Ancient Native American Dice Reveal Earliest Gambling 12,000 Years Ago
A groundbreaking archaeological study has uncovered evidence that Native American hunter-gatherers were using dice for gaming and gambling more than 12,000 years ago, predating the earliest known dice from the Old World by over 6,000 years. This discovery fundamentally reshapes our understanding of the global history of probability and chance-based games.
Rewriting the Timeline of Dice and Probability
The research, led by Robert Madden, a PhD student in archaeology at Colorado State University, argues that dice were being intentionally crafted and utilised on the western great plains of North America at the end of the last ice age, during the late Pleistocene epoch. This challenges the long-held academic consensus that the earliest examples of dice emerged in the Bronze Age societies of Mesopotamia and the Indus Valley.
"Historians have traditionally treated dice and probability as Old World innovations," Madden stated. "What the archaeological record shows is that ancient Native American groups were deliberately making objects designed to produce random outcomes and using those outcomes in structured games thousands of years earlier than previously recognised."
The Archaeological Evidence: A Methodical Treasure Hunt
Madden's findings are based on a meticulous re-examination of artefacts often labelled merely as "gaming pieces" or overlooked entirely in museum collections and online databases. He spent approximately three years compiling a dataset, which forms the basis of his paper published in the journal American Antiquity.
"It was like a treasure hunt," Madden explained. "I just kept looking for examples and keeping track of them. Finally, after about three years, I compiled the dataset that makes up this paper and tracked this practice all the way from the well-documented historical era over the last 2,000 years as far back as I could."
The earliest identified examples, dating up to 12,800 years old, originate from late Pleistocene archaeological sites in Wyoming, Colorado, and New Mexico. These include a notable pair from the Agate Basin site in Wyoming. The two-sided dice were crafted from materials like wood or bone and would have been tossed in groups onto a playing surface.
Understanding Pleistocene Probability and Social Exchange
The study, titled Probability in the Pleistocene, posits that these ancient communities possessed a fundamental, practical understanding of chance, randomness, and probability. While not engaging in formal probability theory, they were "intentionally creating, observing and relying on random outcomes in repeatable, rule-based ways that leveraged probabilistic regularities, such as the law of large numbers," according to Madden.
This practice of games of chance served a crucial social function. It allowed disparate groups with no prior relationship to "interact; exchange goods, information, and mates; and forge new social bonds." Madden clarifies that this form of gambling differed from modern casino betting.
"What we think of gambling is like at a casino where you bet against the house," he said. "These games are one on one; there's no house. This is me against you. It's a fair game, everybody's got an equal opportunity, equal conditions, and it was used as a form of exchange … particularly between groups of people who did not come into frequent contact with each other."
This research establishes ancient Native Americans as "early movers in humanity's emerging understanding and practical application of these concepts" related to chance and probability, marking a significant milestone in the archaeological and historical record.
