According to a statement released by the University of Bristol, Christianne Fernée and Konstantinos Trimmis suggest that small stone spheres and stone slabs with shallow cup marks found at settlements across the Aegean and Mediterranean regions could be pieces to a Bronze Age game.

The researchers examined more than 700 stones unearthed at the site of Akrotiri, which is located on the Greek island of Santorini. These spheres are made of different materials and range in age from 4,500 to 3,600 years old. First, Fernée and Trimmis used machine learning to sort the stones into groups, finding they could be split into two groups based on their size.

If they had been used as part of a counting system, Fernée explained, the researchers expect that the sorting would have produced more groups. They will next investigate possible clusters in the cup marks on the stone slabs, and associations between the spheres and slabs at some sites. Artificial intelligence may even help them to determine how such a game could have been played.

source archaeology.org

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