Do you remember Battle Chess? I know, I just dated myself. For those of you who don’t, it’s a lot like holo chess from Star Wars but has (poorly) animated versions of the standard pieces who fought. (I remember being distinctly annoyed that everyone had some sort of cool boss move except the Queen, who hit people over the head with her purse.) How about Spock playing 3D chess on the original Star Trek? We’ve been playing the game for 1500-ish years, so, chances are, we’ll still be playing in the 23rd century and beyond.

But where did this long-lived pastime come from? How did it reach its current form?

Let’s find out.

12th century chess set. Photo via the Metropolitan Museum of Art (public domain)

Chess, unlike tarot cards, is legitimately ancient, purportedly originating in India during the 6th century (though of course, the further back history goes, the more difficult it is to sort it out from legend). One story lauds the game as an attempt to memorialize a slain prince for his mother, using an 8×8 ashtapata board. It was also an Indian “race” style game in which one player attempted to get all of their pieces to the center of the board, moving in increasingly tighter counterclockwise squares from the outer edge. The prince’s brother created a new set of rules and included a “king” piece, upon whose fate the entire game hinged.

The new game spread from India to Sassanid Persia, where it acquired the name chess from the word shah (or “king”) and the term checkmate from shah mat (or “the king is helpless”)

When Muslim forces captured Persia, what had once been an exercise in tactics became a source of poetic imagery and a metaphor for world politics. And, above all, it became a popular pastime among the upper echelons of society, including caliphs and their close advisers.

8th century bishop. Photo via the Metropolitan Museum of Art (public domain)

Some historians challenge the Indian roots of chess and claim, instead, it was invented in China as a battle simulation that disappeared after said battle but reappeared in the 7th century as a game with codified pieces and rules. In this version of the tale, chess spread from China to India and then followed the same path mentioned above.

Still other sources suggest the game traveled the Silk Road along with other goods and spread the other way, from the Arab world to China, where it became a hybrid of chess and the local game, Go (in which one player attempts to control more territory than the other by surrounding it with their markers. In China, chess pieces were originally placed on crossroads, as pieces are in Go, rather than in the squares.

8th-10th century king. Photo via Metropolitan Museum of Art (public domain)

Chess landed in Europe by two different routes: the Moors brought it to Spain when they conquered the Iberian peninsula, and it was introduced directly to Russia via trade with the Muslim territories to the south

The game is said to have changed rules and piece configurations several times between the 6th and 15th century in not only China and India but also Japan and Europe. By the year 1000, it was considered an essential part of courtly education, surviving sanctions from the Catholic Church (well known for hating all forms of fun).

The pieces were intended not only as a mechanism of play but also to teach young nobles the proper place of each person in society and why they must conform to their given roles (serf, knights, bishops, kings, etc.).

By the 15th century, the game was codified into something like its current form, although the rules were not set until the 1880s. By the Enlightenment Era (18th century), chess was being played by people from all walks of life and became a romantic impetus, spurning men to bold feats and risk-taking both in play and in life though the creation of formal tournaments, which eventually led to chess being considered, once more, a tactical pursuit rather than a romantic one.

11th-12th century knight. Photo via the Metropolitan Museum of Art (public domain)

Russian players dominated the game in the late 19th and 20th centuries until Deep Blue, an IBM computer, defeated a Russian Master in 1997, the first time a machine had defeated a champion.

And there you have it. There’s more nuance of course, and more theories than there are squares on a board, but those are the basics. The Metropolitan Museum of Art has a great collection of chess pieces and boards from across the ages if you want to take a closer look at all the variations.