Campaign Ideas: Artefacts of a previous civilization

It is a childs toy that functions as an intelligence test. It has existed in the world for centuries, millenia with a multifunction purpose:

•  To identify those with high intelligence from an early age.
• To teach the mathematics of its functioning that are integral to the rise of a Technological civilization.
• To keep a secret hidden in plain sight.

Its history is lost to the past. It is a simple thing. A collection of weights, each larger than the previous, holes up their middle. And three poles protruding from a timber plate. The task is to move the pile, one disc at a time, from one pole to another without ever having placed a larger weight on a smaller weight. An apparently simple test of increasing complexity depending on the number of weights. And now the Wizards use it to test children and determine those that have the brains to be more than cattle of a civilization sliding into a third dark age.