It has lasted long before historians got interested in board games: not only about the middle of the 19th c., and first of all in chess. Chess historians discovered medieval Latin manuscripts with chess positions. These manuscripts presented positions from tables and morris too. Alquerque was described in a Spanish manuscript.

Nowhere draughts was mentioned. Nevertheless, because of its name also draughts draw the attention of chess historians. This name literally meant "game of the chessqueens", they assumed, which proves a relation between chess and draughts. The opinions differed, but since the middle of the 20th c. the ideas of one of them, the Englishman Murray, are generally accepted. Murray pointed to the features which chess and draughts have in common: both games are played on a chequered board with 64 squares and both games games are played with promotion. What's more, the vocabulary of both games is partly equal. After the Middle Ages draughts players in Spain, Italy and France borrowed the name of the chess pawn as the name for the draughts singleton (the unpromoted piece). In the Middle Ages, in French draughts was called  jeu de fierges. Fierge was the medieval name for the chess queen, and therefore the literal sense of draughts was "game of the chess queens". On the verge of the New Time, about 1500, the chess queen received a new name, in French dame. Draughts followed: the medieval name was  replaced by jeu de dames, again literally meaning "game of the chess queens".

For this reasons the origin of draughts is patently obvious: the game was a child of chess. And it also is obvious that draughts players were influenced by chess since the birth of their game, in the south of France in the 12th c., Murray assumes.

The left diagram renders the contribution of chess: draughts is played on the chess board, and the singleton on square 6, in fact a chess pawn, is about to promote to queen (today called king). Draughts, however, has the jump capture. See the right diagram: Black takes 12x19. This jump capture, where does it come from? It was borrowed from the board game alquerque.

Draughts, Murray concluded, is the old board game alquerque played on the chess board with chess pawns which have the right to promote to queen.