A mysterious stone that has been gathering dust in a Dutch museum for many years now may be an ancient Roman board game, if research undertaken by Belgian scientists is correct. Using a specialised AI model and an extensive database of historical board games, researchers have even unravelled how the 1,800-year-old board game was played possibly only two centuries after Julius Caesar waded through the Flemish marshes fighting the Belgae in our climes.
Belgian scientist uses AI to unravel mysteries of an 1,800-year-old Roman board game
For decades, the Roman Museum in Heerlen (The Netherlands) has held a remarkable object in its collection: an ancient stone found near the Villa Coriovallum, a Roman site in the neighbourhood. Due to the striking stripes on the stone, the museum had long suspected that it was an ancient playing board, but conclusive evidence was lacking.
Eric Piette of the Francophone university of Louvain-la-Neuve (UCLouvain) and his research team changed that all that. Piette is an AI scientist with a unique specialisation: unravelling historical board games using artificial intelligence. ‘I worked at Maastricht University in the Netherlands for several years, and during that time, my colleagues and I came across the stone in the Roman Museum,’ he tells VRT NEWS.
Together with his team, Piette decided to re-examine the stone using modern AI technology. ‘During an initial analysis of the surface, we saw signs of wear that indicated repeated movements across the stone,’ he explains. ‘That could mean that it was indeed a playing board.’
To confirm this assumption, the researchers used specialised AI software. This software was able to compare the wear patterns on the stone with thousands of games from an extensive historical database. And that ultimately yielded results: after countless analyses and simulations, Piette and his team now believe that they know what kind of game it was.
Blocking game
While working in Maastricht, Piette and a number of colleagues had already started the so-called Ludii project. This project aims to map all board and card games from the past to the present. And then train a large AI model on this data.
‘The real power of this research lies in that enormous game database,’ says Piette. ‘We can include both modern and ancient board games, from Egypt to America, and from a wide variety of playing styles’. All games are collected on a world map on the Ludii website.
Ludii not only keeps track of these games, but also contains software that allows you to play them. This came in handy in the search for more information on the Roman game from Heerlen. Initial analysis of the traces of use revealed six possible pawn arrangements, but the team still had to figure out how the game was actually played.
‘We used various AI-controlled players to test thousands of game variations on the Dutch stone.’
However, a problem arose.
‘The game seemed to be designed for two players, but one AI player kept winning over and over again, while the other player always lost,’ Piette explains.
‘Ultimately, it turned out that only one fairly simple type of game could have been played: a blocking game. In such a game, both players have a different goal, and one player's main objective is to block the other player from achieving that goal.’
Given the stone's location near Villa Coriovallum, the researchers named the game “Ludus Coriovalli” (“Game from Coriovallum”).
Link with Scandinavia
According to Piette, the find is particularly interesting from a historical perspective. He attempted to date the stone and concluded that it originated from a period between approximately 200 and 400 CE, around the end of the (Western) Roman Empire.
'What is remarkable is that the patterns and possible rules of the game correspond remarkably well with games whose rules were only discovered much later, in the 18th and 19th centuries in Scandinavia'.
This suggests that cultural influence between the two regions may have existed much earlier than initially thought. It is possible that certain gaming traditions or ideas spread over long distances and persisted for centuries. ‘This also fits in with the image of the Roman Empire in its final phase: an empire that became increasingly hybrid through its contacts with other peoples and cultures.’
Next target is in Brussels
Piette and his Ludii team hope to be able to carry out more research of this kind in the future. ‘The database is the result of more than five years of work in Maastricht, but the project is far from complete. That is why we are now also collaborating internationally’.
And the scientist already has a new target in mind, this time closer to home, in Brussels. ‘The Royal Museum of Art and History has a striking clay game table from Ancient Egypt,’ he notes.
‘Possibly it is the oldest playing board known to humankind. We would very much like to conduct research on it, for example by using 3D simulations to reconstruct how it was originally intended to be used.’
Play the Ludus Coriovalli on the Ludii website !