Oldest game in the word

The video game industry has grown into a multi-billion dollar industry and shows no signs of slowing down. According to one source, the industry as a whole is expected to be worth over $230 billion by 2022.

It may be hard to believe, but the video game industry is only about 50 years old. Video games trace their history to the 1950s, but their mainstream popularity and industry did not emerge until the 1970s. Since then, the interest in video games has grown exponentially and playing video games is now one of the most popular pastimes around the world.

10. Gun Fight (Western Gun)

photo source: Wikipedia

Gun Fight, which was called Western Gun in Japan and Europe, was one of the first widely successful arcade games released by Japanese video game company, Taito. The game was one of the first to depict human-to-human combat. Western Gun was designed by Tomohiro Nishikado, who created several games while working for Taito, most notably Space Invaders.

Taito licensed Western Gun to Midway for release in North America. Midway changed the game’s name to Gun Fight, which made more sense to American audiences. The Midway version of the game was the first video game to use a microprocessor.

9. Tank

photo source: Wikipedia

Tank was the only original title released by Kee Games, which was a subsidiary of Atari. Kee Games was created to sell clones of Atari titles to distributors as a fake competitor. Tank was completely original and was designed by Steve Bristow and developed by Lyle Rains.

The game was created because Bristow wanted to move Kee Games away from only producing copies of Atari’s games into also developing original titles.

One month after Tank was released, Atari announced a merger with Kee, which came at perfect time for Atari as the company was facing financial troubles. Atari was helped by Tank’s commercial success,  which sold over 10,000 units. This success led four Tank sequels over the next few years.

8. Gran Trak 10

photo source: Wikipedia

After Space Race was unsuccessful, Atari made a second attempt at releasing a racing game with Gran Trak 10. Although Space Race was also a racing game, Gran Trak 10 is considered to be the first arcade car racing game. The game was controlled by an actual steering wheel, accelerator and brake pedals, and a gear stick — this setup would later be used in nearly all arcade racing games.

Gran Trak 10 was initially designed by Larry Emmons of Cyan, with the mechanical design handled by Eigen Systems. Allan Alcorn, who developed Pong, overhauled Gran Trak 10 and made it ready for a wide release in May 1974. Although Atari underestimated the manufacturing costs of Gran Trak 10 — which led to Atari losing $500,000 for that fiscal year — the game was successful.

7. Space Race

photo source: Wikipedia  

Space Race was the second game released by Atari after the success of Pong. Development of Space Race began in the summer of 1972 and was initially called Asteroid. It was based on ideas from Atari co-founders Ted Dabney and Nolan Bushnell.

The game was a commercial failure and was only created to fulfill an earlier contract that Atari had made with Bally Midway. Despite its lack of success, Space Race inspired Japanese video game developer Taito to make a clone game called Astro Race. Additionally, Space Race is notable for being the first racing arcade video game.

6. Pong

photo source: Wikimedia Commons

Although all of the games on this list influenced the video game industry in some way, Pong‘s success made the video game industry a viable business. Pong was created by Allan Alcorn as a training exercise assigned to him by Nolan Bushnell, the co-founder of the newly renamed video game company Atari (it was previously called Syzygy Engineering).

Bushnell and Atari co-founder Ted Dabney liked Alcorn’s work and decided to manufacture the game.

Pong was an immediate hit and it is considered the first commercially successful video game. Due to Pong’s success, several companies began producing games similar to Pong. Atari released numerous sequels to Pong and released a home version of the game during the 1975 Christmas season. Pong has has been a part of popular culture since its release.

5. Magnavox Odyssey Games

photo source: Wikimedia Commons via Evan-Amos

The Magnavox Odyssey was the first home video game console ever released. The idea for a video game console was developed by Ralph H. Baer and he spent several years developing a prototype with Bill Harrison and Bill Rusch. They showed their prototype to several manufacturers before Magnavox agreed to produce the console in 1971.

The Odyssey debuted in the Fall of 1972 and the U.S. version came with 12 games. Additional games were sold separately later in the year and in 1973. The games included with the Odyssey were: Table Tennis, Ski, Simon Says, Analogic, Hockey, Football, Cat and Mouse, Haunted House, Submarine, Roulette, and States. In addition to the separate game cards, Magnavox sold the first video game light gun as a peripheral controller.

4. Galaxy Game

photo source: Wikimedia Commons

Galaxy Game is the lesser-known of the first two arcade games ever released, which were both based on the earlier computer game Spacewar! The game was developed by Bill Pitts and Hugh Tuck, at the student union building of Stanford University, around the same time that Syzygy Engineering (which would later become Atari) released its Spacewar!-based arcade game, Computer Space.

Pitts and Tuck spent $65,000 building two prototype consoles for Galaxy Game and installed them in the student union. The console charged players 10 cents per game or 25 cents for three and was popular among the university’s students.

Unfortunately, Pitts and Tuck were unable to turn Galaxy Game into a commercial success because they chose to focus on the game’s engineering rather than the business side of their idea. The second console is still operational and is currently a playable exhibit at the Computer History Museum.

3. Computer Space

photo source: Wikimedia Commons

Computer Space was the first arcade video game as well as the first commercially available video game. It was one of a few video games directly based on the popular 1962 computer game Spacewar! Computer Space was designed by Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney in 1970 – 1971  and was intended to be a coin-operated version of Spacewar!

Bushnell and Dabney formed Syzygy Engineering to work on Computer Space. They partnered with Nutting Associates to build a prototype game cabinet for Computer Space. After the initial tests were successful, Nutting ordered 1,500 units of the game and Syzygy eventually sold all 1,500 games.

Although Computer Space was not the runaway hit that Syzygy hoped it would be, it marked the official beginning of the video game industry.

2. Spacewar!

photo source: Wikimedia Commons

Of all the early games on this list, Spacewar! is probably one of the most influential. The game was highly popular among the small programming community of the 1960s and inspired the first commercial arcade games. Spacewar! is so important to video game history that it was the first entry of the game canon at the U.S. Library of Congress.

Spacewar! was developed by Steve Russell with help from Martin Graetz and Wayne Wiitanen. Russell also had help with the game’s programming from Bob Saunders and Steve Piner. The game was created for the newly installed DEC PDP-1 computer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). After the game was released, other students and employees from the universities in the area added on to the game, developing it further.

1. Tennis for Two

photo source: Wikimedia Commons

Although the answer defers depending on who you ask, Tennis for Two is widely considered the oldest video game in the world. It was the very first computer game created solely for entertainment rather than for academic research.

Tennis for Two was developed by American physicist William Higinbotham who worked in the Brookhaven National Laboratory as the head of the instrumentation division.

Higingbotham got the idea for Tennis for Two after reading the instruction manual for the Donner Model 30 analog computer. He discovered that the computer could calculate ballistic missile trajectories or a bouncing ball with wind resistance and Higingbotham used an oscilloscope to display the game.

In just the last few years, board games have been steadily skyrocketing in popularity. The trend can’t be denied and is evidenced by a quick Google search or a glance at the proliferation of board game cafes worldwide. In 2012, The Guardian claimed that we are now living in “A Golden Age of Boardgames,” citing an annual growth in the market of over 40% each year.

Widespread interest in board gaming and the surrounding culture can surely be credited to the internet, which has empowered fan pages, mass market sales, and even crowdfunded creations. This is apparent in the statistics of Kickstarter, where board games are one of the most-funded categories of crowdfunded projects. YouTube is complicit in this “board game renaissance,” with series like Will Wheaton’s Table Top sparking a renewed enthusiasm in gaming.

The recent rise in the popularity of board games — and tabletop gaming in general — got us thinking about the origins of this leisure activity.

• What was the first board game?
• When did people start playing board games?
• What kinds of games have people played through the ages (and around the world)?

As you’ll quickly learn, I am a huge history nerd and love looking at the historical precedents of ideas. Welcome to my history/board game nerdgasm. I hope you have fun with this exploratory look at the history of board games — and hopefully learn something too!

The Stone Age Had Stones, So Probably Board Games Too

The board game market today is filled with a wide variety of games: strategy, roleplaying, chance, trivia, educational, abstract, etc. The list goes on and on. The increasingly popular hobby of playing games is not a new phenomenon. People have been playing board games since the Stone Age (or perhaps earlier) as humans started living together in groups, the natural desire for entertainment and competition inevitably produced the first games of skill, strategy, and chance.

The pastime goes back millennia and has been shaped by culture and tradition, evolving through the ages and appearing in many manifestations throughout human history. As you gather around your table for your weekly gaming session with friends or family, let’s take a quick look back into history to see where some of our favorite games have their origins.

Prehistoric Board Games? Thanks, Archaeology!

Games have existed since before written history! Do you know that dice was very first game ever played? Dice is a very simple game, with a variety of rules and variations, that could be made of wood, bones, or stones.

Sophocles claimed that Palamedes invented dice in about 1400BC and, sure enough, cubical stones and clay dice have been found from this period with numbers on their faces. In truth, dice were developed independently by many ancient cultures around the world — and long before that!

Archeologists found board games dating as far back as the Stone Age. A series of 49 small carved painted stones were found at the 5,000-year-old Başur Höyük burial mound in southeast Turkey. These are the earliest gaming pieces ever found. Similar pieces have been found in Syria and Iraq and to point to board games originating in the Fertile Crescent.

