Popular Science

Like many other cultures, the ancient Romans loved their board games. Some of history’s most well-documented examples of tabletop pastimes date back to the empire. Ludus Latrunculorum, aka latrones, was a strategy face-off between two players on a grid board similar to chess or checkers. Another favorite, Ludus Duodecim Scriptorum, saw players compete on a backgammon-like setup that also involved dice.

A complete catalog of Roman games may never be known, but an international research team is confident they have a new addition to the list. As detailed in a recently published study in the journal Antiquity, their explanation also finally solves a mystery that’s puzzled archaeologists for over 40 years.

The saga began in 1984 while researchers excavated the ancient settlement of Coriovallum. Located in the Netherlands not far from the present-day German border, the town was founded during the reign of Augustus (27 BCE–14 CE) and is one of the region’s only outposts that is specifically named in primary sources. Coriovallum was also strategically placed at the nexus of two principle roadways for the Roman Empire. This guaranteed a sustained level of economic prosperity for centuries, as evidenced in its impressive architecture and ornate burial plots.

During their excavation work, archaeologists discovered an oval stone measuring roughly 8.3 by 5.7 inches in diameter and etched with various intersecting lines. Further examinations revealed the material to be a type of white Jurassic limestone sourced from ancient quarries in Norroy in northeastern France.

“Norroy limestone was a popular choice for large architectural elements in the Roman northern provinces because of its white color, smooth surface, and relative softness, making it an easily sculpted substitute for marble,” explained the study’s authors.

Experts debated the stone’s purpose for years. It was too small to be intended as a building component, and its shape wasn’t suited for roadwork. Although its lines conceivably could represent some form of architectural sketch, the theory was unlikely due to a lack of similar examples from the time period. But while some researchers consistently contended the stone was a board game’s playing surface, it didn’t resemble any known examples from the era.

Recent analysis now appears to support the longstanding board game theory. 3D imaging revealed some of the diagonal and horizontal lines are deeper than others—indicative that people routinely moved tiny pieces along these routes more often than others.

“We can see wear along the lines on the stone, exactly where you would slide a piece,” Leiden University archaeologist and ancient game specialist Walter Crist said in a statement.

But if it was a board game, then what were the rules? The question may seem impossible to answer without access to a playing guide, but Crist’s team doesn’t think this is necessarily the case. After enlisting help from machine learning programmers at Maastricht University in the Netherlands, researchers designed an artificial intelligence system trained on rules from around 100 ancient games documented from the same region as the stone’s origin. The resultant AI program (dubbed Ludii as a play on ludi, Latin for “games”) calculated a number of optional playing styles for the mystery pastime researchers named Ludus Coriovalli.

“[Ludii] produced dozens of possible rule sets. It then played the game against itself and identified a few variants that are enjoyable for humans to play,” said Maastricht University AI designer Dennis Soemers.

From there, researchers doublechecked the potential rule sets against the documented wear on the stone to confirm the most likely move patterns in the game. In the end, Crist, Soemers, and their colleagues theorize Ludus Coriovalli was a “deceptively simple but thrilling strategy game” with the objective to pursue and trap your opponent’s pieces in as few moves as possible.

Although the study’s conclusions offer arguably the most plausible explanation behind the limestone artifact, researchers stopped short of declaring themselves the winners. Without additional primary source references, the exact rules of Ludus Coriovalli may never be fully known.

“If you present Ludii with a line pattern like the one on the stone, it will always find game rules. Therefore, we cannot be sure that the Romans played it in precisely that way,” Soemers cautioned.

Like any great board game, it’s always important to consider all the options and avoid getting too cocky.

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To an untrained eye, it might just look like the remains of some ferocious predator’s feast. But this particular antler is thousands of years old, and could be a remnant of interactions between the last of Europe’s hunter-gatherers and the continent’s early farmers. 

Neolithic farmers belonging to what archaeologists refer to as the “Linear Pottery culture” began to expand across Europe around 5500 BCE. During this migration, they pushed Mesolithic hunter-gatherers in central Germany, among other places, further north. 

“There is a long period in which farmers and hunter-gatherers coexist,” Oliver Dietrich, co-author of a recent study published in Praehistorische Zeitschrift and press officer at the State Office for Heritage Management and Archaeology Saxony-Anhalt – State Museum of Prehistory, tells Popular Science. “Neolithic and Mesolithic thus are not mutually exclusive time periods, but describe two life styles, which are partly contemporary.”

Archaeologists know very little about the contact between these two peoples. Cue Germany’s Eilsleben-Vosswelle settlement, a prehistoric farming community that existed on the frontier, with hunter-gatherers in the north and farmers in the south. It was likely fortified, and may have seen significant interactions with proximal hunter-gatherer groups. 

“The material culture discovered at Eilsleben reflects this frontier situation, as it shows many influences from the world of hunter-gatherers,” Dietrich continues. “[Among] them is the antler industry, i.e. tools and other implements made from antler in a Mesolithic/hunter-gatherer style. The roe deer antler is a prime example,” he adds, referencing a previously discovered 7,000-year old antler from Eilsleben. 

