The Persistence Of Games

There is a historian and archivist at the British Museum who studies games and has also an expert on Sumerian culture and recently they've unearthed a game in the ruins of ancient Sumer called the royal game of Ur./nIt is a game that was played throughout the Near East for something like 3,500 years and is still being played in some form among some communities in South India today./nIt is like 3,500 year old game, basically you know, where they found sort of ancient Egyptian game that's very similar to Cribbage. It's like a racing game if you will where you're moving a peg on a board that's like 3,000 years old./nObviously that play pattern endures to this day, you can go and buy a Hasbro version of it at a toy store so backgammon may be even older than that Egyptian Cribbage game and it's still being played pretty much the same way today that it's been played historically./nGo has been played in Japan and in East Asia for 2,500 years. Chess is probably 1,500 years old and it's hard to imagine but you could really have sat down with Leonardo da Vinci and played a credible game of chess./nCastling I think is probably a new invention but other than that it's pretty much the same as it's been./nEven our modern examples right like Wist which we think of as contract bridge is probably 400.