Humans Have Been Playing Board Games For 5,000 Years Already

2013.08.16

Even our ancestors had to find something to pass their time with. Found in a tomb near Siirt in southeast Turkey, archaeologists believe they have found the oldest gaming tokens dating back to 5,000 years.

The set is made up of 49 small, carved stones that would look like pieces of a chess set, if chess existed back then. It comes in black and white, and some in red, blue and green. The shapes don't really give away how they were used but some are carved to look like pigs, dogs and pyramids while some others were a little more generic like cylinders, dice, and flat round discs. Farmville you say?

Haluk Sağlamtimur of Ege University in İzmir, Turkey told Discovery News:

[Previous, similar pieces] were found as isolated, single objects, therefore they were believed to be counting stones. On the contrary, our gaming pieces were found all together in the same cluster. It's a unique finding, a rather complete set of a chess like game. We are puzzling over its strategy. According to distribution, shape and numbers of the stone pieces, it appears that the game is based on the number 4.

Board games probably originated in the Fertile Crescent over 5,00 0years ago as the stones were found in one of Başur Höyük's nine graves, a site that dates back to 7,000 BC and was located on a trade route between Mesopotamia and East Anatolia.

[Discovery News]