In case you didn’t know, the Fertile Crescent, also known as “The Cradle of Civilization,” is located in the Middle East where the Tigris, Euphrates, and Nile rivers created the optimum conditions in which the earliest foundations of cities, learning, and development were able to flourish.

Other early dice games were created by painting a single side of flat sticks. These sticks would be tossed in unison, the painted sides showing were counted, constituting the player’s “roll”. Mesopotamian dice were made from a variety of materials, including carved knuckle bones, wood, painted stones, and turtle shells.

Due to the scarcity of historical documentation, it’s hard to say which games were truly the first to be played, but archaeology has turned up clues that can give us a general idea of the earliest games in human history.

Board Gaming in Ancient Times: I guess some people had time on their hands

Backgammon originated in ancient Persia over 5,000 years ago. Chess, Pachisi, and Chaupar originated in India. Go and Liubo originated in China. Shax originated in Somalia. Bao (mancala game) is still played throughout eastern Africa. Patolli originated in Mesoamerica played by the ancient Aztec and The Royal Game of Ur was found in the Royal Tombs of Ur, dating to Mesopotamia around 4,600 years ago.

The Royal Game of Ur

The ancient Royal Game Of Ur is probably the oldest board game (with a board) in the world. This game is at least 4,500 years old and was played in the Middle East by the Sumerians. It is a basic race game (similar to Backgammon) with very simple rules, but perhaps unsurprisingly, can have extremely complex strategic mechanics.

British Museum historian, Irving Finkle, spent years researching this enigmatic game and was finally able to decipher the rules. It can be played accurately now and looks like quite a lot of fun! Check out the British Museum official playthrough here:

Senet (‘the game of passing’) 

Egyptians played a board game called Senet (Senat or Sen’t), which was an ancestor of Backgammon. It is not known how the game was played exactly but popular conjecture has deduced some generic rules to allow us, modern folks, to give it a try.

Senet is a racing game, similar to the Royal Game of Ur and Backgammon. The board was divided into squares with counters. Players would throw sticks rather than dice. Senet was pictured in a fresco found in Merknera’s tomb (3300–2700 BC).

Mehen (‘the game of the snake’)

Also from predynastic Egypt is a game called Mehen. The first evidence of the game Mehen is as old as 3,000 BC. It was very popular during the Old Kingdom and remained in popular use throughout many dynasties. Mehen was played on a board that looks like a snail shell at first glance but actually represents a snake. The most detailed playing pieces were shaped like lions. The set of pieces included three to six game bits and a few small marbles.

Snakes and Ladders (200BC): An Indian Game of Good & Evil

Snakes and Ladders originated in India as a morality-based game, where the progression up the board was to teach children about good and evil, with climbing up ladders representing good and sliding down snakes representing evil.

During the British occupation of India, the game found its way to the West where it was modified and rebranded as “Chutes and Ladders” in the United States in 1943 by Milton Bradley.

Mah Jongg (‘sparrows’ – thought to be named for Confucious’ love of birds)

Mah Jongg or (Mahjong) is another ancient game that continues to be played today, despite being about 4000 years old! As a closely guarded secret of the Chinese aristocracy, it only emerged in popularity in the West in the 20th century.

The current version of the game – a four-player game played with tiles on a board – came from China in the 1920s and has many similarities with the card game Rummy. Mahjong is usually played by four people, in which tiles bearing various designs are drawn and discarded until one player has an entire hand of winning combinations.

When in Rome… play as the Romans play? – Backgammon Roman Style

The Romans played a game called Ludus Duodecim Scriptorum (‘the Twelve Line game’ or the ‘game of twelve markings’), which was similar to modern Backgammon. The Roman Emperor Claudius was said to be a very avid player of Tabula, a predecessor to the game of Backgammon.

Although we know the Romans were fond of this game, it predates even the Roman Republic by about 1500 years.

Ludus Latrunculorum (‘the game of brigands’)

Recently, archaeologists in Colchester in the United Kingdom unearthed a remarkably well-preserved board game called Latruncui or Ludus Latrunculorum (‘the game of brigands’). It has references as early as Homer’s time (12th century BC) and is said to resemble chess.

This game had already been discovered in pieces and parts throughout the Roman Empire (and in excerpts from Latin literature) but never in full or set up for play as it was found in Colchester.

They excavated the complete game of 12×10 squares with 24 glass pieces, 12 of white and 12 of blue. Due to limited sources, reconstruction of the game’s rules is difficult but is generally accepted to be a game of military tactics. Game historians are still arguing about the mechanism of play in this archaic ancestor of strategic games.

Examples of Ancient Board Games

Merriment in the Medieval Period: If people were playing board games, these were NOT the “Dark Ages”

In the early medieval period, wealthy Saxon nobles played games similar to our concept of Chess. Historians are not certain where or when Chess was invented, but popular conjecture places its invention in India in the 6th or 7th century AD (or possibly earlier). The game’s popularity eventually led to it being played in Europe by the 10th century.

Hnefatafl (‘king’s table’): The Game of the Vikings

The Vikings played a board game called Hnefatafl (‘king’s table’). Hnefatafl and the many variants of Tafl that go by different names is a game where one player’s objective is to guide the white king to an escape square, while black’s is to surround and capture him (black plays without a king). The pieces move orthogonally, like rooks in chess, and capture is by surrounding a piece on two opposite sides.

It is, in essence, an abstract game that depicts a very specific war scenario with unequal sides. It is very similar to chess, as an abstract military strategy game, but has been criticized for its slow-moving offense and lopsided power between the participants.

Mancala (‘to move’): More fun than watching the crops grow

Evidence of Mancala games have been found by archaeologists in Aksumite Ethiopia in Matara (now in Eritrea) and Yeha (in Ethiopia), dating back to between 500 and 700 AD. The word mancala is derived from the Arabic word naqala, which means “to move.” It is thought that Mancala was originally played with seeds or stones and holes dug into the dirt, which makes sense when you think of how the placement of the tokens into the holes mimics the act of sowing seeds into the earth.

In agrarian civilizations, it is reasonable to assume that many games stemmed from what people did most often. Whether, farming, warfare, or hunting, it goes to show that people play what they know! Many variations of the game exist, and evidence of Mancala boards have been found in Egyptian pyramids, Saharan ruins, and Neolithic settlements in modern-day Kenya.

By the way, a good example of a modern ‘mancala’ game is Five Tribes. (Awesome game, definitely worth adding to your collection.)

Nine Men’s Morris: Shakespeare informs us that it was played on the ground

Archaeology has been extremely helpful in enlightening us about the board games of the past. Even as recently as August 2018, archaeologists discovered a medieval board game in a secret castle crypt in Russia! A hidden chamber in Vyborg Castle, which dates back to the 13th century, contained a brick that had a grid-like pattern etched into its surface, prior to being baked.

The game played on the brick is actually very well known, and it dates back to the Roman Empire. It goes by several names, including Mill, Merrills, and Cowboy Checkers, and it’s very reminiscent of Nine Men’s Morris—a game, which like Checkers and Chess, involves intersecting squares and small pieces, called “men,” that are engaged in combat.

In Tudor England, the upper classes played board games like Chess and Backgammon (a backgammon set was found on the wreck of the Mary Rose, identical to the modern version).

Fox & Geese

The Tudors were also known to have played Checkers (Draughts) and Fox & Geese. Possibly a relative of Hnefatafl, Fox & Geese dates back to the 14th century in Britain and is a simple strategy game for two players, where the fox attempts to eliminate the geese, while they try to trap him.

Fox & Geese is played by one player moving the fox while the other controls the gaggle of geese. The fox can jump over and capture the geese one at a time so long as there is a vacant space beyond. The geese try to push the fox into a corner while avoiding being eaten. The fox wins if he captures all the geese; the geese if they can trap the fox.

The game remained popular into the 17th century when new rules to the game were introduced, making it popular during the English Civil War. Later, more militarily-oriented games evolving from Fox & Geese appeared during the Napoleonic Wars of the 18th century.

Pachisi / Chaupar / Ludo

Pachisi (Parcheesi, Parchisi, Parchisi, Parchesi; also known as Twenty-Five) is the National Game of India. The name comes from the Indian word “pacis” which means twenty-five, the highest score you could throw in the game.

The Indian Emperor Akbar I of the Mogul Empire in the 16th century is thought to have played Chaupar with human pieces on great courts constructed of inlaid marble. He would sit on a platform in the center of the court and throw the cowry shells. On the red and white squares around him, 16 women from the harem, dressed in corresponding colors, would move around according to his directions.

Pachisi boards as played in the street are often constructed of cloth, 6 cowry shells are thrown to determine the moves and the counters are made of wood in a beehive shape. Pachisi is a ‘Cross and Circle’ game, variations of which appear all over the world.

The origins of Pachisi and Chaupar are lost in time but uncertain evidence indicates that forms of the game were in existence in the Indian region from at least the 4th century AD. Both have hardly changed since Emperor Akbar played.

Game of the Goose

Game of the Goose holds the record for being the first modern commercial board game. It is connected with ancient spiral race games like the Egyptian Mehen, and to artifacts like the Phaistos Disc of the Minoans.

The game is a simple race game governed only by the throw of dice – the game pieces (often in the shape of Geese) move from the outside of the spiral towards the middle. Invented in Italy as early as 1500, Game of the Goose (‘Gioco dell’Oca’) was given by Francesco de Medici (1574-1587) as a present to King Phillip of Spain.

