It has been conclusively proved that chess was invented in India or somewhere else sometime before or after 200AD.
When was Chess invented?
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May 26, 2015
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#4
I'll never understand why people keep on asking trivia questions on these forums when there are search engines who can answer these questions much quicker and more reliably.
and because some people wanna know what other people think.
I can quite easily imagine that chess (or the first games resembling chess) was played since the days people discovered music.
Jun 24, 2015
0
#7
According to the FIDE President Chess was invented by aliens from outer space...🐾
Wrong question.
Right question:
How. How can we reconstruct the past that is lost to us.
Who.
Where.
Why.
If you look at Chinese Chess, it is a living game closer to the original Indian Chess. It is a decendent of the original chess. From the descendent we can imagine what the original ancestor look like, the atavus (I learned that word from Sci Fi TV show.) In Chinese Chess, the "Bishops" are the Elephants. Makes sense. People fought with elephants. Who fought with elephants? Indian. Where? In India. When? When they were fighting with elephants and not Panzer tanks.
Why? Just like in heist movie, where they construct a scenario using toys for security guards, armor truck, the river, escape paths, police response time, etc . . . It's a simulation of the real thing they're going to pull off. Just like the X's and O's on a board in American football.
Then it goes back to Who. Most likely a military general, a very smart one.
Another source of history is folklore. That is the best source of history. Everybody has heard the story of the advisor to the king who invented chess and wanted one grain of rice on one square and twice as much on the next square and so on. That's complete bullshit. That's mathematicians trying to take credit for everything. By the way, there's no such thing as a mathematician, but that is another story. When you hear a folklore about a mathematician who . . . It's BULL SHIT, every time.
This one is a better because it rings true. A king was bored and asked an adviser to invent something for him. So he invented chess. The king liked it, liked it so much that he forget being a king, gives up being a king, and just play chess for the rest of his life. Now that story rings ture. Because chess is a kingdom, a better kingdom than a real kingdom. You tell which piece to go where, and there it goes. In real life, people stab you in the back ala Caesar (and every other Roman emperors). You don't have absolute control over your kingdom as you do in chess.
This story rings true. Chess is so prestigious because it is the representation of the world.
"All the world's a stage" - Shakespeare
I believe chess is popularized with the invention of stage crafts (acting).
A couple of cavemen drunk on fermented berries were sitting around pushing pebbles around in the dirt. That was chess version 0.0001 Everything after that was incremental development of the game.
Actually they probably did invent chess. They probably have wood carvings of animals they hunt. They would hunt like lions do. One would make a lot noise the rattle a herd, but the attack would come from a different direction. Or they would lure a herd into a trap, like a pit or something like that. They would plan out their hunt with wooden carved toys very much chess-like.
Me playing Wile E Coyote
A mouse was in my apartment, from where I do not know. It bugged me for a couple of days. It ran all around, my computer workstation, the kitchen, everywhere. The mouse is incredibly fast, it darts in and out and it’s gone.
It has one weakness, sound. I learned the importance of sound from a musician. It’s sound that gives its position away. I put plastic bags in the corners of my kitchen so when it walks on it, it will give its position away. I hear it in corner of the counter-top behind the microwave. How did it get up there? I moved the microwave, it disappeared, like a magician. Like a magician, it fooled my eyes. But I’m not relying on my eyes, but my hearing. I looked under the microwave and saw it was still there. I moved the microwave and it darted along the edge, off the surface and was gone. Darting along the edge is a smart trick. If I were a cat or a person trying to catch it with my hand, the counter and the wall would block my hand.
Just like the Wile E Coyote cartoons, I go to the drawing board and set up a trap based on the known behavior of the mouse. I taped a bag at the edge of the counter, and put fat in the bag. Then I went to sleep. I was awoken by a rustling noise and then . . .
. . . gotcha! I took it outside and let it go.
We humans are really gifted. We don't have the speed of a cat, the flight and eyesight of an owl, or the infrared of a snake. But our intelligence allows us to catch a mouse in our sleep.
Hmm. I thought about it just now, another animal that can do that is the spider.
Does anyone now when chess was invented?