Chess was invented by the Chinese. This is an indisputable fact, just like the four great inventions are masterpieces of the Chinese.

But William Jones, an Englishman, spoke freely and published a story about why chess is named after elephants, and there are elephants in chess. China did not produce elephants in ancient times, but India produced elephants. Therefore, experts on the history of elephants were temporarily confused about several key issues.

, thus losing some confidence in the theory of Chinese origins.

Fortunately, the facts are facts after all. Now archaeological excavations have confirmed that the phenomenon also occurred in ancient China.

Naturally, Mr. William Jones's "high argument" is self-defeating.

Although the birthplace of chess today is locked in the two countries of China or India, there are still divergent opinions on whether it is China or India.

In recent years, human life sciences have made a series of major breakthroughs. Scientists have published the human genome map for the first time, which means that mankind has taken a solid step on the road to solving the mysteries of life.

This also brings useful enlightenment to the current research on the history of chess: research on the history of chess can also engage in "genetic engineering" to analyze in detail some of the heredity of current chess - there must be its origin in current chess.

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Once this information is captured, the mystery of the origin of chess will not be difficult to solve.

Our predecessors believed that chess developed from gambling, but gambling was invented by Huangdi.

This view is mentioned in the prefaces of the ancient chess records "Secret Records of Chess Records", "Taolue Yuanji" and "Abyss Deep and Sea Broad".

In particular, the preface written by Liang Tongshu, a scholar of the Qing Dynasty, for "The Deep and the Deep Sea" very clearly introduced a mainstream saying at that time: "I heard that Emperor Yao in the past played Go according to the degrees of the Zhou Dynasty, and it was called Yi; the Yellow Emperor defeated Chiyou and

For Bo; Emperor Wu conquered Zhou and conquered the world, so it was renamed as chess, which refers to the battle formation." Although the above statements include Qu Yuan's "Chu Ci", Liu Xiang's "Shuo Yuan" in the Western Han Dynasty, and Zhang Hua's "Natural History" in the Western Jin Dynasty.

It is supported by historical documents, but because the origin of chess is so long, it is so long that future generations mistakenly think it is a fairy tale (this is really a misfortune for us Chinese).

It is expected that the Yellow Emperor was just a tribal leader of a patriarchal clan in the late primitive society. With the very low social productivity at that time, who could believe that the Yellow Emperor would have so much leisure to create tools for fun during the war years?

But if we connect it to the "chip" that "strategizes and wins thousands of miles away", and to the rules of dice, chess, and the advancement of chess pieces recorded in the "Ancient Bo Jing", then we will suddenly become enlightened.

: It turns out that what Huangdi invented was the production tool "Bo" - Zhan Chi.

As introduced in "Natural History", in the Xia Dynasty, after the slave-owning aristocracy emerged who were full of food and had no use for anything, a minister named Wu Cao invented a toy like "Bo" as a tribute to Xia Jie based on the Yellow Emperor's planning methods.

At that time, the Yellow Emperor only commanded an alliance of some independent tribal teams and lacked absolute authoritative command power. Therefore, he used the method of deciding the advance and retreat of a certain army by rolling dice at the alliance's military democratic meeting to coordinate his own troops.

Formation, so there are rules for throwing dice and moving chess in Wu Cao's game.

As for the relevant regulations on the promotion of chess pieces to "Xiao", it only reflects a reward mechanism for the Yellow Emperor's troops during war. It is the same as the agreement that "the first to enter Xianyang will be the king" made by later generations Liu and Xiang before they destroyed Qin.

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So after getting to the bottom of it, there is nothing wrong with saying that Huangdi invented "Bo".

The two major rules of rolling dice to determine the movement of chess and the advancement of chess pieces have naturally become the basic features of chess.

In the later spreading process, "Bo" was derived from "Bo", which was collectively called "Bo Sai".

The difference between them is that those who roll the dice are called gambling, and those who do not roll the dice are called plugs.

By the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, the popularity of "Bose" had become very common.

"Zhuangzi Parallel Thumb" records: "Zang and Gu were shepherding sheep together, and both of them killed their sheep. When asked about Zang's ridicule, he would hold his policy to study; when asked about Gu's ridicule, he would go on a tour." Gu was addicted to playing.

Bose even lost his own sheep. It can be seen that the chess games of Bose and Bose were deeply rooted in the hearts of the people at that time.

So why did Emperor Wu of Zhou change the name of the game to chess?

There can only be one answer, which is the result of social development.

With the development of productivity, the Shang Dynasty already had a full-time army, and by the end of the Shang Dynasty, the army was divided into different branches.

The Song Dynasty poet Cheng Hao's poem "Chariots and horses still exist in Zhou's warfare" tells us that Emperor Wu of the Zhou Dynasty used "chariots" and "horses", two relatively new types of arms at the time, in the war against Shang Zhou, and they played a huge role.

So after winning the world, when Emperor Wu of Zhou's group of subordinates were playing gambling, they most likely happily added "cars" and "horses" to the army to praise Emperor Zhou's military power.

Invincible.

In this way, a new type of gambling appeared, which was different from the old gambling in that it was diverse (the original Bosai had a single unit).

Of course, Emperor Wu of Zhou felt that this kind of new game was his "patent". In order to show off that he was better than the three kings, he happily changed the name of the new game to chess.

Therefore, it is probably not wrong to say that chess was born at the end of the Shang Dynasty and the beginning of the Zhou Dynasty.

In the long years to come, chess has continued to grow and develop with the ups and downs of history (of course the same goes for other chess games).

It is conceivable that by the Warring States Period, due to the influence of Bose, chess would inevitably differentiate into dice-throwing chess and non-dice-throwing chess.

Because chess without dice is convenient, and the changes in multiple arms are correspondingly complicated, this kind of chess has great development advantages.