following names: 両拳 (Jan Ken) [Japanese] 가위 바위 보 (Kai Bai Bo) [Korean] 両拳ポン (Jan Ken Pon) [Japanese] Rock, Paper, Scissors Ki, Ki, Ki [Chinese] Jan Ken Hon [Philippines] Jack en Poi [Philippines] Ii Aru Sen [Philippines] Information retrieved from a site that no longer exists (janken.com) Translated version can be found at: http://www.jbrowse.com/text/janken.shtml

Just as a mere reference, in Peru (South America), where I was raised kids say "Jan, Ken, Po" when playing Rock, Paper, Scissors. Nevertheless when they do that they are fully aware that the hand positions represent a rock, a paper and a scissor. Peru has lots of Chinese influence. I was told as a child that "Jan Ken Po" is a chinese game, we also have "Fu Man Chu" which has kind of the same principle but I haven't ever seen in the USA.

In asian countries such as MAlaysia they say scissors paper stone they some how changed the steps but the hand formation is still fist,open hand and v shaped fingering.

Back in caveman days they played rock, rock, rock :)