I have been playing Go for a number of years, but only recently did I decide to teach it to my kid.
It occurred to me in the midst of explanations that the rules, or the object of the game rather, has some uncanny similarities to the territorial behavior or strategies Jungle Crow families may exhibit. This got me wondering if perhaps ancient ornithologists, thousands of years ago might have been inspired to make a game based on the natural laws of corvid behavior they observed in the wild.
It is merely a whimsical observation, but I have run it by the experts just out of curiosity as the more I think about it, the more I become convinced. I will report what, if anything they report to back to me.
One wonders how abundant Jungle Crows were in China four thousand years ago. Hmmm.
I have also come up with a working hypothesis and experiment to help prove my assumption that the game was inspired by Crow behavior:
Hypothesis: Go, or Igo (as it is called in Japan) was inspired by watching wild Crows. The game is based strongly on their natural territorial, family group behavior. While Crows share a lot of behavioral similarities with humans, fundamentally, I believe, they have an all together different character which directs their individula and family/group behavior. Therefore, I hypothesize that if you give two humans who are totally unfamiliar with Go, a Go set, and ask them to play around, and invent an adversarial game, where one person must win, and one must lose, or at least a tie can be reached, they will not manage to come up with the game of Go because their human character will lead them to invent, and follow rules, and take actions which are different from what a Crow would do.
It occurred to me in the midst of explanations that the rules, or the object of the game rather, has some uncanny similarities to the territorial behavior or strategies Jungle Crow families may exhibit. This got me wondering if perhaps ancient ornithologists, thousands of years ago might have been inspired to make a game based on the natural laws of corvid behavior they observed in the wild.
It is merely a whimsical observation, but I have run it by the experts just out of curiosity as the more I think about it, the more I become convinced. I will report what, if anything they report to back to me.
One wonders how abundant Jungle Crows were in China four thousand years ago. Hmmm.
I have also come up with a working hypothesis and experiment to help prove my assumption that the game was inspired by Crow behavior:
Hypothesis: Go, or Igo (as it is called in Japan) was inspired by watching wild Crows. The game is based strongly on their natural territorial, family group behavior. While Crows share a lot of behavioral similarities with humans, fundamentally, I believe, they have an all together different character which directs their individula and family/group behavior. Therefore, I hypothesize that if you give two humans who are totally unfamiliar with Go, a Go set, and ask them to play around, and invent an adversarial game, where one person must win, and one must lose, or at least a tie can be reached, they will not manage to come up with the game of Go because their human character will lead them to invent, and follow rules, and take actions which are different from what a Crow would do.
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