Parts of an ancient board game have been found in a tomb near Qingzhou city. The tomb is believed to be at least 2,300 years old. According to LiveScience, a team of archaeologist found "21 rectangular game pieces with numbers painted on them."

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Found together with the game pieces is a very unique 14-face die which was made from an unknown animal tooth. They also discovered a broken tile. The team of archaeologist successfully reconstructed the broke tile and it revealed "two eyes surrounded by cloud and thunder patterns."

It is believed that the artifacts are part of a very old game known as "Liubo." No one exactly knows how the game was played. It is a lost game - lost at least 1,500 years ago.

Ancient Origins reported that "Liubo" is played by at least two players. Each player has 6 game pieces. They then move the game pieces in a square board. The 14-faced dice will tell each player how to move each game piece.

The artifacts were not the only thing the archaeologist found while digging the tomb. They also found a "curled-up human skeleton" and it is believed to be the remains of one of the thieves who stole other artifacts from the tomb.

Other details of the robber such as age and gender are yet to be determined by the researchers.

Archaeologist believe that the tomb used to be the burial site for aristocrats. They stated in their report that "despite the huge scale of the tomb, it has been thoroughly robbed."  It is evident by the damage sustained by the coffin chambers,

The tomb was excavated back in 2004 by researchers and archaeologist from Qingzhou Municipal Museum and Shandong Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology.  Their findings were first published by Journal Wenwu in 2014.

Tagschinese tomb, liubo, chinese artifacts, 2300 Years Old Board Game Chinese Tomb