Dietrich and his colleagues investigated the artifact for signs of human modification. They found that the rectangle-shaped skull fragment, cut marks (suggesting skinning), and notches at the base fit the bill. The artifact was probably worn as part of a mask or headdress, and the notches would have secured it in place. The headdress also dates back to 5291–5034 BCE. 

Roe deer antler worked into a headdress from Eilsleben. Image: Juraj Lipták/State Office for Heritage Management and Archaeology Saxony-Anhalt.

“Similar headgear is not known from early farmer contexts, but there are good analogies from hunter-gatherer contexts. The best comparison for the Eilsleben antler is from the shaman´s grave of Bad Dürrenberg,” says Dietrich.

The Bad Dürrenberg shaman was a 30 to 40-year-old woman who died around 9,000 years ago. She was laid to rest alongside an approximately 6-month-old child in an intricate tomb in present-day central Germany. Researchers identified her as a shaman, or spiritual leader, thanks in part to animal teeth pendants and a deer antler that researchers believe to be a headdress. 

Despite the fact that the shaman´s grave of Bad Dürrenberg is older than the Eilsleben antler, the shaman’s antler “provides a frame of interpretation for the find,” Dietrich explains. The Eilsleben antler could represent contact between hunter-gatherer ritual specialists and farmers, according to the researchers. 

Some transitions associated with the Neolithic lifestyle weren’t healthy, per a statement by the State Office for Heritage Management and Archaeology Saxony-Anhalt – State Museum of Prehistory. Within this context, it’s possible that early farmers would have requested help from a healer connected to the spirit world who was certainly an expert on local flora’s healing properties. 

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A horse’s whinny is an iconic sound, arguably on par with a cow’s moo and a sheep’s baa and a donkey’s hee-haw. Most people can immediately recognize a horse’s signature sound, so it might come as a surprise to learn that researchers have no idea how the animals actually produce some of the whinny sounds. That is, until now. 

“Although humans have been co-existing – and co-evolving – with horses for 4000 years, we still understand their communication imperfectly,” Elodie Floriane Mandel-Briefer, a biologist at Copenhagen University interested in vocal communication and cognition in birds and mammals, tells Popular Science. “The whinny in particular is strange: it has a low-frequency component that fits the large body size of horses, but a very high-frequency component as well that is way too high for such a large animal.” 

About 10 years ago, Mandel-Briefer and colleagues discovered the existence of the two pitches, which overlap to create a vocal phenomenon called biphonation. The low-frequency component is produced when air from the lungs causes vibrations of the vocal folds. This is also how humans, along with the majority of mammals, make sounds. 

However, normal vocal fold vibrations can’t explain the high-frequency part of whinnies, given how big horses are. So how are these animals making such high noises? Mandel-Briefer and co-authors investigated this biomechanical puzzle in an interdisciplinary study recently published in the journal Current Biology. They ultimately discovered that a laryngeal whistle is behind the whinnies’ high-frequency sound. Part of their work involved two of the authors blowing air through horse larynges secured from a horse meat supplier. 

“Initially they only got the low component, but with some playing around they were able to obtain the high frequency component as well. That showed that both components are produced by the larynx itself (not, as in human whistling, with the lips),” Mandel-Briefer explains. “To prove that the high component is a laryngeal whistle, they then blew two different gases through: air and helium. Because it has different physical properties, helium—compared to air—shifts whistle frequencies up, while frequencies emitted by tissue vibration (like the low component) do not change.”

A horse at Le Borre equestrian center in Montecreto, Italy. Horses have a whistle in their larynx behind their whinnies. Image: Margherita Bassi/Popular Science.

The frequency change confirmed that a laryngeal whistle explains the mechanical production of the high-frequency whinny component. More broadly, the team found that horses create biphonation by simultaneous vocal fold vibration and laryngeal whistling. As far as they know, horses are the only animals that use these two mechanics at the same time. The team proposes that their biphonation probably evolved to communicate multiple messages to each other at once. 

In a 2015 study, Mandel-Briefer and colleagues also demonstrated that frequency and emotion are connected. The high-frequency whinny component indicates that a horse’s emotion is pleasant or unpleasant. The low-frequency components represent the feeling’s intensity. Horses could also use two components to convey messages across varying stretches of space. The high component is louder and can travel farther.

While Przewalski’s horses, which are close relatives of domesticated horses, also create whinnies with biphonation, more distant relatives such as zebras and donkeys don’t seem to have the high frequency part. Horses might possess distinctive vocal adaptations enabling them to create a more plentiful and intricate call spectrum than fellow mammals. 

The paper “highlights the remarkable adaptive flexibility of the mammalian laryngeal vocal production system,” Mandel-Briefer concludes. “Understanding the communication system of any species is of fundamental scientific interest to help us understand their cognition, emotions and welfare, and this helps us understand horses better.”

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