Though more a gambling game of pure amusement, adaptations of the Game of the Goose appeared with an educational purpose, teaching the players about geography, history, and morals. Its influence lasted well into the 20th century when similar race games were tied in with popular culture and current events.

New World, New Games: Patolli

Games were not limited to the Old World though. There is evidence for games being a popular pastime (at least among the nobles and elites) in the New World too! For example, there are drawings in the Codex Magliabecchiano of the Aztec god Macuilxochitl overseeing a game known as Patolli.

Patolli was played by the Aztecs at the time of the Spanish arrival in Mexico. It was a gambling game and is recorded as having been played by nobles for high stakes such as precious stones and gold beads.

Patolli (or patole) was a racing game on a cross-shaped board. Pieces raced around the board according to the throws of five beans, which were marked on one side and plain on the other. Complete rules for the game have not survived, but board game historian R. C. Bell proposed a plausible reconstruction for them.

Examples of Medieval Board Games

Language FTW: A Linguistic Look at the History of Board Games

The English word for “game” has not changed much in the centuries of linguistic development that the Indoeuropean languages have undergone. Even looking back as far as the third century, the word in Gothic, “gamen,” is still recognizable to the modern reader.

Board Games in the Enlightenment and Beyond (17th-19th Centuries)

Traditional games such as Chess, Checkers, Backgammon, and Dominoes continued in popularity throughout the European Renaissance and Enlightenment periods. With the invention of the printing press, new varieties of games emerged, like games with themes and subjects.

Agon

Agon (or Queen’s Guard, Queen’s Guards, Royal Guards) is a strategy game for two players, played on a 6×6×6 hexagonal game board.

Agon may be the oldest board game played on a hexagonally-celled board, first appearing in France as early as the late eighteenth century. The game reached its greatest popularity a century later when the Victorians embraced it for its blend of simple rules and complex strategy.

Conspirateurs

Conspirateurs (Conspirators) is a two- or four-player strategy board game probably invented in 18th century France. It perhaps dates after 1789 from the French Revolutionary Wars, “a period of feverish political activity with factions conspiring against each other”.

Conspirateurs resembles Halma, Ugolki, Chinese Checkers, and Salta in that pieces jump without capturing over friendly or enemy pieces to help race to their destinations.

Shogi (Japanese Chess)

Ko Shogi (‘broad chess’) is a large-board variant of shogi or Japanese chess. The game dates back to the turn of the 18th century and is based on xiangqi and go as well as shogi. Credit for its invention has been given to Confucian scholar Ogyū Sorai.

Tori Shogo (‘bird chess’) is a variant of shogi (Japanese chess), which was invented by Toyota Genryu in 1799 despite being traditionally attributed to his master Ōhashi Sōei. It was first published in 1828.

The game is played on a 7×7 board and uses the drop rule; it is the only traditional shogi variant to do so. This is one of the more popular shogi variants whose popularity has continued to the modern day! There were even tournaments in London and Royston in the 1990s and early 2000s.

Halma and Ugolki

Halma (from the Greek word meaning “jump”) is a strategy board game invented in 1883 by George Howard Monks, a US thoracic surgeon at Harvard Medical School.

The game board is checkered and divided into 16×16 squares. Pieces may be small checkers or counters, or wooden or plastic cones, or men resembling small chess pawns. Piece colors are typically black and white for two-player games, and various colors or other distinctions in games for four players.

Ugolki is a variation of Halma that is typically played on an 8×8 grid board with 16 game pieces per player. It is said to have been invented in Europe in the late 18th century.

Due to its simplicity of rules and complexity of strategy, it’s clear that chess has lasted the test of time. London hosted the first international chess tournament in 1851.

Examples of Enlightenment Board Games

Board Games in the Twentieth Century: A bit closer to home

The 20th century is when we see the invention of more recognizable games such as Scrabble, Risk, Trivial Pursuit, the Game of Life, Cluedo (Clue), Sorry, Civilization, Candyland, and Pictionary. These games were probably a staple in your home growing up and most likely the cause of your love (or extreme hatred) of board games today.

The Origins of Monopoly

One of the most well-known board games was invented in America in 1903 by a woman named Lizzie Magie. Called The Landlord’s Game, and was played on a square board that had various ‘properties’ around the outside that players could buy for differing amounts. It also had a jail, railroads, utilities… sound familiar?

Lizzie wanted to highlight how rent charges made property owners rich while keeping the tenants poor and preparing children for the unfairness of adult life. LOL. So now we know why Monopoly is the root of all domestic strife.

Conclusion: The game is afoot!

Board gaming is now a full-fledged industry with professional gamers, web shows, RPG web series, YouTube tutorials and playthroughs, indie games making history with record-breaking crowdfunding, and festivals dedicated solely to board games.

The market is constantly growing with companies specializing in board game accessories, shelving, storage, protective cases, mobile app scoring systems, and musical scores!

Not bad when you consider we only had sticks, stones, and a few knucklebones around 7,000 years ago.

Maybe it’s just me, but there’s something deeply comforting about the continuities of the human experience, especially positive ones, that show humanity at its most accessible. Our ancient ancestors may have differed from us in many ways, but we still have the commonality of board gaming that links us, helping us understand the people of the past.

We are all part of the same community, through the ages, who have enjoyed board games, still play variations of ancient games, and will continue to compete, strategize, socialize, and cooperate in the future, through the wonderful, adaptable, and timeless medium of board games.

What do you think? Do you know the history of your favorite board game? Which games would you like to try? Drop us a comment below and happy gaming!

Looking for games to play? Check out our video below:

The delightful hobby of playing games isn’t a modern invention. While people in ancient times didn’t have Pokemon Go to entertain themselves, they still spent hours of fun games both inside and outside of their households.

It is unknown who the innovators were who first started to play games. Perhaps the earliest games were created in prehistoric times, when gaming tools would have been made of wood or bone. It is impossible to conclude which is the oldest game in the world, but discoveries made at archaeological sites in Turkey, Syria, and Iraq have unearthed an ancient game that is still a mystery for archaeologists. It seems that games quickly became a very attractive source of entertainment, a valuable diplomatic gift, a portrayal of wealth, and desired artifacts for the afterlife (perhaps with a perception of extra leisure time following death?)

A screen painting depicting people of the Ming Dynasty playing Go, by Kanō Eitoku. ( Public Domain )

Ancient Games of Prestige

One can only imagine what kind of games normal people could play in the distant past and what were the usual ways to entertain children. Ancient resources describe some games, but it is unknown how many of them were available to everyone. Certainly, the number of people allowed to play some games increased over time, but it is unknown how many games were accessible to all in the earliest years.

• Gambling in Ancient Civilizations
• Before They Were Divination Tools, Tarot Cards Were Playing Cards

Archaeological evidence suggest that ancient Egyptians enjoyed board games. Even Queen Nefertari, the famous wife of Ramesses II, was portrayed in her tomb while playing a board game called Senet. The second most famous game in ancient Egypt was Mehen. It is unknown which game is older, however, material evidence presents Senet as the first.

The Egyptian game Senet. Public Domain

The first evidence of the game Mehen is as old as 3,000 BC. It was very popular during the Old Kingdom, and remained prevalent at least until the Third Intermediate Period. Mehen was played on a board which looks like a snail shell at first glance, but actually represents a snake. The most detailed playing pieces were shaped like lions. The set of pieces included about three to six game bits and a few small marbles.

Mehen game with gamestones, from Abydos, Egypt. ( CC BY 3.0 )

On the other hand, Senet was known in the Pre-Dynastic period. The game was played on a grid of 30 squares arranged in three rows. The exact rules are unknown, but it seems that it was played with two sets of pawns. The game was played as a way to contact deities. It was believed that the successful player was protected by gods like Ra, Thoth, and Osiris. The connection to the last god explains somewhat why this game was often placed within tombs. Senet was so popular that it was even referred to in the Book of the Dead.

A game box and pieces for playing the game of Senet found within the intact KV62 tomb of King Tutankhamun. ( CC BY-SA 2.0 )

The famous Royal Game of Ur differed from ancient Egyptian board games as it was also available to normal people. The game is about 5,000-years-old, and is one of the enlightening artifacts that exposes details on the mentality of the ancient people of Ur. It is a racing game based on a set of knucklebone dice. This game spread to neighboring countries and was also played by Egyptians.

The Royal Game of Ur. ( CC0)

Druidic Fun and Medieval Stones

Another very interesting game was one discovered in a tomb dated to the 1st century AD. It belonged to a person known as the Druid of Colchester. The discovery of this artifact was a lucky surprise because it seems the game is complete. An article titled Your Move Doctor! describes the game board and other finds the Colchester archaeologists made in Stanway:

»Delicate excavation gradually uncovered the fragile remains of the game board with the pieces still more or less as they had been left 2,000 years ago. The wooden board had rotted away almost entirely, except for its corners where close contact with its L-shaped metal corner pieces resulted in the survival of some wood. The gaming counters must have dropped by around 15 mm (the thickness of the board) as the wood decayed, and there seems to have been some slight sideways movement of the pieces, presumably because the board was jolted at some point in the burial process. But by and large, there had been surprisingly little movement of the pieces, and this has allowed us to guess at how the board was laid out. What seems to have happened is this. A roughly square pit was dug for the grave. The bottom was ledged so that one end was slightly deeper than the rest of it. A long wooden box (or at least some sort of wooden partitioning) was then placed in the deepest part of the grave so that it was a tight fit across one end of it. The gaming board was opened up and placed slightly askew on the bottom of the box. The pieces were set out in their starting positions, and a few pieces were moved as if a game had started (we will come to this in more detail later). The cremated remains of the dead person were placed on the board, either as a pile or in a bag — we cannot tell which. The medical instruments were then laid either directly on the board or on a shelf in the box. Various other items were placed in the box.”

