Researchers from Colorado State University recently published a paper in the journalAmerican Antiquity, revealing that the history of human gaming is far older than previously thought, based on an analysis of nearly 300 ancient artifacts.
Study author Robert Madden notes that North American Indigenous peoples were using tools like dice for games of probability at least 12,000 years ago, during the late Ice Age. This discovery significantly pushes back the timeline for human engagement with randomness and probability, far earlier than the 5,500-year-old origins previously identified in the Near East and Eastern Europe.
Probability Experiments in the Ice Age
Madden’s research examined prehistoric dice housed at the Smithsonian Institution, the University of Wyoming’s archaeological repository, and the Denver Museum of Nature & Science. These artifacts, known as "biconvex dice," were discovered at 57 archaeological sites across 12 states, with the oldest samples originating from the Great Plains of North America.
"Historians of mathematics generally consider the invention of dice a key step in humanity’s understanding of randomness," Madden stated. "Our research shows that this intellectual pursuit was not initiated by complex societies in the Near East, but was pioneered by hunter-gatherers in the American West at the end of the Ice Age."
The rules of these ancient games bear a striking resemblance to modern gambling. Players would cast the biconvex dice, calculate scores based on how many landed face-up, and use counting sticks to track their totals. Madden’s research suggests that these games were not merely social pastimes but held a central place in the cosmology and religious rituals of the time.
Many ethnographic records indicate that dice games were viewed as sacred rituals capable of pleasing the gods. In Indigenous mythology, the deities themselves were dice players, and some legends even suggest that the creation of humanity was the result of a cosmic gamble. This provides an intriguing cross-temporal echo to Albert Einstein’s famous assertion that "God does not play dice."
Prior to this systematic study, academic understanding of North American Indigenous gaming was largely limited to Stewart Culin’s 1907 compilation,Games of the North American Indians. By verifying these findings through physical evidence, Madden has confirmed that these prehistoric humans possessed a surprisingly sophisticated grasp of probability, offering a fresh perspective on the evolution of early human cognition.
