ANCIENT GAME BOARD.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 189, 12 August 1933, Page 11 (Supplement)

ANCIENT GAME BOARD.

USED BY "VTKINGS,

FOUND IN LAKE DWELLING.

Harvard archaeologists have discovered in Ireland an ancient Viking game that no one knows how to play, a "parlour" game antedating parlours by about 1000 years. The game consistfi of a board, about nine inches square, smooth, set inside a square, ornately carved wooden frame which surrounds the board like the frame around a painting. The smooth inner surface is perforated by 40 round holes, evenly spaced, seven on each side, the magic number seven multiplied by iteelf no matter which two 6ides are used as the factors for multiplication. The centre hole is surrounded by a ring, cut in the wood. This ring is double, like a child's drawing of a circular road.

The archaeologists suggest that the ancient board might have been used for some form of cribbage. The mystery is not clarified by two handles of wood attached to the frame around the board. Each handle is rounded, much like a door knob, one nearly twice the size of the other. The big handle is carved rudely in the likeness of a human head; the little one an animal's head. This gaming board was found by the Harvard under direction of ProfessorTS. A. Hooton, now engaged in a five-year survey of ancient Ireland. It was in "a tenth century lake dwelling in Ballinderry, County Westmeath. The board contains also Christian crosses of a style common to the Isle of Man. The ancient dwelling was found by Dr. Hugh O'Neill Hencken, curator of European archaeology, and Hallam L. Movius, both of the Peabody Museum, Harvard.