Recreation of the game board which was dug up in a possible Druid’s grave ( liberatedway.wordpress.com)

This remarkable discovery is one of the most fascinating pieces of evidence about games in ancient Britain, however, it is unknown what the game’s origins are. Roman soldiers brought many games to Britain to play during long evenings next to the fireplace. The Roman game s often had their roots in the Middle East or Greece — which also had strong gaming traditions.

Illustration of alquerque being played, from ‘ Libro de los juegos’ (13th century). ( CC BY SA 4.0 )

In the later years, people still enjoyed playing board games. You can find some of the most magnificent examples of those games in very surprising places. For example, there are drawings of the Mayan king Montezuma II watching his nobles playing a game known as Patolli.

• Golf — The Ancient Origins and Hidden Beginnings of a World-Wide Sport
• Oldest Gaming Tokens Found in Turkey

During medieval times, Arabs and other groups from Somalia to Asia Minor, and from Persia to West Africa, played a game known as Tab. It seems that the game may have some similarities to the ancient Egyptian game Senet.

Patolli game being watched by Macuilxochitl. ( Public Domain )

The Heritage of Old Games

Nowadays, people still love to spend time playing games. Board games have also managed to remain popular over the millennia. However, they are no longer symbols of wealth and status, instead they are available for almost everyone to enjoy.

Many of the games from ancient times spread across countries and similar games appeared on every continent. People have needed entertainment and distraction from the daily toil since the beginning of humanity, and many have been able to find enjoyment and mental stimulation in board games.

An oil on canvas painting titled «The Game of Knucklebones (Les Osselets)» (1734) by Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin. ( Public Domain )

Top Image: Ancient Egyptians playing a board game, possibly Senet. Source: oudemeesterschilderijen

By Natalia Klimczak

Results: 10254831,
Time: 1.0173

The history of games dates to the ancient human past.^[3] Games are an integral part of all cultures and are one of the oldest forms of human social interaction. Games are formalized expressions of play which allow people to go beyond immediate imagination and direct physical activity. Common features of games include uncertainty of outcome, agreed upon rules, competition, separate place and time, elements of fiction, elements of chance, prescribed goals and personal enjoyment.

Games capture the ideas and worldviews of their cultures and pass them on to the future generation. Games were important as cultural and social bonding events, as teaching tools and as markers of social status. As pastimes of royalty and the elite, some games became common features of court culture and were also given as gifts. Games such as Senet and the Mesoamerican ball game were often imbued with mythic and ritual religious significance. Games like Gyan chauper and The Mansion of Happiness were used to teach spiritual and ethical lessons while Shatranj and Wéiqí (Go) were seen as a way to develop strategic thinking and mental skill by the political and military elite.

In his 1938 book, Homo Ludens, Dutch cultural historian Johan Huizinga argued that games were a primary condition of the generation of human cultures. Huizinga saw the playing of games as something that «is older than culture, for culture, however inadequately defined, always presupposes human society, and animals have not waited for man to teach them their playing».^[4] Huizinga saw games as a starting point for complex human activities such as language, law, war, philosophy and art.

Pre-modern[edit]

Some of the most common pre-historic and ancient gaming tools were made of bone, especially from the Talus bone, these have been found worldwide and are the ancestors of knucklebones as well as dice games.^[5] Dice were invented at least 5 000 years ago and early dice probably did not have six sides.^[6] These bones were also sometimes used for oracular and divinatory functions. Other implements could have included shells, stones and sticks.

Middle East and the Mediterranean[edit]

Board games likely originate from the ancient Near East, based on archeological findings. A series of 49 small carved painted figures found at the 5,000-year-old Başur Höyük burial mound in southeast Turkey could represent the earliest gaming pieces ever found. Similar pieces have been found in Tell Brak and Jemdet Nasr, but they were isolated.^[7] Researches have called the find Dogs and Pigs.^[8] The earliest board games were a pastime for the elite and were sometimes given as diplomatic gifts according to a study published in Antiquity.^[9] Another possibility is that boards were reserved for the elite, but lower classes played on boards scratched into stone or on the ground. Some archeologists think that stones carved with long rows, dated between 7000 BCE and 9000 BCE, were used for a mancala-like game.^[6]

The earliest known board games all used dice and were for two players.^[6] Among the earliest examples of a board game is senet, a game found in Predynastic and First Dynasty burial sites in Egypt (circa 3500 BCE and 3100 BCE, respectively) and in hieroglyphs dating to around 3100 BCE.^[10] The game was played by moving draughtsmen on a board of 30 squares arranged into three parallel rows of ten squares each. The players strategically moved their pieces based on the throw of sticks or bones. The goal was to reach the edge of the board first. Senet slowly evolved to reflect the religious beliefs of the Egyptians. The pieces represented human souls and their movement was based on the journey of the soul in the afterlife. Each square had a distinct religious significance, with the final square being associated with the union of the soul with the sun god Re-Horakhty.^[10] Senet may have also been used in a ritual religious context.

The Royal Game of Ur, or Game of Twenty Squares was played with a set of pawns on a richly decorated board and dates from 2600 to 2400 BCE.^[11] It was a race game which employed a set of knucklebone dice. This game was also known and played in Egypt. A Babylonian treatise on the game written on a clay tablet shows that the game had astronomical significance and that it could also be used to tell one’s fortune.^[12] The game of Ur was also popular with the lower classes, as attested by a 2,700-year-old graffiti version of the game, scratched onto a gateway to a palace in Khorsabad. Similar games have been found in Iran, Crete, Cyprus, Sri Lanka, and Syria.^[12] Excavations at Shahr-e Sukhteh («The Burnt City») in Iran have shown that the game also existed there around 3000 BCE. The artifacts include two dice and 60 checkers.^[13][14] Games such as Nard and the Roman game Ludus Duodecim Scriptorum (game of 12 points, also known as simply «dice», lat. «alea») may have developed from this Iranian game. The Byzantine game Tabula is a descendant of the game of twelve points.

The other example of a board game in ancient Egypt is «Hounds and Jackals», also known as 58 holes. Hounds and Jackals appeared in Egypt, around 2000 BC and was mainly popular in the Middle Kingdom.^[15][16] The game was spread to Mesopotamia in the late 3rd millennium BC and was popular until the 1st millennium BC.^[15] More than 68 gameboards of Hounds and Jackals have been discovered in the archaeological excavations in various territories, including Syria (Tell Ajlun, Ras el-Ain, Khafaje), Israel (Tel Beth Shean, Gezer), Iraq (Uruk, Nippur, Ur, Nineveh, Ashur, Babylon), Iran (Tappeh Sialk, Susa, Luristan), Turkey (Karalhuyuk, Kultepe, Acemhuyuk), Azerbaijan (Gobustan) and Egypt (Buhen, El-Lahun, Sedment).^{[17][15][18][19]} It was a race game for two players. The gaming board consisted of two sets of 29 holes. Ten small pegs with either jackal or dog heads were used for playing.^[20] It’s believed that the aim of the game was to begin at one point on the board and to reach with all figures at the other point on the board.^[21]

In Ancient Greece and in the Roman Empire, popular games included ball games (Episkyros, Harpastum, Expulsim Ludere – a kind of handball), dice games (Tesserae), knucklebones, Bear games, Tic-tac-toe (Terni Lapilli), Nine men’s morris (mola) and various types of board games similar to checkers. Both Plato and Homer mention board games called ‘petteia’ (games played with pessoi’, i.e. ‘pieces’ or ‘men’). According to Plato, they are all Egyptian in origin. The name ‘petteia’ seems to be a generic term for board game and refers to various games. One such game was called ‘poleis’ (city states) and was a game of battle on a checkered board.^[22]

The Romans played a derivation of ‘petteia’ called ‘latrunculin’ or Ludus latrunculorum (the soldiers’ game or the bandits’ game). It is first mentioned by Varro (116–27 BCE) and alluded to by Martial and Ovid. This game was extremely popular and was spread throughout Europe by the Romans. Boards have been found as far as Roman Britain. It was a war game for two players and included moving around counters representing soldiers, with ‘custodian’ captures made by getting one of the adversary’s pieces between two of one’s own.^[23]

After the Muslim conquest of Persia (638–651) Shatranj spread to the Arab world. While pre-Islamic chess sets represented Elephants, Horses, Kings and Soldiers; the Islamic prohibition against image worship led to increasing abstraction in chess set design. Islamic chess pieces were therefore simple cylindrical and rectangular shapes. The game became immensely popular during Abbasid Caliphate of the 9th century. The Abbasid Caliphs Harun al-Rashid and Al-Ma’mun were avid Shatranj players.^[24] During this period Muslim chess players published several treatises on chess problems (mansubat) and chess openings (ta’biyat). Elite players such as Al-Adli, al-Suli and Ar-Razi were called aliyat or «grandees» and played at the courts of the Caliphs and wrote about the game. Al-Adli (800–870) is known for writing Kitab ash-shatranj (book of chess), a comprehensive work on the game, including history, openings, endgames and chess problems. Al-Adli also developed a system for ranking players. During the reign of the Turko-Mongol conqueror Timur (1336–1405), a variant of chess known as Tamerlane chess was developed which some sources attribute to Timur himself who was known to be a fan of the game.

