Ancient Liubo Set Recovered from Western Han Dynasty Tomb

From Peoples Daily (English version online)  Note: I do not believe that most western chess scholars agree that liubo was an early form of "chess," but writer David Li wrote a book several years ago, "The Genealogy of Chess", that made this argument.  From the comments made by archaeologist Fan Shuhai in the article, it appears that the theory of liubo as an ancient form of chess may be accepted as fact in China.

Ancient chess set from original version of game found in Hebei
16:13, September 08, 2010

Recently, an archaeology team from the Hebei Cultural Relics Research Institute has found a chess set for Liu Bo Chess, thought to be the original version of Chinese chess and chess, in an ancient tomb belonging to the Western Han Dynasty in Pingshan County.

Since May of this year, the archaeology team has carried out a protective excavation along a train station reconstruction site in Pingshan County. On a field to the west of the railway, archaeologists found 100 ancient tombs from a period lasting from the Warring States Period to the Qing Dynasty and unearthed some very rare and precious cultural relics from those tombs.

Fan Shuhai, the leader of the archaeology team, announced on Sept. 7 that they found a Liu Bo chess set, including chessmen and chess-prods, near one male's remains in a Western Han tomb. He said the discovery was "one of the most important discoveries," because "several chessboards of Liu Bo Chess have been found in China, but hardly ever the chessmen and chess-prods."

He said the chess game was invented before the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods, and it includes three major tools, the chessmen, chess-prods and a chessboard. The game symbolized a battle, and two players had to use their wisdom and strategies to attack each other and to win the game by forcing rivals into a deathtrap.

According to Fan, the form of chess was on the wane after the Eastern Han Dynasty, and the playing method and rules were gradually out of record both in people's memories and history books.

By Wang Hanlu, People's Daily Online

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Information on the game of liubo (including several images), from Cazeaux's comprehensive website on ancient chess and chess-like games.

For those interested:

A story well told is not necessarily true - being a critical assessment of David H. Li's "The Genealogy of Chess" by Peter Banaschak

A letter by Dr. David Li to E. Meissenberg of the Initiativ Gruppe Koenigstein, in response to an invitation to give a presentation at a symposium to be hosted by the IGK.

A 2005 interview of Dr. David Li at Chessbase that discusses, among other things, "The Genealogy of Chess."

Another interview of Dr. David Li at Sonshi (possibly from 2006).

Bat Girl and Chess

I don't remember if I've written about Sarah a/k/a Bat Girl and her website, Sarah's Chess Journal. It's a fascinating collection of information about chess players and chess history. I don't know why she is Bat Girl, but then, most people don't understand why I'm sometimes called Jan Xena :) After awhile it just gets to be too much to keep explaining over and over... Check out Bat Girl's archives. I'm adding her site to my list of links - she is in very exclusive company there, darlings! (ok, you can stop laughing now) P.S. I don't know who Bat Girl is, we've never "met" online or otherwise. I can only say this about her: she sure does now how to do research!

Faulty Chess History - Arrggghhhh!

