Archeological game

Claim 1

An archeological game apparatus for a plurality of players to simulate the finding of an ancient buried civilization comprising a game board having a map delineated thereon representing an archeological location in which information associated with said ancient buried civilization is located, said maplike area being partitioned into a plurality of distinguishably coded contiguous subareas each representing a stratum of a different historical age; a plurality of indicia bearing fragment cards locatable at predetermined locations in each of said distinguishably coded subareas and arrangable at said locations in randomly arranged stacks for selection thereform; said plurality of fragment cards comprising a plurality of distinguishably coded decks, a portion of the cards in each respective deck having inscribed thereon symbols representing encrypted language indicia of a first type, said symbols collectively defining an ancient language uniquely associated with said respective deck, said language indicia of the first type thereby defining a unique encrypted language for each of said distinguishable decks; at least one decipherment for each of said encrypted languages assigning meaning to the symbols belonging thereto; a portion of the cards in each of the respective decks which bear said first type of indicia further having thereon a second type of confusing indicia comprising symbols resembling the encrypted language indicia of said first type borne by said cards but unrelated thereto and having no sensible meaning according to any decipherment associated therewith; stratum code indicia associated with each said deck and identical indicia associated with each said subarea for defining a one -to - one correspondence therebetween whereby each said subarea is uniquely associated with one and only one said deck; and a plurality of also bearing said stratum code indicia arrangable clue cards in at least one randomly provided stack for selection therefrom, said clue cards containing indicia for decrypting said encrypted language symbols contained on said fragment cards including indicia relating to the genuine meaning of said language symbols and evidence of the association between said language symbols and said ancient civilization, said clue cards having at least one code thereon corresponding to a particular stratum code, said clue cards being cooperatively associated only with those fragment cards having said same stratum code thereon, said clue cards and fragment cards being cooperatively associated in order to initially determine the language of said ancient civilization from said plurality of different languages and for subsequently decrypting a predetermined quantity of said fragment cards in said initially determined language to translate the language symbols thereon in said initially determined language, said ancient civilization being found when said predetermined quantity of fragment cards is translated and identified by said clue cards as genuinely belonging to said ancient civilization, said lanugage to be initially determined being randomly variable from game to game dependent on the random arrangement and selection of said clue and fragment cards.