There’s something about the clack of dice, the push and pull of game pieces and the giddy competitive spirit that brings people together to share a great time. Board games have been a part of human life for thousands of years and are still a favorite pastime today, with new ones constantly popping up. With a recent resurgence in popularity thanks to titles like Ticket to Ride, it’s no surprise that more people than ever are sitting down for a night of fun with friends and family. But did you know that many of these beloved classics are steeped in history?
The earliest board games date back to ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt. Archaeologists have found stone slabs pecked with rows of shallow divots, which are believed to be the basis for mancala-like games. Although no ad hoc game pieces were found with the slabs, researchers suspect that players would have filled them with seeds or other ad hoc tokens.
In the 19th century, a boom in board games emerged. With the advent of mass production, games could be produced more cheaply and easily. The result was a host of games, from simple ones with no theme or narrative, such as checkers or snakes and ladders, to those that evoked real-life situations, such as Advanced Squad Leader or Cluedo.
To understand how these ancient games worked, scholars turned to the British Museum’s archives. A curator and Assyriologist named Irving Finkel interpreted cuneiform script on a clay tablet and discovered the rules to a game called Twenty Squares. The rules were complex, but the idea was simple: opposing players raced five game pieces, each representing a bird of different value (swallow, storm-bird, raven, rooster or eagle), across the board’s 20 squares according to a course dictated by dice rolls.