This 4,500 -year -old game was an absolute mystery. Until AI helped us decipher it

A few years ago archaeologists found something unique at the Shahr-i Sokhta site: a board game. I had about 4,500 years old, and it is believed that it is the board game complete older ever discovered. The problem was that no one knew how it was played … until AI arrived.

Persian games. That site was part of the Helmand civilization in the Bronze Age. Lying To the east of Iran and south of Afghanistan, in that discovery both the board were found, with 20 circular spaces, and four dice and 27 geometric pieces. But how were they used?

No game manuals. In old board games hardly ever There were written rules, and the instructions passed orally. That probably caused the rules to end up being modified between different groups of players over the decades or centuries, experts point out. But that also facilitates the task of finding out how it was played: as explained in New Scientistit was not necessary to find the definitive rules, only those that approached those that were probably the most logical.

AU helps learn to play. The used AI systems use techniques such as Monte Carlo Search Treewhich was also used for the Alphago developmentof Deepmind. With them it is possible to simulate rules that can be applied to the game based on the structure of the board and the available parts. They can evaluate multiple variations of the possible rules that allow evaluating not only if they are logical, but end up offering boring or fun games.

Beyond chess. Among these games there are real jewels because of their age Senetthat for example was found in the tomb of Tutankhamun. There are representations such as the main image – the Nefertari Egyptian queen playing Senet – that demonstrates its popularity in that culture. Others, like him Ur’s real gamefrom the ancient Mesopotamia, their secrets were able to discover a cuneiform tablet that It deciphered in 2007 In the British Museum.

Shahr-i Sokhta game. Source: Persian Wonders

First studies. One of the first applications of AI to the board games of antiquity is in the game Ludus Latrunculorum (“The game of thieves”), which was played among the Romans and that it is believed that it was already played (at least, in a previous version) in Greece. It is one of the best known thanks to the writings recovered from that time, and that allowed – thatNot effortlessly– rebuild its rules quite likely they were the ones that the Romans effectively used.

Thus the Romans played. Cameron Browne, from the University of Maastricht, in Holland, led The call Digital Ludeme Project (DLP). It investigated about 1,000 traditional games over the 6,000 years of the history of humanity, and games such as Ludus Latrunculorum were studied.

Simulations everywhere. It was not easy: this game – or its variants – appears with boards of different formats and sizes throughout history, but the AI ​​helped discover possible rules. Simulations were made to investigate which boards made more sense for the most plausible rules, and it was discovered how three games still active in our days – Khabebga, Seega and Tablut – had a strong relationship. All these tests allowed to conclude how the smallest boards were the ones that probably They were used in the Roman gameand others may be dedicated to other board games that experts have not been able to identify.

You can play Shahr-i Sokhta. As with Ludus Latrunculorum, the help of AI served to raise what were the probable rules of the Shahr-i Sokhta game. So much so that developer Sam Jelveh and archaeologist Hossein Morad created An online playable version of the video game With complete information on how it was supposed to be played.

Endless investigation. These efforts have not stopped there. More than 200 computer scientists, archaeologists and historians are collaborating in the project Gametable to develop even more advanced AI tools to discover the rules of old board games. And also, perhaps, to reveal why some came to our days transformed into current games – it is believed that UR’s real game ended up becoming the backgammon – and others disappeared without leaving just a trace.

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