What did game board pieces look like 5000 years ago?

They looked a lot like this above, these tokens where part of a recent find found in Basur Hoyuk which is in the South-east of Turkey: 

"Small carved stones unearthed in a nearly 5,000-year-old burial could represent the earliest gaming tokens ever found, according to Turkish archaeologists who are excavating early Bronze Age graves..."

"...Some depict pigs, dogs and pyramids, others feature round and bullet shapes. We also found dice as well as three circular tokens made of white shell and topped with a black round stone"

http://news.discovery.com/history/archaeology/oldest-gaming-tokens-found-130814.htm

Terni Lapilli / Men's Morris / Tic Tac Toe

I'm sure everyone would recognise a game of tic tac toe like this, more often called naughts and crosses...

It originates from Ancient Egypt (although it is very widely spread, this is the oldest finding of it), the oldest known carving of it found on a roof tiles in Kurna dating back to 1400 B.C and was one of their most popular games to play. Surprisingly enough the rules haven't changed hardly at all.

The only difference is, the players only play 3 pieces on the board, they can them move them along the lines to the intersections, the first person to create a line wins. 

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The other variations of it include, Twelve men's morris, Nine, Six and Three.

Variations of these games can be found carved a in places around the ancient world.

The oldest recorded writing of it dates back to 8 B.C, written by Ovid.

There is another game divided into as many parts as there are months in the year. A table has three pieces on either side; the winner must get all the pieces in a straight line. It is a bad thing for a woman not to know how to play, for love often comes into being during play.

However the name of Men's morris wasn't called as such in Roman times, It was back then called Terni Lapilli, the name Morris comes from the latin word for game counter/piece: merellus. 

The later became incredibly popular in England during the 13th Century with boards carved into a whole range of places including the seating of the following cathedrals: Canterbury, Gloucester, Norwich, Salisbury and Westminster Abbey. 

These boards however used holes and forming a diagonal line didn't result in a victory. This was called nine holes.

http://www.rupestre.net/tracce/?p=2054

http://listverse.com/2013/01/20/10-most-important-board-games-in-history/

http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/board-games-in-pre-islamic-persia

http://ablemedia.com/ctcweb/showcase/boardgames7.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nine_Men's_Morris#cite_ref-King_8-1

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Men%27s_Morris

Chaupat: A board game born in India.

The game of Chaupat comes from India, it also has a closely related game called Pashisi, both are the origins of the cross-and-circle games, both which are now known as 'Ludo' (below). However Ludo today is a a much simpler game which Chaupat and Pashisi are. 

The players aim is to race their pieces around the board, the moves are determined by the score from throwing cowry shells. When two pieces of the board land on each other they merge to form a super piece. 

All seven cowry shells are used in each throw.

Scoring is as follows:

All 7 facing down – 7 points
1 facing up, 6 facing down – 11 points
2 facing up, 5 facing down – 2 points
3 facing up, 4 facing down – 3 points
4 facing up, 3 facing down – 4 points
5 facing up, 2 facing down – 25 points
6 facing up, 1 facing down – 30 points
All 7 facing up – 14 points

The biggest resource for the rules and how it was played are from Wikipedia,  It's hard to find an exact date of when it was made but It is played in a great Indian epic called Mahabharata, the epic it's self is from before 400 B.C.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chopat

http://listverse.com/2013/01/20/10-most-important-board-games-in-history/

The oldest game with rules: Royal game of Ur

The Royal game of Ur isn't the oldest game board known, but, it is the oldest board game with which the rules to the game are known. This board game dates to around 2500 B.C and the picture above depicts one such board which was found in Iran. It was later superseded by Backgammon 2000 years ago.

he rules of the game as it was played around 2500BC are not know at all but the same boards were still in use a century or two before the birth of Christ and archeologists have discovered the rules for the game played at that time on some cuneiform tablet dated at 177/176BC. The early games show a variety of patterns on the board but the consistent factor is that five rosettes always appear.

There was also Egyptian variants of this called Tau / Game of Twenty Squares.

http://www.tradgames.org.uk/games/Royal-Game-Ur.htm
http://listverse.com/2013/01/20/10-most-important-board-games-in-history/

The oldest board game: Senet

One of the oldest currently known game board to of have existed comes from Ancient Egypt and is called 'Senet'. This game was played between Egypt and Turkey, where variations of it have been found to exist, and played between all classes of people. "As many as fifty senet boards have been found amidst the finery and flotsam in ancient Egyptian tombs, from the glory of the table-sized board found in King Tut's tomb to simple boards found in the graves of more ordinary folk" - Although this game was played all over the place there are no known rules to how people played the game, but people have attempted to deduct their own rules from the pictographs left by the egyptians.

When each square is numbered the board would appear to be like this, so you would follow these numbers around the board snaking right, left to right.

1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9 10

20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11

21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30

The board above was found was one of 4 discovered within King Tutankhamun's tomb, 

It apparently evolved farther, still, as over time it became so much a part of the warp and woof of Egyptian life that it entered into the realm of religious practice: it seems to have been thought that a game played with unknown forces shortly after death would determine whether the dead would get to enter a peaceful eternity or not, as depicted in many murals within tombs showing the deceased playing the game against an unseen opponent. 

However Senet was played all the way up till 400 A.D until Christianity marked it as pagan, and from there on it died out. 

http://www.gamecabinet.com/history/Senet.html

http://listverse.com/2013/01/20/10-most-important-board-games-in-history/

http://www.ccgs.com/games/senet.htm

Initial Ideas!

For my initial ideas I really wanted something that would have some history to it that has always interested me but something I've never looked into. I came to the following 3 topics to look into.

• Book covers
• Road signs
• Board games

These will give me enough legroom to work with, without crossing paths with one another hopefully.