Meanwhile, proto-backgammon games entered western civilization through Ancient Greece, which was just across the Aegean Sea from backgammon’s ancestral home in the cradle of civilization. Finally, both pachisi and backgammon have solitary pieces as very weak, and multiple pieces as strong.Įlsewhere in Asia, countries like China, Japan, Korea, and Thailand also had their own similar games. Both also require that you first move all your men into your home sector before you can get them off the board. Both games have the same objective: get your little “men” (that’s the technical term for “pieces”) off the board. The game is similar enough to backgammon to be in the running as a possible ancestor. The other is chess, but chess gets plenty of attention, and we’re talking about backgammon here. Pachisi-branded in America as “Parcheesi”-is one of the two most famous board games to come out of medieval India.
The Egyptians even had a mechanical dice box that would roll the dice for you-something later replicated by the Greeks and Romans-to stop cheaters.
Sets were found in King Tut’s tomb, one set was found with Queen Hatshepsut’s name on it, and many tomb paintings show both rich and poor people shooting dice over their boards. Skipping ahead a few thousand years, it looks like Egyptian Pharaohs had another game that may have been a precursor to modern backgammon. 3 What Ancient Egypt has to do with the history of Backgammon This one had stacks of pieces under the board: dice as well as player pieces in two colors. Not long after, in another part of ancient Mesopotamia, archaeologists found another board, similar to those discovered by Woolley. Wooley found five artifacts that looked something like today’s backgammon boards, but probably more expensive: wood boards, decorated with mosaics of bone, shell, lapis lazuli (a very blue rock), black limestone, and black paste. In the 1920s, British archaeologist Sir Leonard Woolley was in modern-day Iraq excavating Ur of the Chaldees-the city described as the birthplace of Abraham in the Hebrew Bible. Everyone started doing it, and one or more of these early dicey-board games may have been backgammon’s earliest ancestor. “Dice, but more fun” was a common desire across civilizations. Look, dice are great, and we all love a good round of “guess a number, then see if you roll that number.” But even the ancients got bored, and boredom is the mother of invention, at least when it comes to creating board games. 2 Game Boards, The Origin of Backgammon and its Earliest Sumerian Ancestor Gaming dice took many forms, but the six-sided cube dice became the most popular-in part because they were easier to make than 20-sided Dungeons & Dragons dice, but rolled better than pyramidal dice. So, people would shoot dice and bet on the outcomes for money, rather than f*cking with space-time and pulling back the veil of predetermination. For the ancients, truth divination wasn’t for fun, however, and treating it like a game was a stupid thing to do.īut you know what wasn’t stupid? Gambling. Now, I’m not so sure throwing bones and bird guts have ever accurately predicted the future, but it gave folks something to do to pass the time. Haruspices in Ancient Rome later did something similar with bird entrails, but that was more of a hassle because you’d have to wash your hands after. Originally, tribal priests would roll dice made from animal bones in order to predict the future. Speaking of, throwing bones is likely the starting point for backgammon-and all dice games, really. If you don’t remember exactly where Sumer was, I’ll throw you a bone: Southern Iraq, to the 21st-century person. Its earliest ancestor may well have come from ancient Mesopotamia-Sumer, to be specific. You’re telling me! For a little bit of context reference, that’s almost 2,000 years prior to the Trojan War.īackgammon actually had its beginnings not far from Troy (modern-day Anatolia, Turkey). And, it turns out, few surviving games are as old as backgammon - which has a lineage dating back 5,000 years. So, why the change of tack? Well, I like old things.
#Now boarding game hacked how to
I won’t tell you how to play it, because I already forget, but it’s basically a dice game for two players, where each is trying to get all of their pieces off the board first. For me this past winter, that game was backgammon. Or you might finally try out an even older game. Then I’d go play Ecco the Dolphin on my Sega Genesis.īut as you get older and occasionally need something to do because the power’s gone out, you find yourself trying things that you once found aggressively dull, like Soviet-era editions of Trivial Pursuit. Ever since I was a little kid, part of my relationship with my dad consisted of the following: He’d pull out what looked like a little wooden briefcase and say, “Want to play some backgammon?”
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