History of games
Games like Gyan chauper and The Mansion of Happiness were used to teach spiritual and ethical lessons while Shatranj and Wéiqí (Go) were seen as a way to develop strategic thinking and mental skill by the political and military elite.
[4] Huizinga saw games as a starting point for complex human activities such as language, law, war, philosophy and art.
[15] More than 68 gameboards of Hounds and Jackals have been discovered in the archaeological excavations in various territories, including Syria (Tell Ajlun, Ras el-Ain, Khafaje), Palestine (Tel Beth Shean, Gezer), Iraq (Uruk, Nippur, Ur, Nineveh, Ashur, Babylon), Iran (Tappeh Sialk, Susa, Luristan), Turkey (Karalhuyuk, Kultepe, Acemhuyuk), Azerbaijan (Gobustan) and Egypt (Buhen, El-Lahun, Sedment).
Elite players such as Al-Adli, al-Suli and Ar-Razi were called aliyat or "grandees" and played at the courts of the Caliphs and wrote about the game.
This debate was settled by the eighth century when all four Muslim schools of jurisprudence declared them to be Haraam (forbidden), however they are still played today in many Arab countries.
[25] It passed from Sassanid Persia to the neighboring Byzantine Empire at an early date, and a Tzykanisterion (stadium for playing polo) was built by emperor Theodosius II (r. 408–450) inside the Great Palace of Constantinople.
[27] Playing cards were imported from Asia and India and were popular during Mamluk dynasty Egypt, featuring polo sticks, coins, swords, and cups as suits.
Just like the real ancient Indian army, it had pieces called elephants, chariots, horses and soldiers, and was played to devise war strategies.
Historians of chess such as Yuri Averbakh have surmised that the Greek board game petteia may have had an influence on the development of early chaturanga.
Karuna Sharma of Georgia State University noted the political side of these board games played at the court.
[34] Several variations of tag, such as kho kho, kabaddi, atya patya, and langdi (sport),[35] are believed to be hundreds or thousands of years old (or even older as non-human animals are known to play tag[36]), with kho-kho having been played since at least the fourth century BC,[37] certain aspects of kabaddi possibly being mentioned in the Mahabharata (in or before 300 AD),[38][39] and atya-patya being mentioned in the Naṟṟiṇai (in or before 300 AD).
Go, also known as Weiqi, Igo, or Baduk (in Chinese, Japanese, and Korean, respectively), is first mentioned in the historical annal Zuo Zhuan[43] (c. 4th century BC[44]).
Some historians believe that mancala is the oldest game in the world based on the archaeological evidence found in Jordan that dates around 6000 BC.
[54] Archaeologist Barbara Voorhies has theorized that a series of holes on clay floors arranged in c shapes at the Tlacuachero archaeological site in Mexico's Chiapas state may be 5000-year-old dice-game scoreboards.
[56] The game evolved over time, but the main goal was to keep a solid rubber ball in play by striking it with various parts of the body or with tools such as rackets.
Card games first arrived in Italy from Mamluk Egypt in the 14th century, with suits very similar to the Swords, Clubs, Cups and Coins and those still used in traditional Italian and Spanish decks.
[62] The four suits most commonly encountered today (spades, hearts, diamonds, and clubs) appear to have originated in France circa 1480.
Boules, lawn billiards (later brought indoors as billiards), skittles (an ancestor of modern ten pin bowling), medieval football, kolven, stoolball (an ancestor of cricket), jeu de paume (early racket-less tennis), horseshoes and quoits all predate the early modern era.
This was a game which was intended to teach lessons about karma and good and bad actions, the ladders represented virtues and the snakes vices.
The moral lesson of the game was that spiritual liberation, or Moksha could only be achieved through virtuous action, while vice led to endless reincarnation.
[67] Designed in England by George Fox in 1800, The Mansion of Happiness became the prototype for commercial board games for at least two centuries to follow.
L'Attaque was subsequently adapted by the Chinese into Luzhanqi (or Lu Zhan Jun Qi), and by Milton Bradley into Stratego, the latter having been trademarked in 1960 while the former remains in the public domain.
Originally released in 1957 as La Conquête du Monde ("The Conquest of the World") in France, Risk was first published under its English title in 1959.
Starting with Gettysburg in 1958, the company Avalon Hill developed particular board wargames covering specific historical themes such as Midway, D-Day and PanzerBlitz.
Early European card games included noddy, triomphe, all fours, piquet, basset, Hofamterspiel, Karnöffel, and primero.
In 1674 Charles Cotton published his Compleat Gamester, one of the first books which set out to outline rules for many card and dice games.
Cervantes was a gambler, and the main characters of his tale Rinconete y Cortadillo are cheats proficient at playing ventiuna (twenty-one).
[78] During the American Civil War the game was popular with soldiers and additions were made including stud poker, and the straight.
After the stunning Prussian victories against Austria and France in the 19th century, the Austrians, French, British, Italians, Japanese and Russians all began to make use of wargaming as a training tool.
The earliest reference to a purely electronic game appears to be a United States patent registration in 1947 for what was described by its inventors as a "cathode-ray tube amusement device".
