So, I pulled out my trusty old Webster's dictionary to try and get a grip on Pi's true meaning. I usually need help in interpreting Pi's thought processes - something that I can sometimes almost but not quite understand - for me, an intellectual process rather akin to Parcifal's physical quest for the Holy Grail. Fitting, I guess, since what we're after is, in essence, the Holy Grail of Chess to chess historians: ORIGINS (cue spooky music here....)
Semiotic or semiotics: (paraphrasing here) from the Greek semeiotikos observant of signs, from semeiousthai to interpret signs, from semeion sign; akin to Greek semu sign - more at SEMANTIC: a general philosophical theory of signs and symbols that deals esp. with their function in both artifically constructed and natural languages and comprises syntactics, semantics, and pragmatics.
Semantics: 1. the study of meanings: (a) the historical and psychological study and the clasification of changes in the signification of words or forms viewed as factors in linguistic dvelopment; (b)(1) SEMIOTIC; (2) a branch of semiotic dealing with the relations between signs and what they refer to and including theories of denotation, extension, naming, and truth 2. GENERAL SEMANTICS 3. (a) the meaning or relationship of meanings of a sign or set of signs; esp. connotative meaning (b) the exploitation of connotation and ambiguity (as in progaganda).
So, now that I know (sort of) what semiotics actually means (I have distilled it down to the study of signs and symbols to determine their meanings), I understand (I think) what cartosemiotics means. I know that "carto" has reference to maps - but, interestingly, "carto" is not a defined term in my Websters. The closest terms are cartogram (a map showing statistics geographically) - from the French carte and gramme; cartographer (one that makes maps), and cartography (the science or art of making maps) again referencing the french word carte card, map + graphie - more at CARD. There is also the highly suggestive definitation of cartomancy - literally from the French carte card + mancie -mancy: fortune-telling by the use of playing cards. It's quite probable that the earliest board games had divinatory significance - so this much later linkage of playing cards/fortune telling is like a distant echo of practices having much greater significance in the past.
Under CARD, the etymological roots of the word are fascinating: Middle English carde, modification of Middle French carte, probably from Old Italian carta, literally, leaf of paper, from Latin charta leaf of paprus, from Greek chartes. It's most common meaning is a small stiff piece of paper.
However, there is also cardi or cardio - HEART which, although not shown as related to the root words for CARD, caught my attention because of the concept of the axis mundi The axis mundi (also cosmic axis, world axis, world pillar and center of the world), a symbolic concept representing the mythical point of connection between sky and earth. One of the definitions of HEART is CENTER. The concept of the axis mundi reflects man's thought of a necessary and vital connection between the center of the universe and the center of our world. Out of man's desire to build his local "world" around this centered concept arose, I think, the first mathematics and geometry.
Pulling all of this together, cartosemiotics - simplistically (the way I like it) - the study of the meanings of symbols and signs on maps was, to th
e ancients, the study of signs and symbols encompassing their understanding of the mystical and/or spiritual connection (or attempting to understand such a connection) between the Heavens and the Earth as embodied in the axis mundi, as well as using practical means (via divination, for instance) to discern the meaning and intent of such signs and symbols, which they understood to contain messages from the gods.
If we can understand that, then we can begin to understand the significance of the earliest surviving representations of what we call board games. Pimander mentioned two of them: the "Scorpion-man" board game of 16 playing spaces excavated at Jiroft, Iran, and I think he had in mind the second game board show here, excavated
at Beth Shemesh (Stratem V), dating to the Middle Bronze Age, c. 2200 - 1570 BCE. Dating of the Jiroft artifact is uncertain, but is generally thought to be from between 3,000 to 2,000 BCE, the midpoint being 2,500 BCE (about the same date as the game boards discovered by Woolley in the "royal tombs" at Ur and the wooden "serpent" game board excavated at Shar-i Sokhtah (the Iranians call it the "Burnt City" because it was destroyed at least 3 times by catastrophic fires). Shar-i Sokhtah is located in the border area of where modern-day maps show Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan all meet, near the Helmand River.
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