Hola darlings! I've had a very bad day. It was raining hard this morning when I left for the office. It was difficult enough to force myself out of a cozy warm bed at 6 a.m. while the rain was pounding on the roof. The half-mile walk to the bus stop at 7:20 a.m. resulted in me getting rather wet from the waist down from the blowing rain, and my shoes sprung leaks, so I went to work with wet socks. Oh YUCK! It stopped raining shortly after I boarded the bus. Of course. It started raining again shortly before I had to get off the bus to hike the blocks to the office. Of course. There is extra walking now since the bus has been detoured by summertime street repairs. Of course course. I was not in a very good mood when I got to the office. I had a pile of work still sitting from the day before (my first day back from nearly 3 weeks vacation), my hair looked like crap and I was hungry. I did get a very fat-filled breakfast sandwich from the cafeteria, which I scarfed down at my desk while going through my emails and prioritizing the work for the day. My hair - well, I won't even go there. I am so glad to be home tonight. The rain finally stopped and the fog has blown away. I swear my grass and plants have sprung up inches since the rain started in earnest late last night. Yes, yes, as an amateur gardener I realize the importance of regular deep watering. And so I could rationalize my discomfort and mushy socks (still mushy when I got home, eeeuuuuuwww) for the greater good of my water-starved garden. So what if the rain arrived 24 hours later than first forecast, that caused me to postpone doing serious watering with the sprinkler in the back yard on Sunday, because my herbaceous friends were looking somewhat peaked. And I felt so guilty, like I was personally murdering each and every blade of grass... Arrrgggghhhh. Anyway, I get home tonight, dispose of the stinking mushy socks, dry off, and settle down for a night of blogging since there is absolutely nothing decent on network television, and I'm too cheap to subscribe to cable or satellite. But now I'm all p.o.'d again, darlings, and it is all because of THIS MAN! I am not a member of Gamasutra, and I do not wish to become a member - I mean, come on - Gamasutra? Please - give me back my Kama Sutra! And no, that's not a World War II kamikaze game involving flying planes into battle cruisers. No offense to Mr. Dinehart, and I mean that sincerely. It's not the easiest thing in the world to go back into the mists of time trying to tease out the true origins of the game we call chess. We started out as rank amateurs and ten years later we're still amateurs - although not so rank as we used to be :)) For the vast majority of people alive today, I'd say somewhere between 99.94% and 99.99% - how chess came to be is not a compelling question. But for us at Goddesschess, it is. I'd say it has become almost an obsession (eek!) Suffice to say, after 10 years of continuous work, we believe we have accumulated sufficient evidence to say with confidence that "H.J.R. Murray got it wrong, baby!" Okay - I don't hear the trumpet fanfare I want - drat! Which only goes to show you. To most people, this ain't an important issue! But to us, it is. And so I'd like to go on the record with what we think is a more correct statement of facts about the origins of chess. Without going into too much boring detail. Before I get started, I'd like to state for the record that I thought Mr. Dinehart's blog post was great. I found it entertaining, charming, humorous and informative, all about a subject I could care less about - except for the history of chess part! Well done, Mr. Dinehart. Now, as to that: So I set out to do research, and like most things in western culture, one need look east to find their roots. I started with Chess and then dug a little deeper. It lead me to Chaturaga, a game whose rules are mostly lost, but the pieces remain. This, the first serious war-game, came before Europe was even a dream. There is evidence that points to at least three ancient games having their roots in divination, and warfare was not the primary motif or even a consideration at the beginning: in ancient Egypt, the games of Mehen (the serpent game) and Senet, and in ancient China, the game of Liubo (Image: liubo board, c. 400 BCE). In later times in ancient Egypt, Mehen ceased to be played for reasons that are unknown, although some have speculated that it was because playing a game on the back of a God (actually, a Goddess, but that's another story) was insulting. Senet and the much later game of Liubo could be played "straight" - that is - as a board game of chance - or as a game of divination. Two historians of whom I am aware have pointed to Liubo as a direct predecessor of chess: David Li