Thinking on these lines, I was able to draw a few conclusions regarding the formation of the board, inclusion of pieces and piece movements.
The Board...
Take the case of the board. As we all know, there are two types of squares on the board. Light and Dark. Why so?
Take a look at the Bishops. All the other pieces, except the pawns, can move to any square on the board. Pawns, on the other hand, have some restrictions governing their movement though they too can land on any square, considering all the pawns from both sides. So colouring the board for alternate squares does not seem relevant enough for these pieces as they would not be affected, had all the squares been of the same color.
But consider the case, where in both of white's bishops are on board. It would easily be identfiable with alternating, coloured squares. For if someone did mistakingly place the Bishops on similar coloured squares, the error could easily be spotted. Had all the squares been of the same colour, people would have spent half their time distinguishing the Bishops.
I believe the Pawns were the earliest to arrive on board because of two major reasons.
One being the fact that there are lots of other similar games such as checkers, for instance, that depict pieces similar to pawns as well as an almost identical board. This stresses the fact that all these games must have evolved from a single primitive form which had pawn like pieces with identical movement for all these pieces.
The other reason being the simple fact that everything in this universe evolves from the simple to complex forms. Chess was no different either. The earliest pawn movement, I suppose, must have been to just move forward and this seems a very simple logic to be discovered. The sheer number of pawns on the board implies the fact that their movement was easy to handle with as well as predict. Think if we had 8 Queens on board or 8 Rooks for that matter.
The earliest form of the game, thus, must have been to capture all of opponent pawns. Capturing was made diagonal as there already existed other forms of the game where in capturing took place straight ahead. The side with last pawn/pawns standing, won the game. The concept of capturing the King seems way too high a logic to be discovered at this point of time.
The arrival of major pieces on the board were propelled by the fact that people needed more action out of the game. The pawn moved one square at a time and this made the game a little slow. People began to wonder as to what if the pawn could move to the last square on its file in one move, take a pawn sitting diagonally a couple of squares further on the next move, etc.
Thus the arrival of Bishops and Rooks...
I cannot figure out as to which piece preceeded the other, but I believe Bishops and Rooks, more or less, arrived at the same point of time because both of them held some element of a pawn with them.
The Bishop was a revolutionary discovery as it marked the beginning of the coupling up of pieces as well as the freedom for major pieces to move back.
The concept for the Bishop rose as a direct consequence of the diagonal movement by the pawn when it captures an opponent pawn. Maybe they tried amending the pawn movement to incorporate the Bishop's powers but later found out that it created a lot of confusion and so resided to the thought that a single Bishop with freedom to move back as well, would be enough and enticing. And thus a major piece clearly differentiated itself from its smaller counterparts, in the light that it could go back to the square where it came from.
As soon as the Bishop was introduced, one major shortcoming was noted. One Bishop on board could only reach half the squares so it meant that to stay aloof from the Bishop, you just needed to make sure that all your pieces sat on the other half of the board. Hence was introduced yet another Bishop and the problem was sorted out. This led to the coupling of major pieces in the future. Ofcourse, the dimension of the board was also one reason behind coupling of major pieces but it was not untill a lot of games were played, that it was undersood that the forces on the board should be in some way be propotional to the dimension of the board.
The Rook too, entered the scenario almost simultaneously with the Bishop. It rose as a direct consequence of the thought that the pawn had to move one square at a time, straight ahead to reach the end. Bishops had already attained a symmetrical force on the board by controlling the diagonals and it is quite obvious that a major piece was brought into the picture to control the remaining symmetry present on the board, which was the horizontal and vertical one.
It was not untill a few games passed by, that the chess enthusiasts discovered the Rook to be far more powerful than the Bishop. They began noticing the fact that pieces could be cornered and captured faster. And now the reverse logic seemed to step in.
The Bishop was a revolutionary discovery as it marked the beginning of the coupling up of pieces as well as the freedom for major pieces to move back.
The concept for the Bishop rose as a direct consequence of the diagonal movement by the pawn when it captures an opponent pawn. Maybe they tried amending the pawn movement to incorporate the Bishop's powers but later found out that it created a lot of confusion and so resided to the thought that a single Bishop with freedom to move back as well, would be enough and enticing. And thus a major piece clearly differentiated itself from its smaller counterparts, in the light that it could go back to the square where it came from.
