14 DAY TRIAL // What could be the world's oldest gaming tokens have recently been discovered inside a 5,000-year-old burial mound near Siirt, southeast Turkey.
The archaeologists who found the 49 ancient tokens detailed their findings at a conference on excavations, surveys, and archaeometry recently held in Muğla.
The researchers explain that, although other similar objects have been discovered in the past both in northeastern Syria and in Iraq, specialists have failed to figure out what purpose they used to serve.
This is because, unlike the 49 gaming tokens found in Turkey, the items dug out in Syria and Iraq were unearthed as isolated single objects, The Inquisitr reports.
Therefore, archaeologists assumed that the objects they were dealing with were merely counting stones.
The same source tells us that the 49 pieces discovered in Turkey were scattered across the floors of nine ancient graves under a burial mound at the time when the archaeologists found them.
The gaming tokens are all made of stone. They have different shapes, and appear to have been painted in five different colors.
Check out the picture next to this article to get a better idea of what they look like.
What's interesting is that pieces of wood and even sticks were also found inside this burial mound, not far from the gaming tokens.
It is likely that these items were also used by ancient people when playing the game the tokens were part and parcel of.
For the time being, archaeologists are unable to say anything about how a game involving these tokens would have unfolded. Thus, archaeologist Haluk Sağlamtimur says that he and his colleagues are still “puzzling over its strategy.”
The researchers suspect that the game would not have been all that different from modern-day chess.
Pottery, both painted and unpainted, ritual artifacts, bronze spears and several other items were also recovered from the burial mound inside which the gaming tokens were found.