and Joseph Needham. Thanks to the research of several historians and ethnographers, it is now generally accepted that the earliest board games probably had their roots in attempts to determine the future. The Sanskrit word "Chaturanga", means "four parts", or "Army", which for the ancient Indians was compromised by 4 parts. It is a game of 6th century BCE Indian origins consisting of two small armies with unique units, on an 8 x 8 board.Chaturanga predates Chess, but only in the little evidence had in artifact, not by popular record. Most likely a Persian invention, Chaturanga beats Chess in record by only a number of years. I believe most chess historians are in general agreement that chaturanga was a game invented or evolved sometime during the sixth century CE, not the 6th century BCE. Some posit an earlier date for invention or evolution of the game, but to my recollection, not as far back as the 6th century BCE (except Goddesschess). Perhaps Mr. Dinehart made a typo. The Sanskrit chaturanga literally means four ("chatur") and limbs (as in arms and legs) ("anga"). As such, it does not, per se, refer to anybody's army, Indian or otherwise. Chaturanga does, however, have a counterpart in the Pahlavi (middle Persian) word chatrang, which means the mandrake plant (it has the same meaning in modern Farsi). Sanskrit and Pahlavi, and their descendants, are all derived from an ancestral "mother tongue" - proto-Indo-European, placing the sub-continent of India firmly in the "west" linguistically. I can't locate it in my notes at the moment, but I believe the Pahlavi word for four is chatar, which is very close to the Sanskrit chatur four. Chess is an Arab invention first mentioned by the court poet Bana, in a poem he wrote between "625 and 640 CE"[3]. I haven't studied Bana's quotes, and so I'll only say this: most chess historians are in agreement that chess is NOT an invention of the Arabs, but was adopted by them as the game shatranj (from Pahlavi chatrang) after the Persians were conquered in the mid-7th century CE. Thanks to the trade routes of the ancient world Chess along with Chaturanga were both brought west to the likes of Africa, Spain, Germany, and the Ottoman Empire. The game evolved into chess and hung around for until 2400 years later when things got interesting. There is a lot of evidence of trade and cultural exchanges from the far east (China) to ancient Rome and beyond, over an extended period of time during period of time well within the historical, along the Silk Road routes. There is a great deal of evidence of direct trade and cultural exchanges between ancient Persia and ancient China dating to the first ruler of the Tang Dynasty (c. 600's CE). Who knows how long such trade might have existed for which evidence no longer exists, or has yet to be discovered? For instance, there is suggestive evidence that the trade in tin between the Middle East and mines in Cornwall existed as far back as the Bronze Age. There is even evidence of some ancient Egyptian pre-dynastic maces showing up in graves in far northwestern China, dating back to approximately 3500 BCE. What historians currently state is that the Arabs spread the game of chess they called shatranj as they conquered more and more lands, including modern-day Spain and Portugal. The Arab historians are quite honest in admitting that their game shatranj was taken from the Persian game chatrang. Murray wrote about how the game shatranj was carried into parts of India that were subsequently conquered by the Arabs and somehow morphed into a four-handed game where the pieces were moved depending on the throw of dice - also called chaturanga. Thus the confusion in trying to determine just what game was talked about in some written historical accounts. In any event, the four-handed dice-game called chaturanga was a far cry from the pure strategy game played by the Persians in the 6th century CE. It is documented that "chess" was spread by the Moslems (Arabs) during their conquests in the 7th and 8th centuries CE, and it is also documented that the game was spread by Vikings and other traders, including the "Rus" during the 8th to 11th centuries CE. Well, that's it, more or less in a nut-shell. There's much more - a veritable tapestry so rich in interconnecting threads that it is nearly inpenetrable. We at Goddesschess call it "The Weave." Like any good weavers, however, rather than being overwhelmed by the completed product, we start with a single thread and follow it as best we can to its origin. Pick a thread - any thread - and follow it to where it may lead. Please pay attention to all of those intersections with other threads along the way, and to where they may lead, too. Okay, end of harangue! I'm hungry, it's well past my supper time!

