One of the most fun things to do at home is to engage in board games. How old can they be? Monopoly, for example, is about a century old. But others are thousands of years old. Apparently, dice are among the first to exist. Recently, a very interesting discovery was made in Oman. A 4,000-year-old board game was found.
Game board
It was found by a team of archaeologists from the Ministry of Heritage and Tourism of Oman. It is a large board 4,000 years old. A board game with marked fields and holes.
where was the find made? In one of the least studied settlements in Oman. It is in the northern mountain valleys of the Hajar range.
There they found a tower. And they unearthed evidence of a copper smelter. In doing this, they discovered a board game from 4 thousand years ago. It is made of stone. According to the researchers, these board games were used during the Bronze Age. They were popular in economic and cultural centers.
“Finds of this type are rare. They occurred in areas such as India, through Mesopotamia, to the eastern Mediterranean. The most famous example of a game board is the Ur tombs.” This was said by archaeologist Piotr Bielinski referring to the royal cemetery of Ur. This is an archaeological site in Iraq.
More excavations
The settlement where the board game was found includes at least four towers. They are three round and one angular. One of the round towers was not visible on the surface. And so it was, despite being 20 meters in diameter. It could only be discovered during excavations.
Archaeologists continue to study the function of these structures. They have been found in many sites of Umm An Nar, where copper was worked.
“The settlement participated in the lucrative copper trade. For this, Oman was famous at the time. There are mentions of Omani copper in Mesopotamian cuneiform texts”, concluded Bielinski.
