A smooth, white stone dating from the Roman era and unearthed in the Netherlands has long baffled researchers.<\/p>\n
Now with the help of artificial intelligence, scientists believe they have cracked the mystery: the stone is an ancient board game and they have even guessed the rules.<\/p>\n
The circular piece of limestone has diagonal and straight lines cut into it.<\/p>\n
Using 3D imaging, scientists discovered some lines were deeper than others, suggesting pieces were moved along them, some more than others.<\/p>\n
“We can see wear along the lines on the stone, exactly where you would slide a piece,” said Walter Crist, an archaeologist at Leiden University who specialises in ancient games.<\/p>\n
Other researchers at Maastricht University then used an artificial intelligence programme that can deduce the rules to ancient games.<\/p>\n
They trained this AI, baptised Ludii, with the rules of about 100 ancient games from the same area as the Roman stone.<\/p>\n
The computer “produced dozens of possible rule sets. It then played the game against itself and identified a few variants that are enjoyable for humans to play,” said Dennis Soemers, from Maastricht University.<\/p>\n
They then cross-checked the possible rules with the wear on the stone to uncover the most likely set of movements in the game.<\/p>\n
However, Soemers also sounded a note of caution.<\/p>\n
“If you present Ludii with a line pattern like the one on the stone, it will always find game rules. Therefore, we cannot be sure that the Romans played it in precisely that way,” he said.<\/p>\n
The aim of the “deceptively simple but thrilling strategy game” was to hunt and trap the opponent’s pieces in as few moves as possible.<\/p>\n
The research and the possible rules were published in the journal Antiquity.<\/p>\n
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