Ancient Board Games

When did people start playing games?

Reference: http://www.ccgs.com/games/index.htm (28/09/10)

 Games can fall under many different categories but not everything is relevant to board games. I would assume people would have started playing games as soon as any kind of leisure time would come up in their lives. Take babies for example, a natural paternal instinct is to keep the baby happy with basic games such as peek-a-boo and latter in an infants life with Hide and seek. Games seem to be a part of human nature, and are a useful educational source, as well as fun.

 The earliest board game to date is "The Royal Game of Ur" -- which was discovered in 1926 – 1927 by Sir Leonard Woolley in royal tombs in what is now Iraq.

The following rules are taken from http://www.ccgs.com/games/ur.htm (28/09/10)

Design, and How The Royal Game of UR is Played

The game board consists of three rows of eight squares, with two squares -- the fifth and sixth on the top and bottom -- left out.  The board is marked with rosettes.

The games found in the city of UR were accompanied by pyramidical dice, each one with a corner shaved flat -- and each with two of its four corners decorated or inlaid in some way to make them stand out.  When rolled, each die thus had a fifty-fifty chance of coming up "marked" or "unmarked" -- an unusual configuration and method, then or now, when we would use the flip of a coin. Each game had six dice -- two sets, one for each player -- and the rolling of three dice would then give four possible outcomes: one marked, two marked, three marked or no marked sides, representing moves of one, two, three or (no marks) four spaces. Four marks allowed not only a move, but another roll.
 Fourteen playing pieces in two different colors -- seven for each player -- are moved around the board according to the throw of the dice (although some versions have five per player) -- with the object being to bear all your pieces off the board first.  Rules written in cuneiform on tablets dating back to about 200 B.C. have provided most of the rules for the game of that time, except that there was no explanation of the direction of travel, so that still leaves room for some discussion as to how the game was played.  The most common rules have pieces remaining on their own side of the board when not sharing the middle. The more logical is based on the distance between the rosettes marking the board and the maximum possible distance moved with a throw of the three dice -- four spaces. 
 Using the latter rules, the two colors first enter the board above the middle rosette on opposite sides -- black on the top, white on the bottom. They then head along to the rosette on their path on the long side of the board, then turn and return across the middle. Thus they start off alone on their path, and only meet conflict with the opponent when the pieces trek along the middle track; if a roll allows the player to land a piece occupied by the opponent's, then that piece is off the board and must start over -- with the exception of pieces resting on squares marked by rosettes -- they are safe and cannot be knocked off.  Once the pieces cross the narrow middle bridge, they then follow a looping path around the small end -- first heading for the rosette on the opponent's side and then around the end squares to the rosette on their own side of the board, from which point they can bear off the board (exact throws are not required).
The popular version of the game has pieces remaining on their own sides or on the middle track -- not crossing in the final portion to the opponent's side -- but this makes for less exciting conflict and also less sense in terms of the distance from one rosette to the next.

Mah Jongg

Mah Jongg is an ancient Chinese game, which throughout history has been adapted by many different countries/cultures. The original game itself is said to be 4000+ years old.

The game started as paper cards but was eventually adapted into a stone or wooden “tile”. The game itself was only for the aristocracy and the rules were not disclosed until China became a republic early in the last century, which I would assume would mean the game could have been played illegally amongst the common people and would have had many different sets of rules.

Mah Jongg wasn’t played outside of china until 1920, when it was taken and played in America and eventually spread over the world.

Dice Games

Maybe before board games, dice or games involving stones, seeds, animal bones and other round items were used as a form of entertainment.

Old examples include;

Dice made from the knuckle bones of Sheep or Goats, rolled on to a flat surface that would land one of four ways and valued at 1, 3, 4 and 6. This would have certainly been an early way to keep scores or even a very early way to gamble.

Another example would be using dice to move pieces along a board, with the dice number being how far you move along the board. This is very similar to Snakes and ladders. These types of games would have obviously evolved around the cultures playing adding in obstacles and other variants that would make the game more interesting and prolong the playing experience, making varied types of playing experiences depending on the players wants or timescales.