As soon as the Bishop was introduced, one major shortcoming was noted. One Bishop on board could only reach half the squares so it meant that to stay aloof from the Bishop, you just needed to make sure that all your pieces sat on the other half of the board. Hence was introduced yet another Bishop and the problem was sorted out. This led to the coupling of major pieces in the future. Ofcourse, the dimension of the board was also one reason behind coupling of major pieces but it was not untill a lot of games were played, that it was undersood that the forces on the board should be in some way be propotional to the dimension of the board.
The Rook too, entered the scenario almost simultaneously with the Bishop. It rose as a direct consequence of the thought that the pawn had to move one square at a time, straight ahead to reach the end. Bishops had already attained a symmetrical force on the board by controlling the diagonals and it is quite obvious that a major piece was brought into the picture to control the remaining symmetry present on the board, which was the horizontal and vertical one.
It was not untill a few games passed by, that the chess enthusiasts discovered the Rook to be far more powerful than the Bishop. They began noticing the fact that pieces could be cornered and captured faster. And now the reverse logic seemed to step in.
Untill now, they deviced pieces that always captured, be it a Rook, a Bishop or a pawn. They needed to device a piece that was primarily built to run or escape and stay safe.
Enter the King.
Game enthusiasts realised that with the introduction of the King, the whole aspect of the game took an all new turn from being just offensive to a game that metamorphised itself into a balanced strategic one with both defense and attack elements to it. They seldom realised that this very aspect of the game would one day make it so popular that it would be one of the oldest game to be played in the succeeding millenium.
The King primarily had to evade being captured. So when a Bishop attacked it, it had to move like a Rook and when attacked by a Rook, it had to move like a Bishop. But providing the King with the option to flee had to be restricted in an apt manner so as to ensure victory to one side. And thus came the logic to restrcit the king to just jump one square, similar to the pawn.
But the game enthusiasts had not left the idea of a King who could move like the Bishop as well as the Rook without any restrictions...
Enter the Queen.
Banking in on the idea of introducing a King who could move without restriction, they shaped up what is now known as the Queen. Since there existed already a King, the Queen was introduced as an offensive piece just like the Bishops and the Rooks. The Queen easily proved itself to be the most effective and lethal force on the board and thus arose the need to revamp the board size to incorporate its force and space. Even though the Queen can be thought of as a Bishop and a Rook merged together, it is slightly more valued than both, as a Bishop and a Rook will only able to commute along the lines of the Bishop where as the Queen can commute along the squares of both the Bishop.
Let me also make familiar to you, the concept of domain. This is a term introduced to chess by myself to facilitate easy understanding and denote the immediate squares surrounding a piece. For eg: If a Queeen stands on e4, the 1st domain of the queen would comprise of the 8 squares - e5, f5, f4, f3, e3, d3, d4 and d5. The second domain would comprise of the squares surrounding the first domain - e6, f6, g6, g5, g4, g3, g2, f2, e2, d2, c2, c3, c4, c5, c6, and d6. For those who are not familiar with the chess notation, a simple method to visualize the first domain is to think about the neighbouring states of Madhya Pradesh. Madhya Pradesh would be the Queen and the neighbouring states would be the surrounding squares or the first domain.
The Queen controls all the 8 squares in the first domain, the Rook controls 4 and the Bishop controls 4. Mentioning the domain controls of the Rook and the Bishop is unnecessary as the statistics of the Queen represent their combined control of their respective domains. The Queen controls 8 out of the possible 16 squares in the second domain which got the game enthusiasts thinking about the rest of the squares in the second domain...
This is exaclty where the Knight comes in.
The game enthusiasts somehow realised that the number of squares on the board were far grearter compared to the forces in play and they needed to introduce a new piece with some power to balance the force and the space on board. But a problem that they faced was, that the existing combination of symmetry had already left no new moves for the new piece to blend in. So they knew they had to device a special piece. They had to be also carefull as to not to overdo or underdo the power of this new piece.
Thinking on these lines, I believe the following factors might have led to the discovery of the Knight. A piece when placed on the board, will have a maximum of 4 domains surrounding it. The Queen and the King control the whole of the first domain while only the Queen controls half of the second domain. The Bishop and the Rook, each control just one fourth of the second domain respectively. Thus the game enthusiasts discovered a symmetry, this time a partly circular one on the second domain. They saw a lot of squares vacant on the second domain for a major piece to fit in but had a few more hurdles to cross...
