According to a study recently published inAmerican Antiquity, the history of Native Americans using dice in games of chance dates back at least 12,000 years. This discovery not only rewrites the history of gaming but also proves that Native Americans had mastered the concept of probability thousands of years before the earliest known dice appeared in the Old World.
Robert Madden, a graduate student at Colorado State University and author of the study, noted that historians have long tended to view dice and probability theory as inventions of the "Old World." However, the archaeological record shows that Native American groups were intentionally crafting objects capable of producing random results and incorporating them into structured games thousands of years ago.
Redefining Ancient Gaming Tools
Madden’s research initially focused on the Mayan ball game before expanding to various other indigenous games of chance. He discovered that most of these ancient dice were dual-sided rather than the six-sided cubes common today; these are academically referred to as "binary lots." Madden stated that these gaming tools were ubiquitous across almost all Native American tribes.
Previously, the archaeological community generally dated dice-like artifacts back no further than 2,000 years. Archaeologists have often been cautious about labeling older, similar artifacts as gaming tools due to a lack of definitive evidence. In a Colorado State University podcast, Madden explained the difficulty of identification: "One of the biggest challenges in archaeology is that when you find an object, it is difficult to determine its original purpose."
To overcome this hurdle, Madden’s team employed the "ethnographic analogy" method. This approach involves reviewing historical documents to find evidence of cultural continuity within the same geographic region. Madden argues that if historical records show that later tribes used similar items for gaming, it is logically sound to infer that ancient peoples crafted and used those objects for the same purpose.
The study’s findings challenge a Eurocentric and Asia-centric view of gaming history. As archaeological evidence continues to accumulate, it reveals a picture of early human civilization’s understanding of randomness and probability that is far more complex and profound than previously believed.
