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Native Americans were gambling with dice 6,000 years earlier than anyone else, study says
Archaeological record suggests hunter gatherers were playing games of chance at the end of the last ice age
TL;DR
- Native American hunter-gatherers used dice for gaming and gambling more than 12,000 years ago.
- This is over 6,000 years earlier than the earliest known dice from Bronze Age societies in Mesopotamia and the Indus Valley.
- The study suggests ancient Native Americans possessed a basic knowledge of chance, randomness, and probability.
- Games of chance allowed different groups to interact, exchange goods, and form social bonds.
- The earliest identified dice date from the late Pleistocene in Wyoming, Colorado, and New Mexico.