This week’s selection is the Ancient Roman Game by Reddit contributor melig1991.
What’s this all about? Archaeologists at Maastricht University investigated a mysterious inscribed stone found in Heerlen. For decades, this stone sat there, and no one knew its purpose.
The researchers used an interesting approach to figure out the nature of the stone and its markings. They performed highly detailed 3D scans on the stone and captured not only the most visible lines but those that were less visible. They also found that some lines were more eroded in certain areas, suggesting frequent abrasions.
This data was then fed into an AI, which was instructed to figure out the “rules of this game”, based on other historical games that have known rules from subsequent periods.
The AI’s rules were checked against the wear patterns on the stone, and this confirmed, more or less, that they had figured out the majority of the rules of the game. They’ve published a short PDF on how to play, along with a 2D representation of the game to act as the playing surface.
That wasn’t sufficient for melig1991, who designed a full 3D model of the game, based on the research work.
I have to say that the 3D printed version is far more attractive than the 2D printout. It looks like a very easy print; however, it has not yet been posted publicly. Melig1991 promises to do so when it’s completed: it seems that the researchers have been tweaking the rules slightly, so they want to get the 3D model just right.
Stay tuned!
Via Reddit, University of Maastricht, and PDF