Various games in the Tables family were also quite popular and are known as ifranjiah in Arabic (meaning «Frankish») and as Nard in Iran. Many of the early Arabic texts which refer to these games often debate the legality and morality of playing them. This debate was settled by the eighth century when all four Muslim schools of jurisprudence declared them to be Haraam (forbidden), however they are still played today in many Arab countries. Other popular games included Mancala and Tâb.

Polo (Persian: chawgan, Arabic: sawlajan) was first played in Sassanid Persia.^[25] It passed from Sassanid Persia to the neighboring Byzantine Empire at an early date, and a Tzykanisterion (stadium for playing polo) was built by emperor Theodosius II (r. 408–450) inside the Great Palace of Constantinople.^[26] After the Muslim conquests, it passed to the Ayyubid and Mameluke dynasties, whose elites favored it above all other sports. Notable sultans such as Saladin and Baybars were known to play it and encourage it in their court.^[27]

Playing cards were imported from Asia and India and were popular during Mamluk dynasty Egypt, featuring polo sticks, coins, swords, and cups as suits.

Gallery[edit]

• 

• 

  Board game with inlays of ivory, rock crystal and glass paste, covered with gold and silver leaf, on a wooden base (Knossos, New Palace period 1600–1500 BCE, Heraklion Archaeological Museum, Crete)

• 

  Modern reconstruction of the Roman board game, Ludus latrunculorum (The bandits’ game or the soldier’s game), Museum Quintana of Archaeology, in Künzing, Germany

• 

  Roman Statue of a girl playing astragaloi 130 — 150 BCE. Berlin, Antikenmuseum.

• 

  Shatranj set, glazed fritware, 12th century

India[edit]

India saw a number of games in ancient period ranging from the various dice games to other board games. The use of cubical and oblong dice was common in the Indus Valley Harappan civilization (c. 2300 BC). Archaeological excavations have found gambling dice in monasteries and other Buddhist sites. The earliest textual mention of games in India is the Rig-Veda’s mention of the use of dice (c. 1000 BC). Texts such as the Mahabharata indicate that dice games were popular with Kings and royalty, and also had ceremonial purposes.^[28] Cowry shells were also widely used.

Another early reference is the list of Buddha games (circa 500 BC) which is a list from the Pali Canon that Buddhist monks were forbidden to play. This list mentions games on boards with 8 or 10 rows (Ashtapada and Daśapada), games which use floor diagrams (one game called Parihâra-patham is similar to hop-scotch), dice games and ball games. Ashtapada and Daśapada were race games.

Chaturanga (which means ‘quadripartite’ and also ‘army’), the predecessor of Chess, possibly developed in the Indian subcontinent or Central Asia during the Kushan (30–375 CE) or Gupta (320–550 CE) periods from an amalgamation of other game features and was transmitted to Sassanid Persia (where it was known as Shatranj) and China through the Silk Road. It was divided into four parts called angas, which were symbolic of the four branches of an army. Just like the real ancient Indian army, it had pieces called elephants, chariots, horses and soldiers, and was played to devise war strategies.

Checkmate comes from the Persian term in the game, ‘Shah-Mat’, meaning ‘the king is dead’.^[29] Another game named Chaturaji was similar but played with four sides of differing colors instead of two, however the earliest source for this four sided board game is Al-Biruni’s ‘India’, circa 1030 AD. Historians of Chess such as Yuri Averbakh have surmised that the Greek board game petteia may have had an influence on the development of early Chaturanga. Petteia games could have combined with other elements in the Greco-Bactrian and Indo-Greek Kingdoms.^[30][31]

The game of Carrom is said to have originated in the Indian subcontinent. Though there isn’t any particular proof, it is said that Indian Maharajas invented the game centuries ago. There was a finding of an ancient glass carrom board in Patiala, Punjab. Carrom gained popularity after World War I, and is still a widely popular board game in India.^[32]

Adding on, the game of Snakes and Ladders was previously known as Vaikuntapaali. «Vaikuntapaali» – which was originally a Hindu game. It has been speculated that this game was already being played in India as early as the 2 nd century AD. Others have credited the invention of the game to Dnyaneshwar (known also as Dnyandev), a Marathi saint who lived during the 13 th century AD. This game is also known by names like Gyan Chaupar (meaning ‘Game of Knowledge), Mokshapat, and Moksha Patamu.

The game now known as Ludo – was then called Pachisi (/pəˈtʃiːzi/)^{[33][circular reference]}. The board was made out of cloth or jute. A depiction of Pachisi is found in the caves of Ajanta Cavesin Maharashtra, showing that the game was quite popular in the Medieval Era. Cross and circle games such as Chaupar and Pachisi may be very old games, but so far their history has not been established prior to the 16th century. Chaupar was a popular gambling game at the court of Mughal emperor Akbar the Great (1556–1605). The emperor himself was a fan of the game and was known to play on a courtyard of his palace using slaves as playing pieces. Karuna Sharma of Georgia State University, in her research paper –«A visit to the mughal harem: Lives of Royal Women»^[34] noted the political side of these board games played at the court.

The game of seven stones is mentioned in the Bhāgvata Purāna, a text written in 1000 AD at the latest.^[35] Several variations of tag, such as kho kho, kabaddi, atya patya, and langdi,^[36] are believed to be hundreds or thousands of years old, with certain aspects of kho-kho and kabaddi possibly being mentioned in the Mahabharata (at or before 300 AD),^[37][38] and atya-patya being mentioned in the Naṟṟiṇai (at or before 300 AD).^[39]

East Asia[edit]

The extinct Chinese board game liubo was invented no later than the middle of the 1st millennium BCE, and was popular during the Warring States period (476 BCE – 221 BCE) and the Han dynasty (202 BCE – 220 CE).^[40][41] Although the game’s rules have been lost, it was apparently a race game not unlike Senet in that playing pieces were moved about a board using sticks thrown to determine movement.

Go, also known as Weiqi, Igo, or Baduk (in Chinese, Japanese, and Korean, respectively), is first mentioned in the historical annal Zuo Zhuan^[42] (c. 4th century BC^[43]). It is also mentioned in Book XVII of the Analects of Confucius^[43] and in two of the books of Mencius^[44] (c. 3rd century BC^[43]). In ancient China, Go was one of the four cultivated arts of the Chinese scholar gentleman, along with calligraphy, painting and playing the musical instrument guqin, and examinations of skill in those arts was used to qualify candidates for service in the bureaucracy. Go was brought to Korea in the second century BC when the Han dynasty expanded into the Korean peninsula and it arrived in Japan in the 5th or 6th century AD and it quickly became a favorite aristocratic pastime.

Chinese Chess or Xiangqi seems to have been played during the Tang dynasty, any earlier attestation is problematic. Several Xiangqi pieces are known from the Northern Song dynasty (960–1126). It is unknown exactly how Xiangqi developed. Other traditional East Asian Chess variants include Shogi (Japan) and Janggi (Korea).

Playing cards or tiles were invented in China^[45] as early as the 9th century during the Tang dynasty (618–907).^[46][47][48] The earliest unambiguous attestation of paper playing cards date back to 1294.^[49]

The modern game of Dominoes developed from early Chinese tile based games. What appears to have been the earliest references to gaming tiles are mentions of kwat pai, or «bone tiles», used in gambling, in Chinese writings no later than 900 AD.^[50] The earliest definite references to Chinese dominoes are found in the literature of the Song dynasty (960–1279), while Western-style dominoes are a more recent variation, with the earliest examples being of early-18th century Italian design.^[51] The modern tile game Mahjong is based on older Chinese card games like Khanhoo, peng hu, and shi hu.^[52]

The pre-modern Chinese also played ball games such as Cuju which was a ball and net game similar to football, and Chuiwan, which is similar to modern golf.

Gallery[edit]

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  A pair of Eastern Han dynasty (25–220 CE) ceramic tomb figurines of two gentlemen playing liubo

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  A screen painting depicting people of the Ming dynasty playing Go, by Kanō Eitoku

• 

  Players and observers alike absorbed in a Ssangryuk game during the Joseon era.

• 

Africa[edit]

The most widespread of the native African games is Mancala. Mancala is a family of board games played around the world, sometimes called «sowing» games, or «count-and-capture» games, which describes the gameplay. The word mancala:منقلة comes from the Arabic word naqala:نقلة meaning literally «to move». The earliest evidence of Mancala consists of fragments of pottery boards and several rock cuts found in Aksumite in Ethiopia, Matara (now in Eritrea), and Yeha (also in Ethiopia), which have been dated by archaeologists to between the 6th and 7th century CE. More than 800 names of traditional mancala games are known, and almost 200 invented games have been described. However, some names denote the same game, while some names are used for more than one game. Today, the game is played worldwide, with many distinct variants representing different regions of the world. Some historians believe that mancala is the oldest game in the world based on the archaeological evidence found in Jordan that dates around 6000 BCE. The game might have been played by ancient Nabataeans and could have been an ancient version of the modern mancala game.^[53]

Americas[edit]

Archaeologist Barbara Voorhies has theorized that a series of holes on clay floors arranged in c shapes at the Tlacuachero archaeological site in Mexico’s Chiapas state may be 5000-year-old dice-game scoreboards. If so this would be the oldest archaeological evidence for a game in the Americas.^[54]

Dice games were popular throughout the Americas. Patolli was one of the most popular board games played by mesoamerican peoples such as the Mayans, Toltecs and Aztecs, it was a race game played with beans or dice on square and oval-shaped boards and gambling was a key aspect of it. The Andean peoples also played a dice game which is called by the Quechua word pichca or pisca.

