{"id":1183450,"date":"2023-09-19T15:34:42","date_gmt":"2023-09-19T19:34:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/?p=1183450"},"modified":"2023-09-19T15:34:42","modified_gmt":"2023-09-19T19:34:42","slug":"archaeologists-find-500-year-old-board-game-carved-in-ruins-of-polish-castle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/?p=1183450","title":{"rendered":"Archaeologists find 500-year-old board game carved in ruins of Polish castle"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\n \"game<\/p>\n

Enlarge<\/a> \/<\/span> Archaeologists excavating the ruins of an early 16th-century Polish castle discovered a carved strategy board game called Mill. (credit: Tomasz Olszacki)<\/p>\n<\/figure>\n

<\/div>\n

Some 500 years ago, construction workers in the midst of building \u0106miel\u00f3w Castle<\/a> in Poland carved a simple game board into a slab of the sandstone floor as a diversion for their leisure time. At least that’s one possible scenario for the existence of a game board recently discovered<\/a> by archaeologists in the castle ruins; it’s also possible the board could have been carved by children or by servants after the castle was completed, or it may have been meant as a symbolic message.<\/p>\n

As previously reported<\/a>, there is archaeological evidence for various kinds of board games from all over the world<\/a> dating back millennia: Senet<\/a> and Mehen<\/a> in ancient Egypt, for example, or a strategy game called ludus latrunculorum<\/a> (“game of mercenaries”) favored by Roman legions. A 4,000-year-old board discovered last year at an archaeological site in Oman’s Qumayrah Valley might be a precursor to an ancient Middle Eastern game known as the Royal Game of Ur<\/a> (or the Game of Twenty Squares), a two-player game that may have been one of the precursors to backgammon (or was simply replaced in popularity by backgammon). Like backgammon, it’s essentially a race game in which players compete to see who can move all their pieces along the board before their opponent.<\/p>\n

This latest discovery isn’t quite as old as that in terms of the actual carved board, but the game could be just as ancient. According to archaeologist Tomasz Olszacki, it’s a two-person strategy board game called Mill, also known as Nine Men’s Morris<\/a>, Merels, or “cowboy checkers” in North America. The earliest-known Mill game board was found carved into the roofing slabs of an Egyptian temple at Kurna, which likely predates the Common Era. Historians believe it was well-known to the Romans, who may have learned of the game through trade routes.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Read 4 remaining paragraphs<\/a> | Comments<\/a><\/p>\n


\n
\nSource: Ars Technica – Archaeologists find 500-year-old board game carved in ruins of Polish castle<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Enlarge \/ Archaeologists excavating the ruins of an early 16th-century Polish castle discovered a carved strategy board game called Mill. (credit: Tomasz Olszacki) Some 500 years ago, construction workers in the midst of building \u0106miel\u00f3w Castle in Poland carved a … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1183451,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[27,110],"tags":[73],"class_list":["post-1183450","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ars-technica","category-unfiltered-rss","tag-ars-technica"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1183450","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1183450"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1183450\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1183451"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1183450"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1183450"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1183450"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}