Archaeologists working in southern Russia have identified the remains of an ancient board game believed to be a distant precursor to chess, shedding new light on cultural connections between Mesopotamia and the Eurasian steppe during the fourth millennium BC.
Researchers from the Southern Scientific Centre of the Russian Academy of Sciences (SSC RAS) made the discovery at the Aglitsky I burial mound in the Aksaysky District.
The board was divided into two sections separated by a crossbar. A stylised anthropomorphic figure stood at the centre, mounted on a small pedestal and likely taking on a symbolic or ritual role in the game.
Nearby, archaeologists found more than 50 small hemispherical gaming pieces carved out of bone. The tokens had flat bases and were made from the epiphyses of sheep or ram femurs, pointing toward thoughtfulness in shaping for use as counters.
Archaeologist Leonid Ilyukov has reconstructed the game based on an analysis of a previously found artefact associated with the Konstantinovka cultural horizon of the Lower Don region.
According to the researcher, board games with patterned squares and gaming pieces first appeared in Mesopotamia during the fourth millennium BC. These early games, played on boards divided into small and large squares, are considered distant predecessors of later strategic games, including chess.
Ilyukov suggests that the game reached the Northern Caucasus through the migration of groups associated with the Uruk culture, one of the earliest urban civilisations of Mesopotamia. These migrants likely introduced game boards, possibly made from leather or textile surfaces painted with squares, along with sets of playing pieces.
The game, therefore, seems to have continued northward into the steppes of Eastern Europe and eventually the Lower Don basin, providing rare material evidence of cultural transmission.
The gaming set was found within a burial mound next to the remains of a person who lay on their right side in a curled position. Archaeologists also recovered several other grave goods placed around the body: two pointed-bottom ceramic vessels, two flint cores, and a stone tool.
Ilyukov believes the find may point to a broader cultural role for games in ancient ritual practices. He proposes that such “complex mechanisms” could have been associated with symbolic ideas about fate, particularly in funerary contexts. Although further research is needed, the discovery provides a rare glimpse into how games, migration, and belief systems may have intersected in prehistoric societies across Eurasia.
Sources : IIKSС
