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SPONSORED BY  | | | | August 2, 2024: Boardgames date back to ancient times, the best ways to know how hot it is outside, and bird flu is likely more widespread than reported. —Andrea Gawrylewski, Chief Newsletter Editor | | | An inlaid game board and playing pieces of the Royal Game of Ur discovered in a tomb at the southern Iraqi site of Ur. They date back to the second millennium B.C.E. Zev Radovan/Alamy Stock Photo | | | Play is embedded in human culture. Starting in childhood, play helps kids work on their social skills, navigate the world and learn lessons of winning and losing. Every culture has games to challenge the intellect, pass the time, and inspire bonding among those who play (play is an important behavior in lots of non-human species too). We've rounded up 10 ancient games. You can see the full list here, after you check out the top three below.
1. The Royal Game of Ur (shown above): First played as early as 2600 B.C.E.. by the ancient Mesopotamians. The game also spread around Central Asia, from Iran to India.
The rules: Snippets of the rules to Ur are known from ancient texts that describe the game's distinctive I-shaped board. Each of the two players has five or seven button-like pieces. They throw dice to enter these pieces onto the game board, where they try to beat their opponent in moving all their own pieces to a square at the end of the board. | | | An example of a Go board at the end of a game between two people. Saran Poroong/Alamy Stock Photo | 2. Go: First played around 500 B.C.E. by people in China, who spread the game throughout Asia. It is perhaps the oldest traditional board game that is still played today.
The rules: Go is played on a 19-by-19 board of squares. Each of the two players gets a supply of stones (181 black pieces or 180 white ones) and must place them on the board in turn. The goal is to surround the other player's stones to win more of the board's area. The player with the most area wins. | | | One of at least four Senet boards that were found buried with King Tut. Smith Archive/Alamy Stock Photo | 3. Senet: First played around 3000 B.C.E. in ancient Egypt. The rules: Each of two players moved at least 10 pawns around a 30-square board and may have determined the number of spaces to move by throwing sets of four two-sided sticks.
What the experts say: "People tend to think of play as an activity one engages in at one's leisure, outside of learning important skills needed to succeed later in life," Caitlin O'Connell, a behavioral ecologist at Harvard Medical School, wrote in a 2021 issue of Scientific American. "But although playing is fun for all involved—and fun for those who are watching—play behaviors evolved as ritualized forms of survival skills needed later in life, providing the opportunity to perfect those skills." | | |
Other measurements: Humidity can make 78 degrees F feel like 85. It's the measure of the amount of water in the air, and can make things oh-so-sticky because the water vapor in the air prevents sweat from evaporating off skin, which would otherwise cool you down. Dew point is a measurement related to water vapor in the air. It is the temperature the air would have to be cooled to for the water vapor in the atmosphere to start condensing out and forming liquid. When dew points are high, sweat will cling to your body longer and make everything feel yuck (a scientific term).
| | | Zane Wolf; Source: National Weather Service (data) | The heat index is calculated based on air temperature and humidity and is meant to give you an accurate idea of what it really feels like outside. News stations and weather reports often report the heat index, but it can have limitations. It is based on assumptions about body size or health. Plus its parameters aren't as relevant in the Western U.S. where air is typically drier.
The future: The National Weather Service and some schools and sports teams are incorporating more sophisticated heat metrics, like the Wet-Bulb Globe Temperature (which was actually invented by the military in the 50s). It accounts for not only the air temperature and humidity but also sun exposure and wind speed.
| | | • U.S. swimmer Katherine Douglass just won gold in breaststroke at the Paris Olympics. Read this article she co-wrote on how swimmers are using "digital twins" to improve their technique. It seems to work! | 7 min read | | | • During wildfires, some trees close their pores (microscopic openings on their leaves that exchange gases) and photosynthesis grinds to a halt. | 4 min read | | | • Bird flu cases in dairy workers are being undercounted, according to a new study in Texas. | 7 min read | | | • The U.S. government spends hundreds of millions of dollars each year on replenishing the sand on its beaches, which promptly washes away again. Why this practice may never end. | 8 min read | | | SPONSORED CONTENT BY CCHCS | Come Join a Community of Colleagues | | | • Last month, NASA decided to remove the VIPER lunar rover from its Artemis program, which is intended to get humans back to the moon. The decision is a major blow to moon science, former NASA official Thomas Zurbuchen told Scientific American. Zurbuchen served as NASA's associate administrator for science from 2016 to 2022. Canceling Viper removes the scientific teeth from the Artemis mission, he says: "It's no longer a program that actually drives toward deeper scientific understanding so that when everything is said and done, you have a much better understanding of the moon itself, or the timing of the outer planets' migration, which has a lot to do with how we ended up in a stable solar system." | 6 min read | | | MOST POPULAR STORIES OF THE WEEK | | | • The Long History of Sex Testing in the Olympics and Other Elite Sports | 17 min listen | • Quantum Physics Has Reopened Zeno's Paradoxes | 5 min read | • This Is the Most Exciting Rock Ever Found on Mars | 5 min read | | | • Providing frogs with artificial heat-trapping structures (which are like mini saunas) helps them fight off the deadly chytrid fungus that has devastated global amphibian populations. Click on this one for the cute photos. | 3 min read | | | • Urban planners are rebuilding cities into "sponge cities" that absorb and clean water from street runoff. Landscape architects often rehab polluted waterways and marshlands and restore them to beautiful urban green spaces. | 13 min read | | | I may be decades behind the times, but I recently learned how to play Catan, a multiplayer game where players build settlements on an island by buying and trading resources with their fellow players. Dozens of expansion packs, adaptations and parallel versions now exist of the game, but one recent release caught my eye: In Catan New Energies, players must build societies using both traditional and renewable energies. But the catch is, if pollution rates reach a breaking point on the island, all players lose simultaneously. If play helps humans strategize and problem solve for the future, this game is more than just fun. | What are your favorite games? Tell me all about them and how you're liking this newsletter by emailing: newsletters@sciam.com. And have a lovely weekend. | —Andrea Gawrylewski, Chief Newsletter Editor | | Subscribe to this and all of our newsletters . | | | | Scientific American
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