Welcome to the History Extra podcast, fascinating historical conversations from the makers of BBC History Magazine.

From chess and go to snakes and ladders, Monopoly and the ancient Egyptian game of Senate, societies have long

had a fascination with games. But these games have not only entertained players and sparked

a few family arguments, they've also helped to shape the course of human history. Well,

at least that's the take of Kelly Clancy, the author of a new

book Playing with Reality. So I spoke to her to find out more. It's lovely to have you on the

History Extra podcast, Kelly. Thanks for joining us. To start us off, can you tell us why games have

been so significant through history?

What have the offered societies beyond just having fun?

Yeah, games are this really kind of incredible system that humans and even animals have been

playing and engaging with for really millions of years.

It goes back to, obviously, mammals, birds, reptiles, even insects

play games. So there's something really significant to something that evolution has kept around

for that long. And if we look back in the archaeological record, we have evidence of humans playing

games for maybe up to like 10,000 years and certainly longer.

I mean, we can imagine that people were playing some kind of game much longer than that.

So in that sense, board games are maybe older than written language.

They're really important because they are a form of learning.

They're a way to learn how to engage with the world and learn how to

engage with each other. It's a really important form of social learning where we find if

researchers look at animals that for one reason or another didn't get to play, they tend to have

a lot of social deficits. They are more aggressive. They can't read each other's

...