Firstly, they could in no way connect these squares on the second domain to the square where this major piece would sit. For e.g. The queen controls the square e4 while sitting on h1 via the a8-h1 diagonal. So they decided that the piece would simply jump to those squares rather than doing it along a line of control. Morover, they did not need to give this piece the control of 1st domain as they found that it would only replicate Queen's power and would overpower this piece. The ability to control the rest of the 8 squares in the 2nd domain combined with the ability to jump was enough to introduce the Knight on the board as the last force to join the team.
Enter the King.
Game enthusiasts realised that with the introduction of the King, the whole aspect of the game took an all new turn from being just offensive to a game that metamorphised itself into a balanced strategic one with both defense and attack elements to it. They seldom realised that this very aspect of the game would one day make it so popular that it would be one of the oldest game to be played in the succeeding millenium.
The King primarily had to evade being captured. So when a Bishop attacked it, it had to move like a Rook and when attacked by a Rook, it had to move like a Bishop. But providing the King with the option to flee had to be restricted in an apt manner so as to ensure victory to one side. And thus came the logic to restrcit the king to just jump one square, similar to the pawn.
But the game enthusiasts had not left the idea of a King who could move like the Bishop as well as the Rook without any restrictions...
Enter the Queen.
Banking in on the idea of introducing a King who could move without restriction, they shaped up what is now known as the Queen. Since there existed already a King, the Queen was introduced as an offensive piece just like the Bishops and the Rooks. The Queen easily proved itself to be the most effective and lethal force on the board and thus arose the need to revamp the board size to incorporate its force and space. Even though the Queen can be thought of as a Bishop and a Rook merged together, it is slightly more valued than both, as a Bishop and a Rook will only able to commute along the lines of the Bishop where as the Queen can commute along the squares of both the Bishop.
Let me also make familiar to you, the concept of domain. This is a term introduced to chess by myself to facilitate easy understanding and denote the immediate squares surrounding a piece. For eg: If a Queeen stands on e4, the 1st domain of the queen would comprise of the 8 squares - e5, f5, f4, f3, e3, d3, d4 and d5. The second domain would comprise of the squares surrounding the first domain - e6, f6, g6, g5, g4, g3, g2, f2, e2, d2, c2, c3, c4, c5, c6, and d6. For those who are not familiar with the chess notation, a simple method to visualize the first domain is to think about the neighbouring states of Madhya Pradesh. Madhya Pradesh would be the Queen and the neighbouring states would be the surrounding squares or the first domain.
The Queen controls all the 8 squares in the first domain, the Rook controls 4 and the Bishop controls 4. Mentioning the domain controls of the Rook and the Bishop is unnecessary as the statistics of the Queen represent their combined control of their respective domains. The Queen controls 8 out of the possible 16 squares in the second domain which got the game enthusiasts thinking about the rest of the squares in the second domain...
This is exaclty where the Knight comes in.
The game enthusiasts somehow realised that the number of squares on the board were far grearter compared to the forces in play and they needed to introduce a new piece with some power to balance the force and the space on board. But a problem that they faced was, that the existing combination of symmetry had already left no new moves for the new piece to blend in. So they knew they had to device a special piece. They had to be also carefull as to not to overdo or underdo the power of this new piece.
Thinking on these lines, I believe the following factors might have led to the discovery of the Knight. A piece when placed on the board, will have a maximum of 4 domains surrounding it. The Queen and the King control the whole of the first domain while only the Queen controls half of the second domain. The Bishop and the Rook, each control just one fourth of the second domain respectively. Thus the game enthusiasts discovered a symmetry, this time a partly circular one on the second domain. They saw a lot of squares vacant on the second domain for a major piece to fit in but had a few more hurdles to cross...
Firstly, they could in no way connect these squares on the second domain to the square where this major piece would sit. For e.g. The queen controls the square e4 while sitting on h1 via the a8-h1 diagonal. So they decided that the piece would simply jump to those squares rather than doing it along a line of control. Morover, they did not need to give this piece the control of 1st domain as they found that it would only replicate Queen's power and would overpower this piece. The ability to control the rest of the 8 squares in the 2nd domain combined with the ability to jump was enough to introduce the Knight on the board as the last force to join the team.
