Chess has been called "the Olympics of the mind" and keeping a chess table handy is a great way to ensure that you take up every opportunity to sharpen up your logical reasoning skills. Chess is the oldest game of skill played in the world, but it is much more than that. Chess is also a fascinating history lesson in miniature and it tells us much about how people lived in earlier times. No-one know for sure where chess originated, it is so old, but it is well documented to have been played for centuries in the same basic form played today with variations in naming and design but little else, in the most ancient of times in China, India, and Persia.
The game therefore was already popular and well established when it came to Europe via Spain with the Moors in the tenth or eleventh century (The movie 'El Cid' was set in Spain at this time, 'cid' being a moorish word meaning 'chief' or 'lord') and once the Spanish got the chess playing bug the rest of Europe and the West wasn't far behind. The chess set we see today refelects European 'modernisations' on the basic imported theme and the knights and bishops, kings and queens and castles have a medieval flavor which is a European refinement to that original Middle Eastern import. The Europeans found the piece names hard to pronounce and they represented a social order and culture which was of course entirely different to that to be found in Europe.
Chess tells us a great deal about the social order of the people who originated it. Pawns represent the lowest members of society, serfs and laborers. The castle represents the fortified home. The knight represents the professional soldier of olden times who was important but also frequently sacrificed by his masters when the need arose!
The great authorities in medieval times were the church and the monarchy and these are represented by the central, most critical pieces in chess, the Bishops , kings and queens.
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