I seriously doubt that Go is anything like 4000 years old. However, small shaped pieces of stone that are clearly playing pieces go back much older than that, all over the world and found by archaeologists. Go has a rich prehistory of various kinds of games played with markers and pits or boards, way before the current rules even began to be formulated. But I’ll bet that the present rules go back only 1000 to 2000 years, and only in certain regions, and were probably codified in stages by now-forgotten warriors, kings, or their advisors who loved games. My opinion only. And I agree with the OP: most board positions are nonsense, and when you subtract them out, 19-line Go is probably only moderately more complex than chess.
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Since your reasoning is brief, I will reply in kind: I don’t agree.
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small shaped pieces of stone that are clearly playing pieces go back much older than that, all over the world and found by archaeologists. Go has a rich prehistory of various kinds of games played with markers and pits or boards
Just likely to be race games or mancalas as types of Go, wouldn’t you think?
Or a game like hasami shogi / ludus latrunculorum. I wouldn’t be surprised if “hasami shogi” (which isn’t a type of shogi whatsoever) had been a precursor of Go, seeing as it uses custodial (two-stone) capture.
Not a difficult jump, one would think, to shift from a game of undifferentiated moving pieces capturing custodially to one of undifferentiated non-moving pieces capturing in the “double custodial” manner of Go.
I know of two detailed speculations on the origins of the game, Claire’s thread and Shotwell’s book, both of which I can link if you’d like. Claire idea is especially interesting, that Go is a product of sedentary culture and represents disputes over irrigation.
On when “modern Go” emerged, I remember hearing it claimed that early references to Go speak only vaguely of achieving a certain goal, like perhaps making a certain shape as in gomoku – gomoku and other connect-N games are another good explanation for early stones – rather than specifically of surrounding territory. But I don’t know how accurate that claim is.
We also have to avoid being too absolutist.
If I have a chessboard, that doesn’t mean I’m playing chess; I could be only playing draughts, or both games.
Similarly, if I as an ancient Chinese nobleman have a “Go set”, I might be using it to play Go, or gomoku, or hasami shogi, or any mixture of the two depending on my mood or company.
The same analogy could be made to a pack of playing cards.
I don’t care
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I’ve heard many times that Americans are generally polite and positive, compared to the Dutch, who are generally blunt and cynical.
I suppose there are always exceptions to such generalizations
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You were given misinfo
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