Ancient games like chess

A strike-and-pocket table game that is popularly played throughout South Asia and in a few Middle-Eastern countries, carrom is said to have originated in the Indian subcontinent. You can find an ancient glass carrom board in Patiala, Punjab. Carrom gained popularity after World War I, and is now played at family or social gatherings for fun. Earlier in India it was called Pachisi , and the board was made out of cloth or jute. A depiction of Pachisi is found in the caves of Ajanta in Maharashtra, showing that the game was quite popular in the Medieval Era.

In the late 19 th century, different variations of the same game were played in England; in , a similar game appeared that was called Ludo, and thus the name was patented. Created by Sant saint Gyandev in the 13 th century, this game of vice and virtues was used in Hindu Dharma to teach good values to children.

The snakes represented vice and the ladders virtues. The squares where the ladders were found depicted virtues; for example, square 12 was faith, 51 was reliability, 76 was knowledge, and so on. Similarly, the squares where the snakes were found were known as vices; square 41 was disobedience, 49 was vulgarity, 84 was anger, et cetera.

The hundredth square represented Moksha or Nirvana. With time, the game underwent a number of changes, but the meaning remained the same: if you do good deeds, you go to heaven, and if you do bad deeds, you will be reborn. If certain accounts are to be believed, oblong dice were found in excavations at Harrapan sites like Lothal, Alamgirpur, Kalibangan, Desalpur and Ropar. These dice were earlier used for gambling.

Dice then spread to Persia and became a part of popular board games there. Early mentions of dice are also found in the Rig Veda and Atharva Veda. Modern playing cards originated in ancient India, and were called Krida-Patram.

They were made of cloth pieces, and showcased ancient designs from the Ramayana and Mahabharata. Each player is given a couple handfuls of stones as they take turns placing them on the intersections of a 19 by 19 grid, with the objective of trapping and capturing their opponents stones.

On the surface Go looks easy as players only have to place a single stone on the board every turn. However, the strategic value of this game cannot be understated. Even though learning how to play Go can take only a few moments, it can take a lifetime to master. Wasting no time, he ordered his men to compete in an attempt to replicate the beautiful tile-work. In Azul, players take turns drafting color tiles and then taking turns placing them on the board, trying to maximize their point value.

Trying to keep in mind which combinations your opponent can play, as well as ensuring your design comes out the way you envision can be a difficult task. In the end, the player with the most points and most beautiful tile-work becomes the victor. Near the end of the s, the bishop and queen were added to Western chess.

Although it appears to be a much simpler game than chess, checkers in American English and draughts in British English offers plenty of strategic considerations for those who look for them. The modern variety is believed to have been derived from a similar Middle Eastern game called alquerque. There are a number of variations of checkers that have been played since at least B. Great thinkers like Plato and Homer both referenced playing the game. Checkerboards have even been found in Egyptian tombs.

The word mancala means "to transfer" in Arabic. This game, which by some estimates is 7, years old, challenges players to move pieces from bin to bin in its special board. Many rule variations exist, and mancala is played in some form in almost every African country. There are over different names for this turn-based strategy game. The boards can range from something simple with two rows of bins to more artistically-crafted designs made to look like things like seashells or animals.

The largest of these games uses pieces to play. The gameplay shares some similarities with modern-day backgammon. It is this interesting relationship between games, such as Knossos Game and Game of Ur above, whether as an evolution of one to another or a cultural inspiration and deviation, that allows us to paint a more detailed picture of the cultural exchange between peoples. This is already done comparing arts and foods, and now we have games to help fill in some of the gaps.

This map is from the Ludii site , and shows the games and genres found around the world, whether from Aztecs and Mayans, to Europe to the Middle East, and even Pacific Isles. Games have clearly been an integral part of societies throughout history.

The host site describes it as "a computational study of the world's traditional strategy games throughout recorded human history. It aims to improve our understanding of traditional games using modern AI techniques, to chart their historical development and explore their role in the development of human culture and the spread of mathematical ideas.

The paper introducing the new field called Digital Archealudology. This combination of historical data, archeological finds, and advanced AI techniques to reconstruct ancient games has led to the founding of a new field called Digital Archealudology. Its mission according to its inaugural paper is:. The aim is to provide digital tools and methods to help game historians and other researchers better understand traditional games, their development throughout recorded human history, and their relationship to the development of human culture and mathematical knowledge.

But what is even more fascinating is the creation of Ludii. Ludii is a platform that breaks down games into blocks called 'ludemes'. A ludeme can be the number of players, the way the pieces move, or a victory condition, among others. By breaking a game's construction into such blocks, the AI is able to easily swap a block for another and then run simulations to try to find the most likely set of rules to fit it taking into account historical and archeological data, and even the 'fun factor'.