The unearthing of 2,000-year-old boards has given historians a new insight into an ancient game akin to chess that was played much earlier, by everyone from royals to commoners in society.
Archaeologists have presented some fascinating new findings that were dug up in Shaanxi Province, in northern China. Among them were ancient "chessboards" found in Han dynasty tombs, which date back some 2,000 years.
The boards were for a similar game known as 六博 ("six sticks"), or Liubo, which predates the invention of what would become modern-day chess by around 500 years.
The Shaanxi Provincial Institute of Archaeology has presented these new findings, which were excavated at a northwestern Chinese site set for urban development.
If you haven't heard of Liubo, that's understandable. In fact, while we know a few things about this board game, the concrete rules have been completely lost in time.
Historians have managed to piece together some clues as to the rules of the game, from archaeological finds and ancient texts, but how it worked is still not well understood.
What we know for certain, thanks to historic writings, is that it was a game played by two people, with 12 pieces – six black and six white. It also involved six "throwing sticks", which are thought to act as some kind of dice or be used as a bargaining tool during the game.
The board itself is marked by 12 "paths" with a central area called the water. In one of the most compelling readings of the game, historians at Carnegie Mellon University believe it was a game where each player had birds that, as they moved along the board, could evolve to become owls (梟) and advance toward the central water area, representing a pond of some sort, where only an owl was able to "catch" the fish there.
They believe that this awarded players points, and the first to reach six on the scoreboard won the game.
"Liubo is a game about birds catching fish," the Carnegie Mellon University researchers describe. "Each player controls six pieces representing birds. These birds fly around the board in order to reach the center square, which represents a pond full of fish. Birds catch fish by crossing over or landing on this pond, and then score points by dropping the fish in the circle 'Nest' spaces on the opponent’s side of the board."
Each game, they believe, took somewhere between 10 and 45 minutes to play.
However, the team points out that they can't determine the rules of movement around the board, variations of Liubo, or what exactly constituted a win. The secrets of this ancient game are believed to have been lost during the Tang dynasty (AD 618-907).
While the game is believed to have reached peak popularity during the Western Han period, or the first half of the Han dynasty (206 BC-AD 9), archeological finds have traced its origin story to King Jie of the Xia dynasty (c. 2070-1600 BC), a kingdom whose historical existence remains the subject of debate. But that's an entirely different story in itself.
According to the South China Morning Post, the earliest definitive evidence of Liubo has been traced back to the Warring States Period (475 BC-221 BC), thanks to an ancient text of a king's speech referencing it.
Interestingly, no Liubo artefacts have been found dating beyond the Jin dynasty (AD 265-420), suggesting the game was lost as time moved on.
However, the 1973 discovery of a sealed lacquered box containing a complete Liubo set, found in a Mawangdui Han tomb in Changsha, Hunan province, brought the game to the 20th century. Since then, historians have been trying to decipher the precise workings of this popular ancient pastime.
And in 2019, researchers got their best clues yet, thanks to more than 1,000 bamboo slips – thin strips of bamboo used to "write" on before paper – that were excavated from the tomb of the Marquis of Haihun in Jiangxi province. On these slips, according to Peking University researchers, were Liubo gameplay rules.
But due to a range of challenges – including decay, issues with interpreting ancient Chinese language – researchers were still working on these findings at the end of last year. And the projected 2026 results of the painstaking work are yet to surface.
So while the new findings offer clues into how widespread Luobo was during the early Han dynasty period, it's almost ironic that efforts to understand the rules have become a game of strategy in their own right.
It's also a fascinating study on how something so popular can disappear with time – a reminder that cultural artefacts are just physical remnants of the past if knowledge isn't also passed from one generation to the next.
Source: Shaanxi Provincial Institute of Archaeology via Global Times
Fact-checked by Mike McRae
