Myron J. Samsin, Ottawa, 2002: PAWNS AND PIECES - TOWARDS THE PREHISTORY OF CHESS
In the following full version (pdf), I use arguments based in cultural history and the structure of chess to show that chess originated as a hybrid game. It was the result of combining Greek petteia-games with Indian race-games. I suggest that the Pawns in modern chess descended from petteia-stones, and the pieces in modern chess descended from pieces in the race-games. This fusion was most likely to have happened in what is now northwest India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan, in the years following Alexander the Great's conquests of central Asia. More specifically, this fusion probably happened in the years 180 to 50 BC, when there was an active, cosmopolitan Indo-Greek culture in the region. This proto-chess game then became, with a few modifications, the game which is first mentioned in written records ca. AD 600.