One of the oldest known ball games in history is the Mesoamerican ballgame (Ōllamaliztli in Nahuatl). Ōllamaliztli was played as far back as 1,400 BC and had important religious significance for the mesoamerican peoples such as the Maya and Aztec.^[55] The game evolved over time, but the main goal was to keep a solid rubber ball in play by striking it with various parts of the body or with tools such as rackets. The game may have served as a proxy for warfare and also had a major religious function. Formal ballgames were held as ritual events, often featuring human sacrifice, though it was also played for leisure by children and even women.

The indigenous North American peoples played various kinds of stickball games, which are the ancestors of modern lacrosse. Traditional stickball games were sometimes major events that could last several days. As many as 100 to 1,000 men from opposing villages or tribes would participate. The games were played in open plains located between villages, and the goals could range from 500 yards (460 m) to 6 miles (9.7 km) apart.^[56]

Europe[edit]

The Tafl games were a family of ancient Germanic and Celtic board games played across much of Northern Europe from earlier than 400 CE until the 12th century.^[57] Although the rules of the games were never explicitly recorded, it seems to have been a game with uneven forces (2:1 ratio) and the goal of one side was to escape to the side of the board with a King while the other side’s goal was to capture him. Tafl was spread by the Vikings throughout northern Europe, including Iceland, Britain, Ireland, and Lapland.^[58]

Chess was introduced to the Iberian emirate of Cordoba in 822 during the reign of Abd ar-Rahman II. By the middle of the 10th century it was being played in Christian Spain, Italy and Southern Germany. By 1200, it had reached Britain and Scandinavia.^[59] Initially there were many differing local Chess games with varying rules or assizes such as Short assize chess, Courier chess and Dice Chess.

An important source of medieval games is the Libro de los juegos, («Book of games»), or Libro de acedrex, dados e tablas, («Book of chess, dice and tables», in Old Spanish) which was commissioned by Alfonso X of Castile, Galicia and León in 1283.^[60] The manuscript contains descriptions and color illustrations of dice games, chess and tabula, a predecessor of backgammon. The book portrays these games within an astrological context, and some game variants are astronomically designed, such as a game titled «astronomical chess», played on a board of seven concentric circles, divided radially into twelve areas, each associated with a constellation of the Zodiac. The symbolism of the text indicates that some of these games were given metaphysical significance. Chess was also used to teach social and moral lessons by the Dominican friar Jacobus de Cessolis in his Liber de moribus hominum et officiis nobilium super ludo scacchorum (‘Book of the customs of men and the duties of nobles or the Book of Chess’). Published circa 1300, the book was immensely popular.

Other pre-modern European board games include Rithmomachy or «the philosophers game», Alquerque, Fox & Geese, nine men’s morris, draughts, Nim, Catch the Hare and the Game of the Goose. Dice games were widely played throughout Europe and included Hazard, chuck-a-luck, Glückshaus, shut the box and knucklebones.

Card games first arrived in Italy from Mamluk Egypt in the 14th century, with suits very similar to the Swords, Clubs, Cups and Coins and those still used in traditional Italian and Spanish decks.^[61] The four suits most commonly encountered today (spades, hearts, diamonds, and clubs) appear to have originated in France circa 1480.^[62] 1440s Italy saw the rise of tarot cards and this led to the development of tarot card games such as tarocchini, Königrufen and French tarot. The decks were also sometimes used for cartomancy.

Outdoor games were very popular during holidays and fairs and were played by all classes. Many of these games are the predecessors of modern sports and lawn games. Boules, lawn billiards (later brought indoors as billiards), skittles (an ancestor of modern ten pin bowling), medieval football, kolven, stoolball (an ancestor of cricket), jeu de paume (early racket-less tennis), horseshoes and quoits all predate the early modern era.

Gallery[edit]

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  Hnefatafl reconstruction

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  Wood carving of two youths playing ball on a misericord at Gloucester Cathedral, c. 1350.

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  Italian Sancai Bowl depicting a card game, Mid 15th Century

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  ‘Game of Skittles’, copy of 1660-68 painting by Pieter de Hooch in the Saint Louis Art Museum

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  Medieval illustration of tabula players from the 13th century Carmina Burana.

Modern games[edit]

Professional board games[edit]

Modern chess rules began taking shape in Spain and Italy during the 15th century with the adoption of the standard Queen and Bishop movements (initially called «Mad Queen chess»). Writings on chess theory also began to appear in the 15th century with the first text being the Repetición de Amores y Arte de Ajedrez (Repetition of Love and the Art of Playing Chess, 1497) by Spanish churchman Luis Ramirez de Lucena. Chess books by authors such as Ruy López de Segura and Gioachino Greco became widely studied. Chess was the favored game of Voltaire, Rousseau, Benjamin Franklin and Napoleon.^[63]

In 1851, the first international chess tournament was held in London and won by Adolf Anderssen. Soon after modern time control rules were adopted for competitive play. The first Official World Chess Championship was held in 1886 in the United States and won by Wilhelm Steinitz. By the 20th century, the game of Chess had developed into a professional sport with chess clubs, publications, player ratings and chess tournaments. The World Chess Federation (FIDE) was founded in 1924 in Paris.

A large number of Chess variants were also developed, with varying pieces, rules, boards and scoring. Among them are Kriegspiel, Capablanca Chess, Alice Chess, Circular chess, Three-dimensional chess, Hexagonal Chess, Chess with different armies, and Bobby Fischer’s Chess960.

In Japan, Go and Shogi became the major board games played at a professional level. Both games were promoted in Japan by the Tokugawa shogunate in the 17th century, and top players (Meijin) received government endowments. During the 20th century the Japan Shogi Association and the Japan Go Association were founded and began organizing professional tournaments. During the Qing dynasty, many Xiangqi clubs were formed and books published. The Chinese Xiangqi Association was formed in 1962, and Xiangqi tournaments are held worldwide by national Xiangqi associations.

In 1997 the first Mind Sports Olympiad was held in London and included traditional as well as modern board games. Other board games such as Backgammon, Scrabble and Risk are also played professionally with dedicated world championships.

Commercial board games[edit]

The Ancient Indian game of Pachisi was brought to the west by the British in the 1863 and an adaptation of the oldest game named Parcheesi was first copyrighted in the United States by EG Selchow & Co in 1869.^[64] A version of the game called Ludo was patented in 1896. A similar German race game, Mensch ärgere dich nicht («Man, don’t get annoyed»), became immensely popular with German troops during World War I. Another Indian game which was adopted by the West was Gyan chauper (a.k.a. Moksha Patam), popularly known as snakes and ladders. This was a game which was intended to teach lessons about karma and good and bad actions, the ladders represented virtues and the snakes vices. The moral lesson of the game was that spiritual liberation, or Moksha could only be achieved through virtuous action, while vice led to endless reincarnation. The game dates to medieval India where it was played by Jains and Hindus. A Buddhist version, known as «ascending the [spiritual] levels» (Tibetan: sa gnon rnam bzhags) is played in Nepal and Tibet^[65] while a Muslim version of the game played during the mughal period from the late 17th or early 18th centuries featured the 101 names of God. The game was first brought to Victorian England and it was published in the United States as Chutes and Ladders (an «improved new version of England’s famous indoor sport») by game pioneer Milton Bradley in 1943.

The first board game for which the name of its designer is known is ‘A Journey Through Europe or the Play of Geography’, a map-based game published in 1759 by John Jefferys, a Geography and writing teacher.^[66] Designed in England by George Fox in 1800, The Mansion of Happiness became the prototype for commercial board games for at least two centuries to follow. The first board game published in the United States was ‘Traveller’s Tour Through the United States’, published by New York City bookseller F. Lockwood in 1822. The earliest board games published in the United States were based upon Christian morality and included The Mansion of Happiness (1843) and The Game of Pope or Pagan, or The Siege of the Stronghold of Satan by the Christian Army (1844). While demonstrating the commercial viability of the ancient race game format, its moralistic overtones were countered by Milton Bradley in 1860 with the introduction of a radically different concept of success in The Checkered Game of Life, in which material successes came as a result of accomplishments such as attending college, marrying, and getting rich. Likewise the Game of the District Messenger Boy (1886) also focused on secular capitalist virtues rather than the religious.

First patented in 1904, The Landlord’s Game, designed by Elizabeth Magie,^[67] was originally intended to illustrate the economic consequences of Ricardo’s Law of Economic rent and the Georgist concept of a single tax on land value.^[68] A series of board games were developed from 1906 through the 1930s that involved the buying and selling of land and the development of that land. By 1933, a board game had been created much like the version of modern Monopoly by the Parker Brothers.

