The past continues to captivate young and old from all walks of life, from kids to average Joes to researchers. A team led by a Belgian researcher investigated an old Roman artefact and discovered that it was a remnant of an old board game. With a little help from artificial intelligence, Eric Plette and his research team were able to bring the game back to life.
Plette, who is affiliated with Belgian university UCLouvain, is specialised in deciphering old board games by way of AI. Earlier in his career, he had stumbled upon a curious stone in a Roman museum, and he decided to take a closer look at it with modern technology, discovering traces of repeated movements on the stone’s surface, which indicated that it could indeed have been used for recreational purposes.
The research team ran those traces against a large database filled with information about games from olden times, ran all kinds of analyses, and lo: after thousands upon thousands of AI face-offs, the only logical explanation was a blockade game, kind of like tic-tac-toe.
The stone was dated between 200 and 400 AD, around the fall of the Western Roman Empire, but uses rules that were found in games in Scandinavia in the 18th and 19th centuries. Could the ancient Roman board game have spread North? So unravel the mysteries of ancient life.
We don’t know about you, but we’re itching to try this game out for ourselves!
