In 1913 Harold James Ruthven Murray wrote a 900 page book called "A History of Chess." You can buy it used at Amazon for about $40.00. In his book, he proposed that India was the birthplace of chess and for many years this was considered gospel. However, there's been much interest in refuting this idea over the years.

Some say chess came from China - see Sam Sloan
Some say chess came from Persia - see Dr. Ricardo Calvo
Some have different ideas
see the Initiative Group Königstein
see here for a myriad of opinions

Where chess was born may forever remain a mystery, but we do know where chess incubated.
Persia, now Iran, at one time comprised of much of the mid-east, parts of Russia, Greece and all of Egypt. In this great empire chess, or some form of chess, was played increasingly by more and more people. Chatrang (Indian) in the form of the more developed shatranj (Arabic) was known to be played in Persia in the 6th century and when the newly founded Islam conquered Persia in the 7th century, the Muslims embraced the game. From the 8th century up to the 11th century, Islam swept across the Mediteranean, introducing this game to Sicily and to the Iberian peninsula.
This medieval game was very similar to the game we play today. But it was very different as well. The main differences were the moves of the pieces we now call the Bishop and the Queen, the the two move option of the pawn (and, of course, en passant) didn't exist; pawn promotion and castling. (as well as the strategies and tactics inherent to the differences) Briefly, the Queen originally was the weakest piece on the board, moving one adjacent, diagonal square at a time; the Bishop could leap over adjacent diagonal squares to the square beyond that diagonal; pawns moved one sqaure at a time, even on their first move and promotion wasn't usually part of the game; castling wasn't yet invented but the King could leap 2 squares on it's first move (in fact, this was called a King-leap or a King-jump); originally, the game was played on a non-checkered, 64-squared board; stalemate counted as a win; Baring the King (capturing all the opponent's men) was the usual way of winning. (see: Shatranj)
By 1475(?), all these changes except for castling had somewhat solidified thanks to Guttenberg and to the progressive chess thinkers in Valencia, Spain and in the cities of Italy. Castling would require more than another century to be codified.
I've glossed over the origins of chess because, while it's important, the game played before 1475 was really not chess, but a proto-chess or pre-chess.
The assumption [though this would be a great over-simplification] is that chess was born when this game was played and published as the basis for the poem, Eschacs d’amor, somewhere between 1475 and 1490 :

These are pieces from the Burmese game, Sittuyin. It very closely resembles chess. Other such pre-chess type games include:
      Shaturanga or Chaturanga
      Shatranj
      Shiang-Chi - Chinese Chess
      Shogi or Sho-gi - Japanese chess
      Changgi - Korean Chess
      Makruk - Thai Chess

You can read something about them here
or actually play the games here

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