Archaeologists find 500-year-old board game carved in ruins of Polish castle | Hacker News Reader

Archaeologists find 500-year-old board game carved in ruins of Polish castle

arstechnica.com

107 pointsisaacfrond17 comments

It's always nice to find a modern example of an ancient practice. E.g. ~3000 years old board scratched in stone in Assyria https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-35669056

This is one of my favorite things to see whenever I visit the British Museum. I just love the mental image of bored guards playing a game to pass the time on a slow afternoon at the city gates.

Similarly, I enjoyed once seeing the preserved birch bark doodles of a schoolboy named Onfim from ~800 years ago: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onfim

Good link.

I found this extract from the Wikipedia page especially charming:

> Onfim left seventeen known birch bark items. Twelve of those have illustrations, five only text. One of the drawings features a knight on a horse, with Onfim's name written next to him, stabbing someone on the ground with a lance, with scholars speculating that Onfim pictured himself as the knight.

On the one hand, the evidence for that speculation isn't really sufficient. What if he was just autographing his work?

But on the other hand, the conclusion is so obvious.

That the human brain evolved to make up stories? Even sleep doesn't stop it from doing that.

Did you mean to respond to a different comment?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nine_men's_morris

Ohh cool! I remember playing this as a minigame in Sierra's Robin Hood, starts at 1:53:23

https://youtube.com/watch?v=j5C_aL6Fx4Q

https://youtube.com/watch?v=j5C_aL6Fx4Q&t=1h53m23s

Source: https://arkeonews.net/500-year-old-board-game-discovered-car...

...which came from the Polish source https://www.national-geographic.pl/artykul/planszowka-sprzed...

The same game found also in the Negev Desert from 1200 years ago:

https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/oldest-soap-factory-in...

I actually first learned about Nine Men’s Morris when playing Clubhouse Games on the Switch. It’s actually quite fun for a simple game.

https://www.nintendo.com/store/products/clubhouse-games-51-w...

Many examples in cathedral cloisters. Also marks of sword sharpening across the years. Churches are schools, churches are good for stabling horses and troops.

It's a bit weird reading a description of the rules in the post. Always thought, this was as well known as chess or checkers.

Never heard of this game before.

Is it still a common game to play?

My family (in the US) plays it a lot. My sister in particular "solved" it so far as if she goes first and doesn't mess up, will always win.

My dad made boards to give as gifts one Christmas.

Fun game.

In my english elementary school there were definitely nine men's morris boards, but I've never seen anyone play it outside of elementary school.

It's well known in Germany under the name Mill, but I cannot recall the last time I've seen anyone actually play it.

It's not too uncommon. Nintendo included it in their collection of tabletop games for the switch.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com