Ancient Dice Used 12,000 Years Ago!

Evidence suggests Native Americans were using dice for games and gambling around 12,800 to 12,200 years ago, significantly earlier than previously thought. These ancient dice, identified as "binary lots," were flat, two-sided artifacts crafted from wood or bone and were tossed like coins. This discovery, reported in the journal American Antiquity, challenges the traditional understanding of dice history, which previously pointed to Mesopotamian and Indus Valley civilizations around 3000 BC as the earliest users.

The study, led by Robert J. Madden, provides new criteria for archaeologists to identify these prehistoric dice, which were often misclassified as "gaming pieces." Madden analyzed hundreds of artifacts from the Late Pleistocene in the western United States, identifying over 600 previously unrecognized sets of Native American dice. This research is crucial for understanding the evolution of games and human interaction with them across millennia.

While the theory of probability was formally developed much later, this study opens avenues to understand earlier human interactions with chance. Experts note that similar natural objects have long been used as binary dice globally, suggesting dice use might be even older but archaeologically harder to trace. The findings humanize the past, revealing enduring human desires for interaction and creative engagement with the world, evident in games played then and now.