Though the first commercial version of the game of Battleship was Salvo, published in 1931 in the United States by the Starex company, the game itself dates to before World War I when it was played on paper by Russian officers.^[69] The French board game L’Attaque was first commercially released in 1910, having been designed two years prior as a military-themed imperfect knowledge game based upon the earlier Chinese children’s board game Dou Shou Qi. L’Attaque was subsequently adapted by the Chinese into Luzhanqi (or Lu Zhan Jun Qi), and by Milton Bradley into Stratego, the latter having been trademarked in 1960 while the former remains in the public domain. Jury Box, published in 1935, was the first murder mystery game which served as the basis for games like Cluedo.

Initially designed in 1938, Scrabble received its first mass-market exposure in 1952, two years prior to the release of Diplomacy, in 1954. Diplomacy was a game favored by John F. Kennedy, and Henry Kissinger. Originally released in 1957 as La Conquête du Monde («The Conquest of the World») in France, Risk was first published under its English title in 1959.

Starting with Gettysburg in 1958, the company Avalon Hill developed particular board wargames covering specific historical themes such as Midway, D-Day and PanzerBlitz. Board wargames such as Squad Leader, Tactics and Europa developed extremely complex and realistic rules. Avalon Hill’s Civilization introduced the use of the technology tree (or «tech tree»), variants of which have been implemented in numerous later board and video games such as Sid Meier’s Civilization. Recent wargames such as ‘A distant plain’, ‘Labyrinth’ and the satirical War on Terror have focused on counterinsurgency and contemporary terrorism.

A concentrated design movement towards the German-style board game, or Eurogame, began in the late 1970s and early 1980s in Germany,^[70] and led to the development of board games such as Carcassonne, The Settlers of Catan, Agricola, Ticket to ride and Puerto Rico.

Card games[edit]

During the 15th century card suits began to approach the contemporary regional styles and the court cards evolved to represent European royalty. Early European card games included Noddy, Triomphe, All Fours, Piquet, Basset, Hofamterspiel, Karnöffel, and Primero. In 1674 Charles Cotton published his Compleat Gamester, one of the first books which set out to outline rules for many card and dice games. During the mid 16th century, Portuguese traders introduced playing cards to Japan. The first reference to twenty-one, the precursor of Blackjack is found in a book by the Spanish author Miguel de Cervantes. Cervantes was a gambler, and the main characters of his tale Rinconete y Cortadillo are cheats proficient at playing ventiuna (twenty-one).

The game of Cribbage appears to have developed in the early 17th century, as an adaptation of the earlier card game Noddy. Pinochle was likely derived from the earlier Bezique, a game popular in France during the 17th century. 1742 saw the publication of Edmund Hoyle’s ‘Short Treatise on the Game of Whist’ which became one of the bestselling publications of the 18th century.^[71] Whist was widely played during the 18th and 19th centuries,^[72] having evolved from the 16th century game of Trump (or Ruff) by way of Ruff and Honours.^[73][74]

Baccarat first came to the attention of the public at large and grew to be widely played as a direct result of the Royal Baccarat Scandal of 1891,^[75][76] and bears resemblances to the card games Faro and Basset, both of which were very popular during the 19th century. The rules of Contract bridge were originally published in 1925, the game having been derived from Bridge games with rules published as early as 1886, Bridge games, in turn, having evolved from the earlier game of Whist.

The first documented game of poker dates from an 1833 Mississippi river steamer.^[77] During the American Civil War the game was popular with soldiers and additions were made including stud poker, and the straight. Modern tournament play became popular in American casinos after the World Series of Poker (WSOP) began, in 1970.^[78] Poker’s popularity experienced an unprecedented spike at the beginning of the 21st century, largely because of the introduction of online poker and hole-card cameras, which turned the game into a spectator sport. In 2009 the International Federation of Poker was founded in Lausanne, Switzerland, becoming the official governing body for poker.

Collectible card games or trading card games while bearing similarities to earlier games in concept, first achieved wide popularity in the 1990s. The first trading card game was ‘The Base Ball Card Game’ produced by The Allegheny Card Co. and registered on 4 April 1904. It featured 104 unique baseball cards with individual player attributes printed on the cards enabling each collector to build a team and play the game against another person.^[79] The 1990s saw the rise of games such as Magic: The Gathering and the Pokémon Trading Card Game.

Miniature wargaming[edit]

Miniature figure games have their origin in a German chess variant called ‘The King’s Game’, created in 1780 by Helwig, Master of Pages to the Duke of Brunswick. It had a board with 1,666 squares of varying types of terrain, with pieces representing modern military units.^[80] In the early 19th century, the Prussian army developed war games or ‘kriegspieler’, with staff officers moving pieces around on a game table, using dice rolls to indicate chance or «friction» and with an umpire scoring the results. After the stunning Prussian victories against Austria and France in the 19th century, the Austrians, French, British, Italians, Japanese and Russians all began to make use of wargaming as a training tool. By 1889 wargaming was firmly embedded in the culture of the U.S. Navy.^[81]

The first non-military wargame rules were developed by Naval enthusiast and analyst Fred T. Jane in 1898. H. G. Wells published rules in his Floor Games (1911) and Little Wars (1913) designed for wargaming with toy soldiers. In 1956, Jack Scruby, known as the «Father of Modern Miniature Wargaming» organized the first miniatures convention and he was also a manufacturer of military miniatures and editor of a wargaming newsletter. Miniature war games became affordable and mainstream in the late 1950s with the rise of cheaper miniature production methods by miniature figure manufacturers such as Scruby Miniatures, Miniature Figurines and Hinchliffe. During the 1980s there was a boom in miniature wargaming with the development of games such as Warhammer Fantasy Battle and Warhammer 40,000. Today miniature wargaming includes most historical eras, fantasy and science fiction settings as well as Naval wargaming (Don’t Give Up the Ship!, General Quarters), Air wargaming and Space combat wargames (Full Thrust, Attack Vector: Tactical).

Role playing games[edit]

Early role-playing games such as those made by M. A. R. Barker and Greg Stafford developed from miniature figure wargames. Gary Gygax of the University of Minnesota’s wargaming society developed a set of rules for a late medieval milieu. This game was called Chainmail and was a historical game, but later editions included an appendix for adding fantasy elements such as spells, wizards and dragons. By 1971, Dave Arneson had developed a miniatures game called Blackmoor which contained elements that would become widespread in fantasy gaming: hit points, experience points, character levels, armor class, and dungeon crawls. Arneson and Gygax then met and collaborated on the first Dungeons & Dragons game which was released in 1974 by Gygax’s TSR. The game was very successful and several other games such as the Science fiction RPG Traveller and the generic GURPS system followed in imitation. In the late 1970s TSR launched Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (AD&D) which saw an expansion of rulebooks and additions. The 80s saw several Dungeons & Dragons controversies such as the claims that the game promoted Satanism and witchcraft. Traditional Roleplaying games were the basis for the modern Role-playing video game.

Other indoor games[edit]

In colonial America, the game of hazard was called crapaud by the French in New Orleans (a French word meaning «toad» in reference to the original style of play by people crouched over a floor or sidewalk). This was later shortened to craps and after several adaptations became the most popular gambling dice game in the United States.^[82] Sic bo was introduced into the United States by Chinese immigrants in the 20th century and is now a popular casino game. Another casino game, roulette, has been played since the late 18th century, and was probably adapted from English wheel games such as Roly-Poly and E.O.

With the possible exception of carrom (a game whose origins are uncertain), the earliest table games appear to have been the cue sports, which include carom billiards, pool, or pocket billiards, and snooker. The cue sports are generally regarded as having developed into indoor games from outdoor stick-and-ball lawn games (retroactively termed ground billiards),^[83] and as such to be related to trucco, croquet and golf, and more distantly to the stickless bocce and bowls.

Dominoes, which originate in China and date as far back as the Song dynasty (A.D. 1120), first appeared in Europe during the 18th century. The Chinese tile game mahjong developed from a Chinese card game known as mǎdiào sometime during the 17th century and was imported into the United States in the 1920s.

Outdoor games[edit]

Modern sports developed from different European games, many of them played by European royalty. Tennis developed in France, French kings like Francis I of France (1515–47) and Henry II (1547–59) were well known players. Golf originated in Scotland, where the first written record of golf is James II’s banning of the game in 1457. The ban was lifted by James IV in 1502 who also played golf. Cricket can be traced back to Tudor times in early 16th-century England and the modern rules of association football and rugby football are based on mid-19th century rules made to standardise the football games played by English public schools. These team sports were spread worldwide by the influence of the British empire.

Electronic games[edit]

The earliest reference to a purely electronic game appears to be a United States patent registration in 1947 for what was described by its inventors as a «cathode ray tube amusement device».^[84] Through the 1950s and 1960s the majority of early computer games ran on university mainframe computers in the United States. Beginning in 1971, video arcade games began to be offered to the public for play. The first home video game console, the Magnavox Odyssey, was released in 1972.^[85][86]

The golden age of arcade video games began in 1978 and continued through to the mid-1980s. A second generation of video game consoles, released between 1977 and 1983, saw increased popularity as a result of this, though this eventually came to an abrupt end with the video game crash of 1983. The home video game industry was eventually revitalized with the third generation of game consoles over the next few years, which saw a shift in the dominance of the video game industry from the United States to Japan. This same time period saw the advent of the personal computer game, specialized gaming home computers, early online gaming, and the introduction of LED handheld electronic games and eventually handheld video games.

