10 OLDEST Board Games In History

9. Nine Men’s Morris (1400 BCE)

A game once so ingrained in European culture that it was mentioned in Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream. The traditional Nine Men’s Morris board consists of 3 squares, linked together with a series of points. Players put their pieces on these points, move them around the board and if they form a line of three connected ones, they can remove an opponent’s piece from the game. Once one player has only two pieces left they lose, pretty simple. While it’s regarded as a medieval standard the layouts of Morris boards appear throughout history, carved into cathedral tables, depicted in ancient painting, definitely as far back as the Roman Empire. The word ‘Morris’ stems from the latin word ‘merellus’ meaning game piece, and in fact something that resembled a morris board was even found carved into the temple of Kurna in Egypt, on roofing slabs dated back to almost one and a half thousand years BCE, which predates Morris dancing by about 3000 years. It was a better world before Morris Dancing.