I realize modern algebraic notation is fairly new but for as long as there have been recorded chess games, every square I think was referred to using two coordinates, in old descriptive notation a column named after a piece and a row which I think would always have been a number from 1 to 8. Come to think of it, the game of Go would have had no good way other than two integer coordinates to refer to the intersections on which stones were placed.
Is there any evidence that Descartes or earlier mathematicians had been inspired by recorded chess or Go games, perhaps even introducing their ideas using the game boards? Go and chess are of course ancient games and I know recorded chess games predate Descartes by centuries and assume that Go also was recorded long ago.
It seems not even hard to imagine that before Descartes someone noticed that the distance between two points on the Go or chess board could be calculated using coordinates.
EDIT: Regarding Go notation: As I understand it, a very cumbersome way to record Go games was/is in use until fairly recently or still which actually displays successive positions. I guess the value is, just recording the moves would be very hard to follow for all but the best players (I emphasize "guess" because I barely know the rules of Go) could follow a game using algebraic notation. But I suspect had coordinates been used 2000 years ago, something like Cartesian geometry would have been the almost inevitable result -- who knows what that would have meant for China combined with other advances? I realize this is speculation, of course.
