US EditionNative Americans had dice and games of probability long before other cultures, study finds
The study identified more than 600 dice-like artifacts and suggests Indigenous games of chance were used for exchange and alliance-building.
- On April 2, a Colorado State University study published in American Antiquity revealed that Native Americans used dice for gaming roughly 12,800 years ago, marking the earliest known evidence of such objects in human history.
- Previously categorized as 'gaming pieces,' these flat, two-sided discs were found at sites across Wyoming, Colorado, and New Mexico dating to the Late Pleistocene, as they lacked traditional cube shapes.
- Lead study author Robert J. Madden created a morphological test using Stewart Culin's 1907 analysis of 293 historic Native American dice sets, identifying 565 diagnostic dice and 94 probable dice across 45 sites.
- Madden suggests these games acted as 'social technologies' fostering interaction among nomadic bands, with Ice Age people intentionally using random outcomes 6,000 years before Old World societies recognized probability.
- Archaeologist Walter Crist called the research 'crucial' for prehistoric archaeology, though University of California, Davis professor Jelmer Eerkens cautioned that confirming function requires archaeological context beyond artifact morphology alone.
74 Articles
74 Articles
Dice Are 6,000 Years Older Than Previously Believed, Study Says
New research published in the journal American Antiquity last week posits that the first dice appeared more than 12,000 years ago, much earlier than previously believed. Made by Native Americans, the Pleistocene-era pieces predate all other archeological findings of dice, most of which come from the Bronze Age, by over 6,000 years. Dice represent a recognition of randomness; tools that wield unpredictability. “At the end of the last Ice Age, the…
12,000-Year-Old Native American Dice Rewrite the History of Gambling
Native Americans were making and using dice more than 12,000 years ago, far earlier than previously thought. These Ice Age tools powered games of chance that hint at early forms of probabilistic thinking. A new study in American Antiquity, a leading North American archaeology journal published by Cambridge University Press for the Society for American [...]
Native Americans Were Making Dice and Gaming Thousands of Years Before Anyone Else
Tribal casinos in the US may seem a more natural fit, after hearing about new research showing that Native Americans were making dice for gaming thousands of years before anyone else in the world. Evidence revealed that the earliest known dice in human history were made and used by hunter-gatherers on the western Great Plains […] The post Native Americans Were Making Dice and Gaming Thousands of Years Before Anyone Else appeared first on Good Ne…
Coverage Details
Bias Distribution
- 64% of the sources are Center
Factuality
To view factuality data please Upgrade to Premium
