If you happen to be of the belief that board games didn't exist until the advent of games like Monopoly or Risk, you are mistaken...sadly mistaken. In fact, board games of various types have been around for centuries. Gaming, as a passtime, has been around for hundreds of years with boards coming in all different sorts of shapes, sizes and play styles.
Bibliodyssey has a great gallery up with pictures of board games from over the last 500 years. No, you won't find Clue or Sorry amongst the images, but you will see the above image from "The New and Enjoyable Game of the Goose" publised by Lucchino Gargano in 1598. In the center of the board are the games rules.
Looking at the boards of the different games, I'm amazed at how little has changed in game design over the last few centuries. The rectangle board, the curving spiral of spaces towards the center of the board. There are still games today that look similar to this.
Also of note at the bottom of the gallery is a link to a 116 page article titled "The Development of the English Board Game, 1770 - 1850". I haven't read the article yet, but I sure will be marking the page to come back to later. As both a gamer and a history geek, the article sounds like it will be a pretty fun read.
(Via Mental_Floss)
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