A more politically correct way of identifying your pieces.

There is some confusion possible about where chess was invented.
Best guess is 8th c Persia
But opinions differ.

@chessspy1
Indeed they do.My preference is China on the basis of the age of their civilisation,but not much more.However,the idea just came to me (literally only 5 mins ago)that maybe a comparison of fighting styles of various ancient nations might be compared to the fighting style of chess.For instance,the castle(a static fortified position) makes no sense at all in the context,but the elephant would.Pawns(the infantry)...how were they used by the different nations?
Maybe we need a military historian and a chess historian working together to try some "reverse engineering"on this.
Meanwhile,the debate goes on..China/Persia/India.

Well Chinese chess is another abstract strategy board game. If chess was indeed invented in China, did the Chinese invent their version, and now-international chess was based on it? Or did they make international chess first?

Obviously the modern rules of the game weren't invented that long ago, but I mean like if the Chinese did invent it, did they make a game that evolved into both of these games, or did one branch off the other?

(Also, it seems that Chinese chess carried over to Korea and some other Asian countries, where the game evolved somewhat differently.)

@bunyip and @InnateAluminum
Whilst all of the opinions in the above two posts have something to offer, There are some ancient board games which are considered to pre-date chess. These are of the 'race game' type. Think backgammon and the ancient Egyptian game of Senet.
The reference to armies is one source which has been much discussed and the four handed game Chaturanga also used the four elements of the Indian armies.
There is a good bit about this on the internet for those who are interested.

Hi @chessspy1

The earliest predecessor of the game probably originated in India, before the 6th century AD. From India, the game spread to Persia. When the Arabs conquered Persia, chess was taken up by the Muslim world and subsequently spread to Southern Europe.

The precursors of chess originated in northern India during the Gupta empire, where its early form in the 6th century was known as Chaturanga.

Real-size resin reproductions of the 12th-century Lewis chessmen. Top row: king, queen, and bishop. Bottom row: knight, rook, and pawn.
The history of chess can be traced back nearly 1500 years, although the earliest origins are uncertain. The earliest predecessor of the game probably originated in India, before the 6th century AD. From India, the game spread to Persia. When the Arabs conquered Persia, chess was taken up by the Muslim world and subsequently spread to Southern Europe. In Europe, chess evolved into roughly its current form in the 15th century.

same wiki copy/paste...and it's wrong.

@bunyip and @akul_nagori
Yes, whilst there are as many opinions about the origins of chess as there are people to express them there is little if any evidence to support any earlier date that 8th c.
The so called Lewis chessmen are almost certainly from an old Nordic board game called Tafl or henefatatl.
There are several reasons to doubt that they were intended for chess. These are some:-
The original horde was said at the time to have been found in a small stone hut on the Isle of Lewis. Whilst that may be so, unfortunately they passed through the hands of a crooked dealer in Edinburgh (Scotland) who messed with them to make them look more like chess pieces so that he could extort a good price for them from the British museum. (he at least. stained half of them red)
There were far to few pawns in the original group for chess (only 6 or so out of 93 objects (from memory)) .
There is no figure to stand in for the rook which is known to already have been a 'castle' (see the holdings of a similarly old set in the Musee Cluny in Paris (France).
They are a much better fit for Tafl
I could go on but I think that will do for now. I have read most of the published literature on these objects.

one could speculate with some justification that simpler games such as the affore mentioned 'race and dice' games generally pre-date skill and strategy games like chess.
However we on this forum are unlikely to discover the name of the person who put together or suggested the first chess like game, simply because better minds than ours have tried and failed over the years.
However it is fun to do a bit of internet searching and no harm done I suppose as long as no one takes an entrenched position.
I suggest we all keep in mind that some things are essentially unknowable
The object found in Butrint a few years ago, said to be 5th c is not a chess piece (in my opinion) It is however a remarkable bit of turning for such an early date. If in fact the date given is correct, which it may well not be.