Chess is one of the most intellectual games invented in the history of mankind. She trains logic, endurance, teaches to count every move and adapt to the changing situation on the playing field. The game has more than a thousand years of its history, and it is already difficult to scientifically validate the question of where chess was invented, but we still try to at least slightly open the veil of secrecy.
One legend is associated with the advent of chess. According to this legend, the game appeared about a thousand years
BC, being the invention of a certain Indian mathematician, who also invented such mathematical action as
exponentiation. What this game was specifically for, this legend does not say, but it is mentioned that a board divided into 64 cells was used to play it. The grateful sheikh, who fell in love with this game, invited him to choose any reward he wanted. Then he asked for a certain number of grains that would fit on the game board, if in each next cell to put them twice as much as in the previous one. The Sheikh recklessly agreed, but after the final calculations it turned out that he had to owe the sage more than a hundred cubic kilometers of grain (for the sake of accuracy, let’s say that the last cell should have 9,223,372,036,854,775,808 grains, so the sum of grains from all cells should represent a truly astronomical number).
If you believe the legend cited, then the answer to the question of where chess was invented is unequivocal - in India. However,
archaeological excavations indicate that a similar game existed in Egypt several thousand years before our era, so scientists still can not accurately name the country where chess was invented. What did the first chess look like, what rules did they have, how did the game of chess go in those ancient times?
If we turn to the
history of chess, we will see that not only the rules, the names of the pieces and the game itself differed, but also the arrangement of chess. Initially, the game was designed for four players, under the leadership of each there were four pawns and one horse, elephant, rook and king. Each player’s pieces lined up in a corner of a 64-board game board. They played two for two, walked in turn, each throwing
dice, so some element of chance was present in the game. When playing only two players, the arrangement of the figures was similar to modern chess (one of the kings changed to a vizier - an adviser to the king). Victory counted:
- With the complete destruction of all enemy troops.
- When capturing an enemy king (when playing one on one).
- When destroying all enemy troops except the king.
This Indian game was called chaturanga (“four sides”). Once in Persia, it was transformed into a new game - shatrange. Shatrange moved from Persia to Western Europe, where he turned into modern chess, from where they gradually spread around the world, becoming the most popular intellectual game of all time.
This concludes our journey in search of the country where chess was invented. We hope you enjoyed reading it as much as writing.