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 Archaeology, presents evidence that the earliest known dice were made and used by Native American hunter-gatherers more than 12,000 years ago. These objects were found on the western Great Plains near the end of the last Ice Age and are far older than the earliest dice previously identified in Bronze Age societies in the Old World.

The research, led by Colorado State University Ph.D. student Robert J. Madden, shows that dice, gambling, and games of chance have been part of Native American cultures for at least 12,000 years. The oldest examples come from Late Pleistocene Folsom-period sites in Wyoming, Colorado, and New Mexico. These finds are more than 6,000 years older than comparable dice from the Old World.

“Historians have traditionally treated dice and probability as Old World innovations,” Madden said. “What the archaeological record shows is that ancient Native American groups were deliberately making objects designed to produce random outcomes, and using those outcomes in structured games, thousands of years earlier than previously recognized.”

What These Ancient Bone Dice Looked Like

The earliest pieces identified date to roughly 12,800–12,200 years ago. Instead of cube-shaped dice, these were two-sided objects known as “binary lots.” They were small bone pieces, carefully shaped to be held in the hand, usually flat or slightly curved, and often oval or rectangular.

Each piece had two distinct sides created through markings, surface treatments, or color differences, similar to heads and tails on a coin. One side served as the “counting” face. When tossed, each piece would land with one side facing up, producing a binary (two-outcome) result. Players threw several pieces at once, and outcomes were based on how many showed the counting side.

“They’re simple, elegant tools,” Madden said. “But they’re also unmistakably purposeful. These are not casual byproducts of bone working. They were made to generate random outcomes.”

A New Way to Identify Ice Age Dice

To avoid subjective interpretations, the study introduces an attribute-based morphological test, which is a structured checklist of measurable physical features used to identify dice in archaeological collections. This method builds on a comparative study of 293 sets of historic Native American dice documented by ethnographer Stewart Culin in his 1907 Bureau of American Ethnology monograph, Games of the North American Indians.

Using this approach, the study revisits previously discovered artifacts that were labeled as possible “gaming pieces” or overlooked entirely. By applying consistent criteria, Madden was able to determine whether these objects were truly dice.

Much of the material had been known for years, but without a clear identification standard, it had not been studied as part of a broader pattern. With this new framework, Madden identified over 600 diagnostic and probable dice from sites spanning all major periods of North American prehistory, from the Late Pleistocene through and after European contact.

“In most cases, these objects had already been excavated and published,” Madden said. “What was missing wasn’t the evidence, it was a clear, continent-wide standard for recognizing what we were looking at.”

The earliest examples were also examined directly in museum collections at the Smithsonian Institution, the University of Wyoming Archaeological Repository, and the Denver Museum of Nature and Science.

Rethinking the Origins of Probability

Dice games are widely seen as one of the earliest ways humans engaged with randomness, laying the groundwork for probability, statistics, and later scientific thinking. Until now, these practices were believed to have originated in complex Old World societies around 5,500 years ago.

The new findings point to a much older and more widespread origin.

“These findings don’t claim that Ice Age hunter-gatherers were doing formal probability theory,” Madden said. “But they were intentionally creating, observing, and relying on random outcomes in repeatable, rule-based ways that leveraged probabilistic regularities, such as the law of large numbers. That matters for how we understand the global history of probabilistic thinking.”

A 12,000-Year Tradition of Games of Chance

The study also highlights how widespread and long-lasting dice games have been across Native American cultures. Evidence of dice appears at 57 archaeological sites across a 12-state region, spanning Paleoindian, Archaic, and Late Prehistoric periods, and representing a wide range of cultures and ways of life.

According to Madden, this long history reflects the important role these games played in society. “Games of chance and gambling created neutral, rule-governed spaces for ancient Native Americans,” he said. “They allowed people from different groups to interact, exchange goods and information, form alliances, and manage uncertainty. In that sense, they functioned as powerful social technologies.”

Reference: “Probability in the Pleistocene: Origins and Antiquity of Native American Dice, Games of Chance, and Gambling” by Robert J Madden, 2 April 2026, American Antiquity.
DOI: 10.1017/aaq.2025.10158

Never miss a breakthrough: Join the SciTechDaily newsletter.
Follow us on Google and Google News.