{"id":108077,"date":"2026-04-06T09:24:21","date_gmt":"2026-04-06T09:24:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/neclink.com\/index.php\/2026\/04\/06\/native-americans-were-gambling-12000-years-ago-study-finds-ice-age-dice-identified\/"},"modified":"2026-04-06T09:24:21","modified_gmt":"2026-04-06T09:24:21","slug":"native-americans-were-gambling-12000-years-ago-study-finds-ice-age-dice-identified","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/neclink.com\/index.php\/2026\/04\/06\/native-americans-were-gambling-12000-years-ago-study-finds-ice-age-dice-identified\/","title":{"rendered":"Native Americans Were Gambling 12,000 Years Ago, Study Finds \u2013 Ice Age \u2018Dice\u2019 Identified"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"post-content__sub-title\">\n        Posted on: April 5, 2026, 03:51h.\u00a0\n    <\/p>\n<p class=\"post-content__sub-title\">\n        Last updated on: April 5, 2026, 03:51h.\n    <\/p>\n<div class=\"post-info-panel\">\n<div class=\"post-info-panel__author-holder js-open-close\">\n<div class=\"post-info-panel__author-logo\">\n                <img alt=\"Avatar photo\" src=\"https:\/\/www.casino.org\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/cropped-5-1-50x50.png\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.casino.org\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/cropped-5-1-100x100.png 2x\" class=\"avatar avatar-50 photo\" height=\"50\" width=\"50\" decoding=\"async\"\/>            <\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Humans gambled thousands of years earlier than previously believed<br \/><\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>Ice Age artifacts reveal early Native American games of chance<br \/><\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>Study reinterprets museum objects as some of the world\u2019s oldest dice<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<hr\/>\n<p>Human beings have been gambling for at least 12,000 years \u2013 six thousand more than had been previously supposed, according to a new study published in the journal <em>American Antiquity. \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_381334\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-381334\" data-style=\"width: 858px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-post-thumbnail-858xAUTO wp-image-381334\" src=\"https:\/\/www.casino.org\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Bones-858x718.jpg\" alt=\"ancient gambling, Ice Age dice, Native American archaeology, history of dice, early human games of chance\" width=\"858\" height=\"718\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.casino.org\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Bones-858x718.jpg 858w, https:\/\/www.casino.org\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Bones-430x360.jpg 430w, https:\/\/www.casino.org\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Bones.jpg 1070w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 858px) 100vw, 858px\"\/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-381334\" class=\"text-description\">Dem Bones: Long before casinos, people were testing their luck with bones and carved pieces, above, rather than numbered cubes. (Image: Robert Madden)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>The researchers have identified \u201cdice\u201d used by hunter-gatherer cultures in the western Great Plains region during the Ice Age, which suggests that ancient Native Americans were playing games of chance and exploring probability thousands of years before Old World societies.<\/p>\n<div class=\"callout\">\n<p>Previously, the oldest dice, found in places like Mesopotamia and the Indus Valley, were dated to around 5,500 years ago.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>\u201cHistorians have traditionally treated dice and probability as\u00a0Old\u00a0World\u00a0innovations,\u201d said doctoral researcher in archaeology Alexandre Madden, who led the study. \u201cWhat the archaeological record shows is that\u00a0ancient\u00a0Native American groups were deliberately making objects designed to produce random outcomes,\u00a0and using those outcomes in structured games,\u00a0thousands of years earlier than previously recognized.\u201d<\/p>\n<h2><strong>Prehistoric Craps?<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>Madden didn\u2019t need to dig up new artefacts. Instead, he took a fresh look at ones already in museum collections.<\/p>\n<p>He started with a detailed record of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.casino.org\/news\/800-year-old-native-american-casino-discovered-utah\/\">Native American dice<\/a> collected in the early 1900s by anthropologist Stewart Culin, which documented what real dice looked like and how they were used. From there, he built a kind of checklist, looking at things like shape, markings, and whether an object clearly had two distinct sides designed to produce random outcomes.<\/p>\n<p>He then applied that checklist to hundreds of artifacts from archaeological sites across the western United States. By combing through published reports and museum records, he identified more than 600 objects that fit the criteria for dice.<\/p>\n<div class=\"callout\">\n<p>The study shows that archaeologists had been finding these objects for decades, they just hadn\u2019t had a reliable way to recognize them as tools for games of chance. That\u2019s because they look very different from the numbered cubes we recognize as dice.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>Instead, they\u2019re often things like split animal bones, carved sticks, or asymmetrical pieces with one side marked or flattened. But the key feature is that they\u2019re designed to land in different ways and produce a random outcome, according to Madden.<\/p>\n<h2><strong>Chance and Belief<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>In many later Indigenous North American cultures, games of chance were closely linked to social gatherings, storytelling, and shared beliefs about luck or fate. The outcome of a throw might not have been seen as purely random, but as something shaped by unseen forces.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cGames of chance\u00a0and gambling\u00a0created\u00a0neutral, rule-governed spaces\u00a0for ancient Native Americans,\u201d Madden said. \u201cThey allowed\u00a0people from\u00a0different groups\u00a0to interact, exchange goods\u00a0and information, form alliances, and manage uncertainty. In that sense, they functioned as powerful social technologies.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.casino.org\/news\/native-americans-were-gambling-12000-years-ago-study-finds-ice-age-dice-identified\/\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Posted on: April 5, 2026, 03:51h.\u00a0 Last updated on: April 5, 2026, 03:51h. Humans gambled thousands of years earlier than previously believed Ice Age artifacts<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":108078,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[158],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-108077","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-gambling"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/neclink.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108077","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/neclink.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/neclink.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neclink.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neclink.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=108077"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/neclink.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108077\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neclink.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/108078"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/neclink.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=108077"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neclink.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=108077"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neclink.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=108077"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}