AI Reveals 2,000-Year-Old Roman Board Game Found in Netherlands

A nearly 2,000-year-old white stone artifact held by Het Romeins Museum in Heerlen, Netherlands, has been identified as a game board thanks to the assistance of artificial intelligence. The oval piece of limestone features a rectangle carved into its surface, containing four diagonal lines. Its original purpose had remained a mystery.

Researchers have now determined that the stone served as a strategy game played with pieces made of glass, bone, or pottery. The objective of the game involved blocking the opponent’s pieces. While similar games were previously known from the medieval period, the discovery in Heerlen demonstrates that such games were played centuries earlier than previously believed.

The investigation began with the creation of highly detailed 3D scans. “Those scans make the traces on the stone clearly visible,” explained Luk van Goor of Restaura restoration atelier in Heerlen.

“Some of them are a fraction of a millimeter deeper than others. Those traces were used more intensively. We also see that the edges of the stone are beautifully finished, which indicates that this is a finished product and not a stone that still needed further processing.”

AI was employed to decipher the game’s rules. This took place at Maastricht University, which is running a project examining strategy games played throughout history. Researchers trained an AI model, Ludii, using the rules of approximately one hundred medieval or older games from the same cultural area.

“We found dozens of possible game rules,” said researcher Dennis Soemers. “With those rules, Ludii played against itself and discovered a few variants that are fun for people to play.”

The researchers then examined whether the movements of the pieces corresponded with the wear patterns on the stone at the museum. Playing with one set of rules did, in fact, produce the wear pattern identified through the 3D scans.

According to Karen Jeneson, conservator at Het Romeins Museum, there is no room for doubt. “We also looked at other possibilities for the use of the stone, such as a decorative element in architecture, but we could not find any other explanation. It really is an unknown game from Roman times.”

The game rules are available on the University of Maastricht website: for anyone who wishes to try the game themselves.