The oldest games in the world
Whether we like it or not, all of us have taken part at least once in our lives in an evening dedicated to board games, especially during holidays or reunions with family and friends. It may seem strange, and yet, as much as evolution never ceases to amaze us with new and tempting alternatives, board games have never lost their place of honor, nor have they ever run the risk of being branded as unfashionable and fall into oblivion. Even more surprising is that most of the most common board games can count on a very ancient origin, which in some cases even lasts up to the sixth millennium BC, or more than 7 thousand years ago.
Index
The best known: checkers, backgammon and roulette
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One of the oldest board games in the world is undoubtedly checkers, a game dating back to 5000 BC which, albeit with numerous variations, has survived to this day. According to a reconstruction by the Italian Checkers Federation, one of the first testimonies of the game can be traced back to ancient Egypt, more precisely to the city of El-Mahash, where archaeologists would have unearthed a board very similar to the one still used today in the game.
The board is currently conserved in the archaeological museum of Brussels and, although it is not really possible to study the analogies with the current game, it has become the symbol of one of the oldest testimonies of a game as well known as today's checkers. Looking at relatively more recent times, however, we can trace the history of the game of roulette, born in France around 1650 thanks to the contribution of the study of probabilities by the physicist and mathematician Blaise Pascal, who introduced it into the first casinos.
Despite its distant medieval relatives, it is probable that an ancient predecessor of backgammon already existed in the 5000th millennium BC: recent studies, in fact, would have found a common thread between the current game and the Egyptian Senet boards, dating back XNUMX years ago.
The games of the ancient Orient: go and mahjong
Even the ancient East, China in particular, plays an extremely important role in the history of the most common board games. Among these, go and majhong certainly deserve to be mentioned for their millenary history, among the oldest of the games still widespread in China.
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The first, go, is a strategy game dating back at least 4000 years ago, which has always been known as Weiqi. According to the site of the Italian Federation Gioco Go, the latter would have long represented the most popular game among the nobility and the literate class, used to dabble in similar strategy games.
Born during the 1987th century, the majhong has a more recent tradition than go and is said to have spread not only in China, but also in the United States and Japan. Starting in the XNUMXs, the game would have found widespread use in Italy too, especially in the province of Ravenna, where the Italian Mah Jong Federation was born in XNUMX, which has now become a real point of reference for all Italian enthusiasts of the ancient game of Chinese origin.
As demonstrated, innovation does not always have to clash with tradition. Although there are now numerous digital versions of traditional board games, or games based entirely on the added value and potential of digitalisation, board games continue to hold a fundamental value within the wide range of entertainment options.
Whether it's checkers, chess or Chinese mahjong, the history of each of these games demonstrates how the most cherished traditions resist all kinds of external influences, even over the centuries.
