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Archaeologists Find Roman Iron Age Board Game in Norway:
Last month, Norwegian archaeologists chose to excavate the remains of a small Early Iron Age grave cairn in western Norway. Dotted with monuments and grave mounds, the scenic location overlooking Alversund played an important role in Norwegian history.
The site at Ytre Fosse turned out to be a cremation patch. Amidst the fragments of pottery and burnt glass, archaeologists found a surprise: rare Roman Iron Age dice and board game pieces.
"This is wonderfully exciting. Such discoveries have not been made so many times before in Norway or Scandinavia. The special thing here is that we have found almost the whole set including the dice," said Morten Ramstad from Bergen University Museum to NRK.
[...] The pieces are of a very rare type, known to be from the Roman Iron Age, dated to around AD 300. The haul included 13 whole and five broken game chips along with an almost completely intact elongated dice.
The dice is marked with number symbols in the form of point circles and have the values zero, three, four and five. Less than 15 of these have been found in Norway. Similar dice were found in the famous Vimose weapon-offering site at Fyn in Denmark.
[...] The gaming board at Vimose was also preserved, so we have some idea of what board games may have been played during the period in Scandinavia. Inspired by the Roman game Ludus latrunculorum, board games seem to have been a popular hobby amongst the Scandinavian elite of the time.
Guess they'll have to push the founding date of Gen Con a little further back than 1968...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 16 2020, @09:40PM (21 children)
My grandpa used to talk about when he was a kid in Rome and they had to play Monopolus with five-sided dice. I thought he was demented but maybe he wasn't imagining it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 16 2020, @09:56PM (12 children)
Wait, are you related to our own beloved Ari?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 16 2020, @11:06PM
Peace and long life to all.
Turning over a new leaf isn't something people should only consider on New Year's Eve, now is always the best time to do the hard personal work of bringing your own mind to peace. Once you can achieve inner peace you shall more easily view the troubles of the world and approach them in a more constructive manner.
Sincerely, your friend and ally
apk
(Score: 3, Interesting) by aristarchus on Tuesday June 16 2020, @11:21PM (10 children)
Rome is still there, and all roads still lead to it, so what are you saying, oh atemporal AC? Besides, this is Viking stuff, in what later became Norway, after splitting from the Trӵe Swedish Kingdom.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 17 2020, @12:52AM (9 children)
Rome is still there, it never paid reparations to the Slavs and its statues still stand.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 17 2020, @01:06AM
OK Visigoth
(Score: 2, Interesting) by aristarchus on Wednesday June 17 2020, @02:34AM (7 children)
Slavs came well after the Germans, the Allemanii. In fact, perhaps you refer to the first sackers of Rome? the Celts? This would be by the Gallic Celts led by the warlord Brennus [history.com], which gave the pretext, centuries later for Julius (Ass) Caesar to prosecute his Gallic Wars. Yes, there are Roman monuments in Slavic countries, but the Slavs were not yet there when they were erected. And your point was? Do you knot know that the true oppressor of Slavs has always been Germans? From the Austro-Hungarian Empire, to the Third Reich, to the Neo-Nazi Viktor Mihály Orbán, it has always been Germans. Francs, Vandals, Ost und Wisigoths, Bavarians, Swabish, Friesians, a whole skein of twisted genetic inbread debauchery. This is why we cannot have White supremacy! All the damn Germans! (Slavs, as a whole, are much more liberal, and humble.)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 17 2020, @01:36PM
Or perhaps he meant the Goths that came after the fall of Western Rome and were temporarily driven from Rome by the Eastern Roman Empire (the Byzantines).
The point is, Rome existed for a heck of a long time, and warred on... anyone they could find, so they probably owe a lot of apologies, if you can find anyone left to apologize to.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 17 2020, @05:47PM (1 child)
"genetic inbread [sic] debauchery"
Do you even know what words mean? If they are usually the victors, it sounds more like they are the Übermennschen.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Wednesday June 17 2020, @07:47PM
OH! There are words involved? Literature, and not just games? That changes everything!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 17 2020, @07:19PM (3 children)
Your memory fails you old man [wiktionary.org]
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Wednesday June 17 2020, @07:48PM (2 children)
Not nearly as much as your grasp of history fails you! What part of Late Latin and Middle ages do you not understand?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 17 2020, @11:54PM (1 child)
The part where the word came into existence during the Byzantium Empire but slavery from the region didn't begin in ancient Rome. I do not "understand" because your claim is wrong.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Thursday June 18 2020, @01:38AM
Best to read the entire Wikipedia entry, instead of cherry picking bits that support your twisted and racist world view.
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Wednesday June 17 2020, @01:08PM (7 children)
I wonder why there are no games with prismic-shaped dice. It could be great.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Wednesday June 17 2020, @03:35PM (6 children)
Perhaps, you just didn't look it up on google / duckduckgo? https://www.dnddice.com/mix-match/prismatic-dice.html [dnddice.com]
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Wednesday June 17 2020, @05:16PM (5 children)
I meant shaped like a geometrical prism - i.e. all sections are a regular n-gon.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Wednesday June 17 2020, @05:31PM (4 children)
https://www.amazon.com/Five-Rhombic-Dodecahedron-12-sided-Black/dp/B00Q1TER2Q [amazon.com]
I mean, unless you're going with some weird version of perfect geometrical prisms, in which case I say. You have your own answer.
Dice for the game Dungeons and Dragons, is the one. There may be others, but people like buying their own special sets of dice for that game.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Wednesday June 17 2020, @06:54PM (3 children)
I meant like this
https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.k6-geometric-shapes.com%2Fimages%2Fprism-pentagon.jpg&f=1&nofb=1 [duckduckgo.com]
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Wednesday June 17 2020, @07:40PM (2 children)
That's, because it's more of a coin, than a die. Good luck getting a fair dice roll out of that. https://xkcd.com/221/ [xkcd.com]
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 3, Funny) by PiMuNu on Wednesday June 17 2020, @09:07PM (1 child)
Yah, my imagination had a game where first of all one can do a pentagonal prism - i.e. 5 sided dice (which is already cool) and then specials for if it lands on end, thus introducing "skill" into the dice role. A whole loads of interesting variants for non-regular polyhedrons.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Thursday June 18 2020, @07:43PM
That would be some weird sort of game. Maybe, you've found your way to being a self-made millionaire. The first non-regular polyhedron dice game in history!
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"