Backgammon
Backgammon is one of the oldest known board games. Its history can be traced back nearly 5,000 years to archeological discoveries in the Middle East, originally in Iran. It is a two player game where each player has fifteen pieces ("checkers") which move between twenty-four triangles ("points") according to the roll of two dice. The objective of the game is to be first to "bear off", i.e. move all fifteen checkers off the board. Backgammon is a member of the tables family, one of the oldest classes of board games.
History of games
Chaturanga (which means 'quadripartite' and also 'army'), the predecessor of Chess, possibly developed in the Indian subcontinent or Central Asia during the Kushan (30–375 CE) or Gupta (320–550 CE) periods from an amalgamation of other game features and was transmitted to Sassanid Persia (where it was known as Shatranj) and China through the Silk Road. The oldest text to mention Chaturanga is the middle Persian work "Wizârîshn î chatrang ud nîhishn î nêw-ardakhshîr" (The explanation of Chatrang and the invention of Nard, c. 600 AD). This texts tells the arrival of Chatrang in an embassy from 'Hind' during the reign of Khosrau I (531–579). The name 'Hind' was often used to refer to eastern regions such as Balochistan. Another game named Chaturaji was similar but played with four sides of differing colors instead of two, however the earliest source for this four sided board game is Al-Biruni's 'India', circa 1030 AD. Historians of Chess such as Yuri Averbakh have surmised that the Greek board game "petteia" may have had an influence on the development of early Chaturanga. "Petteia" games could have combined with other elements in the Greco-Bactrian and Indo-Greek Kingdoms.