The Journal
History You Can Play
Stories, guides, and deep dives into the games humanity has played across the ages. A new piece every week.
Fidchell and Gwyddbwyll: The Board Games of the Celts
The legendary board games of Irish and Welsh myth.
The Board Games of Ancient Mesopotamia
From Ur to Babylon — the cradle of civilization at play.
The Ancient Games Gift Guide
The right historical game for every kind of person on your list.
Games Along the Silk Road
How board games traveled and transformed across trade routes.
Before Dice: Throwsticks, Knucklebones, and Casting Lots
How the ancients left moves to chance before the cube was king.
How Ancient Games Teach Real History
Playing the past is the most memorable way to learn it.
Why Play Ancient Games in a Digital Age?
What a 4,000-year-old game offers that a screen never can.
Ludus Latrunculorum: Rome's Game of Little Soldiers
The lost Roman game of military strategy, reconstructed.
Fox & Geese and the World of Hunt Games
Asymmetric games where few must outwit the many.
Mehen: The Egyptian Serpent Game Lost to Time
The coiled-snake board that vanished with the Old Kingdom.
Patolli: The Aztec Game the Spanish Tried to Erase
A game of beans, stakes, and the gods of Mesoamerica.
The Tafl Family: Understanding Viking Board Games
One game, many boards: how the tafl games relate to one another.
Petteia and Polis: The Board Games of Ancient Greece
The strategy games the Greeks loved — and passed to Rome.
Mancala: Africa's Ancient Game of Counting and Capture
The sowing game played across continents for over a thousand years.
The Best Two-Player Ancient Board Games
Head-to-head classics that still hold up across the table today.
5 Ancient Games Perfect for Family Game Night
Screen-free, quick to learn, and thousands of years in the making.
Nine Men's Morris: The Game Carved Into History
From Roman ruins to cathedral cloisters to Shakespeare's verse.
What Did Roman Soldiers Play?
Ludus Latrunculorum and the games that filled the legions' downtime.
The Royal Game of Ur: A 4,600-Year-Old Mystery Solved
How a British Museum curator decoded the world's oldest rulebook.
Hnefatafl: The Viking 'Chess' That Came First
The asymmetric strategy game the Norse carried across the seas.
Board Games of the Viking Age
What the Norse played by firelight, from Hnefatafl to Fox & Geese.
Senet: The Egyptian Game of the Afterlife
How a simple race game became a spiritual journey through the underworld.
The Board Games of Ancient Egypt
Senet, Mehen, and Hounds & Jackals — how the Nile civilization played.
The 10 Oldest Board Games in the World
A countdown through five millennia of play, from Senet to the Royal Game of Ur.