10 OLDEST Board Games In History

4. Backgammon (3000 BCE)

Embarrassing, this. In our board game club video where we played Snakesss, I got a question wrong, claiming Go was older than Backgammon and while I’ll never live it down, I’m also going to maintain that I’m probably still right. Sure, dice have been uncovered in Iraq that apparently were used for a game resembling backgammon, and those dice apparently date back 5000 years, but also some historians believe that they could be used for the royal game of ur, which is often regarded as Backgammon’s great grandad. So shut up everyone, leave me alone. Regardless, common ancestors of backgammon are ludicrously old. Similar boards, dice and stones being found in bronze age dig sites, like that of the ancient city of Shahr-e Sukhteh (shar-eh-sook-teh), the burnt city. Some legends even ascribed the invention of the game, or something similar to ancient Greek warrior Palamedes.