Chess History - Origination?

The game of chess is thought to have originated in what is now northern India or Afganistan sometime before 6OO AD: the oldest written references to chess date from then, but there are unverified claims that chess existed as early as 100 AD. The KING at the right is part of a set of pieces dating from about 1200 AD found in a robbers' stash on the Isle of Lewis, northeast of Scotland.

(http://math.uww.edu/~mcfarlat/177hist.htm)