References[edit]

When I began to research the history of crosswords for my recent book on the subject, I was sort of shocked to discover that they weren’t invented until 1913. The puzzle seemed so deeply ingrained in our lives that I figured it must have been around for centuries—I envisioned the empress Livia in the famous garden room in her villa, serenely filling in her cruciverborum each morning­­. But in reality, the crossword is a recent invention, born out of desperation. Editor Arthur Wynne at the New York World needed something to fill space in the Christmas edition of his paper’s FUN supplement, so he took advantage of new technology that could print blank grids cheaply and created a diamond-shaped set of boxes, with clues to fill in the blanks, smack in the center of FUN. Nearly overnight, the “Word-Cross Puzzle” went from a space-filling ploy to the most popular feature of the page.

Still, the crossword didn’t arise from nowhere. Ever since we’ve had language, we’ve played games with words. Crosswords are the Punnett square of two long-standing strands of word puzzles: word squares, which demand visual logic to understand the puzzle but aren’t necessarily using deliberate deception; and riddles, which use wordplay to misdirect the solver but don’t necessarily have any kind of graphic component to work through.

WORD SQUARES

The direct precursor of the crossword grid is the word square, a special kind of acrostic puzzle in which the same words can be read across and down. The number of letters in the square is called its “order.” While 2-squares and 3-squares are easy to create, in English, by the time you reach order 6, you’re very likely to get stuck. An order 10 square is a holy grail for the logologists, that is, the wordplay experts.

The ancient Romans loved word puzzles, beginning with their city’s name: the inverse of ROMA, to the delight of all Latin lovers, is AMOR. The first known word square, the so-called Sator Square, was found in the ruins of Pompeii. The Sator Square (or the Rotas Square, depending on which way you read it; word order doesn’t matter in Latin) is a five-by-five, five-word Latin palindrome: SATOR AREPO TENET OPERA ROTAS (“the farmer Arepo works a plow”).

The Sator Square is the “Kilroy Was Here” of the Roman Empire, scrawled from Rome to Corinium (in modern England) to Dura-Europos (in modern Syria). It’s unclear why this meme was such a thing. “Arepo” is a hapax legomenon, meaning that the Sator Square is the only place it shows up in the entire corpus of Latin literature—the best working theory is that it’s a proper name invented to make the square work.

But the Sator Square has more tricks up its sleeve. If you reshuffle the letters around a central n, you can make a Greek cross that reads PATERNOSTER (“our father”) in both directions. Four leftover letters—two a’s and two o’s—stand for alpha and omega. Early Christians might have used the square as a discreet way to signal their presence to one another.

Through the Middle Ages and beyond, the Sator Square persisted as a magical object, gaining a reputation as a talisman against fire, theft, and illness. The devil, apparently, gets confused by palindromes, not knowing which way to read, so a five-by-five two-dimensional palindrome is an extra-powerful snare. The square appears etched on tablets as prevention against mad dogs, a snakebite cure, and a charm to protect cattle from witchcraft.

While word squares maintained their quasimagical reputation for hundreds of years, other visual word games became popular during the nineteenth century. The Victorian era saw a boomlet of visual word games, such as double acrostics, that paved the way pretty directly for the crossword. Queen Victoria, an ur-cruciverbalist, constructed the “Windsor Enigma” to teach her subjects how to bring coals to Newcastle:

Oxford mathematician Charles Dodgson, better known by his pseudonym Lewis Carroll, invented a game called doublets, in which you transform one word into another of equal length, changing a single letter at a time, using as few moves as possible; all the linking steps also have to be legitimate words. As in a crossword, the process of moving stepwise from letter to letter forces you to think about all the possible word combinations. And each doublet has a theme, a kind of mini-alchemy: Drive PIG into STY. Raise FOUR to FIVE. Make WHEAT into BREAD.

But the particular magic of the crossword came when riddles entered the grid.

RIDDLES

Crossword clues trace their origins to riddles, ancient and ubiquitous little games that run the gamut from divine spells to dick jokes. The Exeter Book, an eleventh-century Old English manuscript, has about a hundred riddles of all types: a sweet ditty about a bookworm, barely veiled double entendres about swords in scabbards and bread rising in ovens, and solemn liturgical hymns. There are “about” a hundred because these riddles are still maddening their readers. In the ten centuries since their composition, scholars haven’t conclusively solved every one, which also means that some of the things that get treated as separate puzzles might actually be one giant long riddle, or what we think is a long clue might have two or three answers. Riddle snark is a cottage industry among medievalists, who love to argue about solutions to the riddles, mostly by means of long, ostentatiously thorough academic articles. There ain’t no scholarly rap battle like a multigenerational face-off over whether Riddle 86’s answer is an “organ” or a “one-eyed seller of garlic.”

There are four basic ways that riddle logic operates: true riddles, wordplay, neck riddles, and anti-riddles. The enigma, a metaphorical statement that’s designed to feel like it has one solution but actually contains unresolvable multitudes, is different. Think of koans, like What is the sound of one hand clapping?, or meditative statements like 1 Corinthans 13:12: “For now we see through a glass, darkly.” These are logic knots that want to stay knotted, or (k)not solved.

Riddles, on the other hand, do want to be solved.

TRUE RIDDLES

A true riddle transforms thing A into solution B (A—>B). Take Little Nancy Etticoat:

Little Nancy Etticoat
In a white petticoat
And a red nose;
The longer she stands,
The shorter she grows.

The answer? A candle: the “white petticoat” is the wax, the “red nose” the flame, and of course the longer you leave a candle standing, the shorter it’s going to become. True riddles rely on a logical connection that’s not obvious on the surface, so you have to twist your brain to get it. They’ve been around for millennia, and the best have been repeated for that long. Take, for example, “What has six legs but walks on four feet?” (Answer: a horse and rider.) Or the Sphinx’s riddle: “What walks on four legs in the morning, two in the afternoon, and three in the evening?” (A human: crawling as a baby, standing upright as an adult, and using a cane when old.)

When riddles become baked into culture, they can turn into in-jokes. Consider an egg. Egg’s a great solution for lots of images: a house without doors or windows; a house that cannot be reentered; begets parent; and more. In fact, one egg riddle has become synonymous with the whole genre of riddling itself: Humpty-Dumpty—or, if you prefer, his counterparts: Boule Boule (France), or Tille Lille (Sweden), or Wirgele-Wargele (Germany), or Hümpelken-Pümpelken (also Germany)—was originally printed as a riddle with the answer “egg.” The true riddle can thus become a meta-riddle.

WORDPLAY RIDDLES

A wordplay riddle does the same thing as a true riddle, but adds an extra layer of trickiness (A—>∀—>B). Wordplay riddles include puns and other bits of linguistic gymnastics to take the anticipated answer to the next step. A rebus, for example, uses letters as part of the clue. One simple French rebus riddle uses just two letters—G and a—to be read as J’ai grand appetit (“G grand, a petit”). A syllable riddle acts as a game of charades, connecting seemingly disparate parts, as in this eighteenth-century example:

My first is expressive of no disrespect,
But I never call you by it when you are by;
If my second you still are resolved to reject,
As dead as my whole, I shall presently lie.

The answer: “herring” (her + ring).

NECK RIDDLES

A neck riddle gives a solution that would be impossible for the solver to arrive at without context (?—>B). The term “neck riddle” comes from stories in which the hero uses an unsolvable riddle to outwit a judge and save himself from being hanged: a neck riddle saves your neck. One typical folktale example:

As I walked out and in again
From the dead the living came.
Six there is and seven there’ll be,
So tell me this riddle or set me free.

The answer is a horse’s skull that contains a bird hatching eggs; six have hatched but one is still to come. A neck riddle has an answer that’s so specific it’s deeply unsatisfying, because that’s precisely the point: after all, it’s not actually a solvable, it’s got to be such a stumper that you get off scot-free. Often that’s achieved through overprecision, but sometimes a change in perspective will do the trick. In The Hobbit, our hero Bilbo Baggins bests Gollum in a riddle contest by asking him the unknowable “what’s in my pocket?”

ANTI-RIDDLES

An anti-riddle is one that tricks the reader by looking like a riddle but not actually being one at all (A—>A). “Why did the chicken cross the road?” smells like a riddle, but the answer, “To get to the other side,” is just the literal answer. “What’s black and white and red/read all over?” might not be “a newspaper” but rather “a zebra with blood on it,” defying the anticipated pun with the unexpectedly ultraliteral.

 *

If you’re a piece of artificial intelligence software, you might have a hard time solving a crossword. You’d have to separate the puzzle into two separate strands of problems to tackle the issue: how to figure out what a clue is saying (or, rather, what it’s precisely not saying); and how to fill the letters in the grid in the way that makes the most sense. Crosswords force the brain to cross wires and solve both these problems at once, balancing the visual-spatial part of the brain with the logic-pun part of the brain. This is part of the reason why even the best crossword-solving AI in the world isn’t yet better than the best human: the AI can fill in the grid pretty quickly, but in terms of resolving that grid through riddle logic, humans are still a step ahead. The most innovative aspect of the crossword is that, through braiding together tasks the mind already wanted to do, it created an itch we didn’t know we had. And yet we’ve always been primed to solve them.

Adrienne Raphel is the author of Thinking inside the Box: Adventures with Crosswords and the Puzzling People Who Can’t Live without Them.