Chess History: Article by Carmen

Carmen Romeo (chief librarian, research assistant and widow of chess historian IM Ricardo Calvo) has an article published at the Spanish language Chessbase: La Valencia literaria del siglo XV, el manuscrito de Schacs d’amor y sus tres autores. The English translation will be published at Goddesschess when we receive it.

"The Indian Defense" by Vishy Anand!!!

I'm beside myself tonight. The Goddess is granting me a good evening after a long, hard day. First, the news about Katherine Neville's long awaited sequel to "The Eight" and now this!!!! Am I in Heaven? Er, I don't agree with Anand's take on "The Official HIStory of Chess," based on old chess history crap from 19th century Germans and Englishmen who fancied themselves historians and ethnographers (yeah, we all know where that led us - World War I), but I give Anand a great deal of credit for even knowing about the "accepted" origins of chess line of @%&* and its early history and actually writing about it. Just don't be sucked into the @%&*, darlings. But then, that's why Goddesschess exists. We offer a counter view and some much-needed fresh air... From Time (Magazine online) in Partnership with CNN: The Indian Defense By VISWANATHAN ANAND June 19, 2008 Where did chess begin? For many who play the sport at its highest, most obsessive levels, that's not just a question of history — it's a matter of ownership, of dominion. We're so completely lost in our universe of 64 black and white squares that we like to think every move we make changes the way the world exists. So it's easy for Russians to imagine that chess began when they started to play it. In 1991, at my first international tournament, in Reggio Emilia in northern Italy, a Russian grandmaster condescendingly told me I could at best be a coffee-house player because I had not been tutored in the Soviet school of chess, which then dominated the sport. With the arrogance of youth — I was 21 — I thought to myself, "But didn't we Indians invent chess? Why shouldn't I have my own route to the top of the sport?" It would take me 17 years to find that route, and along the way I've had hundreds of conversations about the origins of chess — with players, fans, officials, taxi drivers, barbers and who knows how many people who sat next to me on a plane. I've heard the ownership of chess being claimed by Russians, Chinese, Ukrainians, Arabs, Iranians, Turks, Spaniards and Greeks. My own view is that the sport belongs to everybody who plays it, but the question of its origins is easy enough to answer: chess comes from India. Our claim is based not on dominance — although the Indian school is now producing lots of high-quality players, including (ahem) the world No. 1. Some of the oldest references to the sport are found in ancient Indian texts. In the great epic Ramayana (which, according to some sources, was orally transmitted sometime between 750 B.C. and 500 B.C.), the demon king Ravana invents chess to amuse his wife Mandodari. A brilliant mind, she promptly beats him at it. My grandmother told me that story when I first began to play the game at age 6. Chess also features in the Arthashastra (3rd century B.C.), perhaps the world's oldest political treatise. Its author, Chanakya, describes chess as a game of war strategy, known as chaturanga, played on an 8-by-8 board. Think of it as the world's first virtual war game. I believe chess traveled westward out of India, through what is now Afghanistan into Persia, where it arrived during the Sassanid Empire — an Indian king is believed to have sent a chessboard as a gift to his Persian counterpart. At the royal court in Ctesiphon, the game was known as chatrang. The Arabs learned it (they called it shatranj) when they conquered Persia in the 6th century A.D. and carried it across northern Africa. They introduced the game to Europe when the Moors crossed the Mediterranean into the Iberian peninsula. It grew immensely popular in Moorish Spain, where it was played in the street — a practice still seen in parks and other squares in cities around the world. Iberia underwent a major change after the 15th century reconquista by Catholic forces led by Queen Isabella I — and chess changed, too. On the board, the queen became the most important piece; the bishop replaced the camel and flanked the king and queen. (Modern chess is still played by rules formalized under Isabella's reign.) Around this time, the Spanish player Luis RamÍrez de Lucena wrote what may have been the first book about chess theory — the Lucena Position remains to this day the cornerstone of rook and pawn endings. Ironically, Russia may have been one of the last places in the Old World to receive chess, likely through the Volga trade route. It became popular there during the reign of Peter the Great. The late introduction didn't stop the Russians from becoming the game's superpower, though, and it wasn't until 2000 that an Indian — yours truly — finally brought the title of world chess champion back to the land of the sport's birth. I like to think that the arc of my own career has in some ways mirrored the journey of chess. I learned to play in India, then moved to Spain so I could play the European circuit, and won my first world championship in Iran. It's nice when your place in chess history has something to do with the bigger picture. Viswanathan Anand, 39, is an Indian chess grandmaster and the current world chess champion

News from the Ken Whyld Association

Photo: Isis and Ken Whyld, IGK Symposium, Amsterdam, November, 2001. From personal album, taken by dondelion.

From the Ken Whyld Association website:
New Chess Literature

Alessandro Sanvito has written a new book about old chess manuscripts: Scacchi manoscritti (120 p.; price: 22.-- €) has been published by Caissa Italia editore where you will find further details.

A new Correspondence Chess Database on CD Ultracorr 2 has been announced by Tim Harding for June/July 2008 which will only be produced if at least 60 advance orders will be received by end of May. The advance price is 32 Euro. Orders can be made via his web site, here the direct link to the order page. Moreover a new book on olympiads has been announced by Mario Tal, you will find more details (in English / German) in this pdf-file!

A number 9 of Dr Hans Ellinger's series "Tübinger Beiträge zum Thema Schach" a reprint of the Lasker drama Vom Menschen die Geschichte [The History of Man] has just been published, you will learn all essential things from this flyer which also contains an order slip (in German; pdf-file).

The KWA serves a worthwhile cause, originally championed by chess historian Ken Whyld (d. July, 2003). Ken spent the greater part of his life researching and writing about chess and its history (including the elusive origins of the game) and amassed a huge collection of chess literature and writings on chess that were, after his death, donated by his widow to the Swiss Museum of Games, curator Dr. Ulrich Schadler (a friend of Goddesschess). Please consider supporting the worthy goals of the KWA via membership.

