Old Asian Wooden Dice



The chamfered cube dice of old Chinese board game "Ryu-Po" (B.C.2nd century)




The truncated cube dice of old Chinese board game "Ryu-Po" (B.C.3rd century)





The truncated cube dice of old Korean board game (A.D.7th century)




These old Asian dice are replicated with wood material by Hiroshi Nakagawa.
All of them seem to be double-centered polyhedra, who have both inscribed and circumscribed spheres.
Reference: "The study of game's history No.3", published by Japanese Society of Game's history, 1991.






The picture, taken by Professor Matsubara working at Japan National Museum of Nature and Science, is a diamond mined in Republique Democratique du Congo.
He was very surprised at the similarity between this diamond and the chamfered cube dice "Ryu-po". Also for me, this fact is very curious and interesting. I think and believe it should not be a incidental concordance.
Reference: Matsubara S, The Science of Diamond, Kodansya, Japan, 2006






inserted by FC2 system