What's the history behind stalemate not being a win? If your opponent eliminates all your options to move, you don't lose in chess, but is regarded an equal to your opponent. Isn't this peculiar? In most games and in real life hunt and war it is a winning strategy to eliminate the opponent's options to move. "Oh, you can't move now, can you, so it's obviously my turn again! (grinning)"

Is there some history to this? Stalemate does make chess much more interesting, but was it kind of invented in order to be so, or how could it have evolved? Is there some Victorian age gentlemanship involved here?
Wikipedia has a history of the stalemate rule. Stalemate being a draw seems to have become more popular in the 15th century, in part due to Lucena


  Lucena (c. 1497) treated stalemate as an inferior form of victory (Murray 1913:461), which in games played for money won only half the stake, and this continued to be the case in Spain as late as 1600 (Murray 1913:833).