Tracking Down an Obscure Reference

An example of a "day in the life of" - yours truly, lol! Maybe it's the way I was raised; maybe it's my law school training. I learned how to research in the days before personal computers! I'd spend hours digging through stacks of dusty books trying to find a hint of a precedent or, more usually, some teensy bit of dicta to use upon which to hang an argument. All I know is, when I'm on the trail of something, I have a bulldog determination to pursue it to the very end. Now, this can at times cause problems :) But on the whole, my stubborness has served me well. In the last few days a question showed up in my email related to the early medieval period of chess in Europe. There was an author cited and a book he wrote that contained a legend concerning the invention of chess by a philosopher called either Xerxes or Philometer. The researcher was attempting to track down the author and the book: John de Vigney and "[The] Moralization of Chess," which is accounted the earliest book to reference the specific Xerxes/Philometer legend about the invention of chess. I haven't had much time of late to devote to research, I've barely had time to respond to my emails and I've been staying up way past my bedtime to post a few items here; well, we all have these "crunch" periods in our lives. But this particular "question" intrigued me. I vaguely recalled reading something years ago about "Xerxes" inventing chess - at the time I thought it was a reference to the great Persian King! So, I thought I'd see what I could track down earlier tonight. I pulled out my trusty old H.J.R. Murray "A History of Chess." Mind you, I think Murray is full of baloney as far as his interpretations of the evidence but as a resource for meticulously researched citations, he is the Gold Standard. And, sure enough, in his practically non-existent Index, was listed "Philometer." I won't go into all the gory details of plodding through Murray's tedious writing. Suffice to say that I discovered in Murray that Jacobus de Cessolis, in his famous (infamous) "Sermon", made specific reference to the legend of chess being invented by the philosopher Xerxes. de Cessolis' work is dated to the latter part of the 13th century CE. Could de Cessolis be the mysterious John de Vigney? It didn't seem so - as "of Cessolis" did not show any resemblance to "of Vigney" to me. But, knowing the vagaries of translation and how language changes over time, I was keeping an open mind. But - what did seem obvious was that "The Moralization of Chess" was a rather bad translation of another title - I guessed - from Latin. The "Sermon" (actually a lengthy four-part book) that de Cessolis wrote was titled "Liber de moribus hominum et offciis nobilium" and as far as I could decipher in my non-existent Latin translation skills, none of that related in any way to anything about "chess" (something like "scaccum" in Latin). However, the information about de Cessolis and "Xerxes" and the invention of chess was contained in Chapter V of Murray, entitled "The Moralities." That seemed fertile ground within which to dig a little further, since the title of the book I was looking for had something to do with "morality" or "moralization" and "chess." Sure enough, after skimming through a few more pages of Murray, I came across the name of John of Waleys. Hmmmm, I thought - John de Vigney - John of Waleys? I read that John of Waleys is also known as Johannes Gallensis, and he wrote a book entitled "Quaedam moralitas de scacciario" (which I roughtly translated from the Latin as something to do with "The Morality (or Morals) of Chess." That sounded suspiciously like "The Moralization of Chess" to me. John of Waleys' book is dated to around 1260 CE, which would date it probably earlier than de Cessolis' "Sermon" and, therefore, could have been available to de Cessolis as a reference to the Xerxes/Philometer legend. My intincts tell me I've found John de Vigney and his "The Moralization of Chess." He was actually John of Waleys (a/k/a Johannes Gallensis) and the book's title is something like "The Morality (or Morals) of Chess." Ahhh, an evening's worth of research ends in a pay off. Wish that was always the case!

Origins of Chess - Essay by Ricardo Calvo

Dondelion has been busy at Goddesschess.

He's been working on this article by IM Ricardo Calvo for some time. We received it from Carmen ("The Chief's" widow, whom he lovingly called "The Librarian") months ago, but it was in PDF format and needed to be "translated" into html so that it could be edited, etc. Part 1 has now been published at Goddesschess, Part 2 will follow in due course:

LOVE, CHESS AND LITERATURE IN LUCENA
AN UNNOTICED PRECEDENT OF "LA CELESTINA"

