Backgammon

Background

All board games that are older than today's fad pass through certain stages of development. These stages are well known to games scholars, and they reappear in game after game. Backgammon has been through more of these stages than any other game, even Chess. Here are the Eight Stages of Board Game Evolution, as told through the history of Backgammon:

1. Claim the Egyptians as Parents: Backgammon is not the oldest game in the world—dice probably holds that distinction, though some people might nominate politics—but, given the available evidence, it has a good claim on the second spot. "An authentic, documented history of the ancient game of Backgammon should probably begin either in the Garden of Eden or in the murky caves of the Neanderthal man," Alexis Obolensky and Ted James declare in Backgammon: The Action Game, and they're only half-kidding. Though Obolensky and James grandly assume that every 6,000-year-old reference to "dice" really means "backgammon", the game has been traced to the beginnings of Egyptian and Sumerian civilization. You can't beat this kind of heritage.



Backgammon boards not so different from our own have been found in the royal tombs of the Nile Valley and in the buried suburbs of Ur. If Mesopotamia, the site of Ur, was also the site of the biblical Flood, then perhaps Noah and his family filled their spare hours aboard the Ark by playing Backgammon!

** Backgammon and Romans? More interesting stories about Backgammon in my next post........ be patient......