Online bingo is taking the world by storm. Essentially a game of chance, bingo is played by a wide variety of people, including everything from Hollywood celebrities, sprightly octogenarians and teenagers.

A few years back the mere mention of word ‘bingo’ conjured up visions of musty church halls and darkened casino’s, but thanks to the advent of the internet players can now engage in their favourite pastime in the comfort of their own homes. Far from being a solitary affair, playing online bingo puts players in near constant contact with their contemporaries. There are even blogs and forums discussing the best online bingo sites and strategies!

But that’s enough about bingo for now. Let us digress for a moment and recall the pastimes of our ancestors – fascinating stuff when you get down to it, really. Ever since archaeologists started excavating remnants of ancient civilizations, the culture and customs of these mysterious peoples have captured our imaginations and none more so than their toys and games. Aqueducts, drainage systems, architecture – that’s stuff a civilization needs in order to function. Games, on the other hand, that’s something they choose to engage in, and these provide us with a glimpse into their psyche. So let’s take a look at two of the more famous ancient board games.

Go: Quite literally the granddaddy of all modern board games, Go is traced back all the way to 2337–2258 BC. Although origin is disputed, some tales attribute the initial design of the game to Chinese Emperor Yao, who supposedly commissioned his counsellor to create a game that would teach his unruly son, Danzhu, concentration and balance. Others theorise that the game developed from the maps and stones Chinese warlords would use to explain battle formations; or even that it was originally intended to be a fortune telling device.

Whatever the case may be, Go is still so popular in the East today that newspapers run regular columns about the game. Rich in strategic complexity despite its deceptively simple rules, Go is played by two players who alternately place black and white stones on the vacant intersections of a grid of 19×19 lines. The object of the game is, in essence, to control a larger part of the board than your opponent. This means that players have to simultaneously arrange their stones in such a way that they cannot be captured and map out territories that will be impossible to invade. Quite the tall order, hey? The intrinsic difficulty of the game lies in finding a balance between the two conflicting interests.

Wow, just thinking about that kind of mental gymnastics gets my brain in a twist. Let’s move on to our next ancient game.

Mancala: Popular in various forms throughout Africa, the Mancala family of games are described, in Western terms as “count and capture” or”planting” games. The first evidence of the game are fragments of a ceramic board and several rock cuts found in Ethiopia, which are dated by archaeologists to have originated between the 6th and 7th century AD. Not quite as old as Go, but geriatric none the less.

The term ‘Mancala’ is derived from the Arabic word meaning “to move” and is used to denote not one single game, but rather a family of game types. Generally played with a dimpled board and a number of tokens (including seeds, cowry shells, stones, etc., depending on the culture in question), the object of the game is to capture more tokens that your opponent. Sound pretty simple, right? Not so, as per usual, games with the least rules are generally the most complex.

These are just two of the plethora of ancient board games that have been found. It would seem that our ancestors were quite an intelligent bunch, wouldn’t it? Games like these have shaped millions of minds over the centuries, much like chess continues to do ‘till this very day. So, next time you hook up to the internet to visit your favourite online bingo sites, take a moment to remember the great games that went before it.

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