Chess in Any Language

Here are some fasinating posts that were posted at the Delphi forum "Chess the Goddess and Everything". I am sure you will enjoy reading them. Isis This is Sunwolf: 169.1 Hi All: I went an took these simple chess words and translated them, to let them speak for themselves: chess, king, queen, pawn, rook, knight, castle, bishop, chessboard French: échecs, roi, reine, pion, tour, chevalier, château fort, évêque, échiquier Portuguese: xadrez, monarca, rainha, penhor, [rook], fidalgo, castelo, bispo, [chessboard] Danish: skak, konge, dronning, [pawn], [rook], [knight], slot, biskop, skakbræt Spanish: ajedrez, rey, reina, peón, grajo, caballero, castillo, obispo, tablero Welsh: gwyddbwyll, brenin, banon, gwystla, brân, farchog, castella, esgob, dawlbwrdd I find it fascinating that each laguage has a unique word for "Chess" and also the Welsh word "gwyddbwyll" is important because I think there is a myth associated with it. Anyone familar with it? Response: Hi Isis:I found that reference to "Gwyddbwyll", the Welsh word for "Chess" in the Goddess Weave. It was from a post by Philip Mistlberger on our old Art Bell home: " Philip Mistlberger - 05:13am Feb 8, 1999 MST (#194 of 673) Mark, what does your number magic say about the following, Peredur, Perceval, Grail, GWYDDBWYLL (correct spelling), black maiden, Empress. In terms of the Mabinogion connection, which pretty much confirms the chess-Goddess tradition link, the above terms are obviously important. I've long been interested in Perceval in the context of the Grail search, and feel he is a key to many things. The symbolism re the relationship between the Empress-Goddess, black maiden, chess, and Peredur is striking and relatively straightforward. A key to Celtic history is Druidry. I'm going to look that way. Jan, it'll be interesting to see if this Celtic link can in turn be bridged to the Chinese links you've uncovered. One other thing: The Druids are linked to Stonehenge, which has direct mathematical commonalities with the Great Pyramid. More later when I have time. Getting interesting." "Mark Borcherding - 09:37am Feb 8, 1999 MST (#195 of 673)dare to dream upon your own star Ref 194 Philip here is what I came up with: 9 numerology 26 numerology Reduction Peredur 42 67 6 Perceval 37 82 1 Grail 29 47 2 GWYDDBWYLL 47 137 2 black maiden 39 75 3 Empress 32 95 5 Black Madonna 37 91 1 Celtic 25 52 7 Holy Grail 53 107 8 Notice "Holy Grail" creates Jan's number "8" the chess board 8x8 squares. Grail also refers to bloodline and perhaps refers to DNA that has 8x8=64 codons. Perceval = 37 = Black Madonna , most of the paintings in the Templar churches have a "Black Madonna". Notice "Celtic" reflects itself with 25 mirror of 52. Empress = 32 = 32 white squares or 32 black squares. 1/2 of the DNA Codon. Perhaps each person carries both Male and Female DNA and can activate it in unity :) Thus ALL of us are the Holy Grail. Philip Mistlberger - 12:15pm Feb 8, 1999 MST (#196 of 673) Thanks Mark, maybe we should rent a mainframe before 2000 to get this solved... The plot thickens... In Egyptian mythology, the floor of the Great Hall of Judgment is a pattern of BLACK AND WHITE SQUARES. In order for the soul to progress on its journey into the afterlife, there must be an equal number of either coloured squares. More of black, or more of white, symbolizes that there is an imbalance in the soul that has to be corrected. Concerning the "Gwyddbwyll" game. In the Mabinogion the word is translated by Guest as "chess". Other sources say it is a board game that derives from an older Irish board game that is almost identical to chess but slightly different. John and Caitlan Matthews, well known Celtic scholars, describe it as synonomous with chess. In some versions the squares are not black and white, but red and white. Red and white is a pairing that shows up throughout the Hermetic and alchemical texts. The Menkaure pyramid of Giza (linked with Horus by some) was originally red and white. Queen Elizabeth I's astrologer, John Dee, found red and white alchemical powders in the Abbey Grounds of the Isle of Avalon. The Sanskrit nectar "Amrita" is a red/white elixer that streams out from the "moon" center in the head. And so the pieces seem to be coming together (pun intended). The original game appears to have been an alchemical code or cipher of some sort, containing keys for initiation and consciousness growth. Very similar to Tarot, with the modern version being a poor, trivial derivative. I suspect that the origins are Nile valley and/or Mesopotamian (as with most eveything, and before that probably something antidiluvian, like Atlantis). With the decline of those cultures it probably spread East through Persia, the Indus valley and India, Silk Road, and China. It also went northwest through Asia Minor and Europe, carried by Celtic tribes and hidden in the legends (such as the Mabinogion). Those are very preliminary speculations, of course. There is so much more here, such as the mathematics of Stonehenge and the Great Pyramid, the geometry of the Shiva temples, and the historical interfacing of the Goddess traditions and Druidism. There is also a stack of info around Sacred Geometry vis a vis the Avalon myths, Freemasonry, and their Egyptian roots. Bridge anyone? :-)" " Philip Mistlberger - 10:57pm Mar 4, 1999 MST (#296 of 321) Jan, in the info that I posted last month about the Celtic chess connection through the Mabinogion (Welsh bardic tales), they mentioned that the Celtic board game "Gwyddbwyll" was derived from an older Irish game that was very similar to chess but slightly different. As the Mabinogion dated from about 1100 CE, "older" would seem to fit with the "pre-500 CE" era you mention. In the Mabinogion the connection between chess and the Goddess is spelled out in a strikingly explicit manner. It is referred to as the "game of the Empress and the black maiden".