Folsom diagnostic and probable Native American dice. (a, b, d, and g: Agate Basin, Wyoming. c: Lindenmeier, Colorado. e–f, h–i, k–p, r: Lindenmeier, Colorado. j: Lindenmeier, Colorado. q: Blackwater Draw, New Mexico; drawing by D’arcy NR Madden after Hester (1972: Figure 9b, by Phyllis Hughes)). (All photographs, except (j), are by the author). Credit: Robert Madden.

Native Americans were making dice, gambling, and exploring probability thousands of years before their Old World counterparts.

A new study has presented evidence that the earliest known dice in human history were made and used by Native American hunter-gatherers on the western Great Plains more than 12,000 years ago at the end of the last Ice Age, long before the earliest known dice from Bronze Age societies in the Old World.

The research conducted by Colorado State University PhD student Robert J Madden indicates that dice, games of chance, and gambling have been a persistent feature of Native American culture for at least the last 12,000 years, with the earliest examples appearing at Late Pleistocene Folsom-period archaeological sites in Wyoming, Colorado, and New Mexico.

These artifacts predate the earliest known Old World dice by more than 6,000 years.

Madden said: “Historians have traditionally treated dice and probability as Old World innovations.

“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 recognised.”

What these Ice Age dice looked like

The earliest examples identified in the study come from Folsom sites dating to roughly 12,800–12,200 years ago. 

Unlike modern cubic dice, these were two-sided dice known as ‘binary lots’, carefully crafted, small pieces of bone that were flat or slightly rounded, often oval or rectangular in shape, sized to be held in the hand and tossed in groups onto a playing surface.

The two faces of these binary lots were distinguished by applied markings, surface treatments, colouration, or other visible modifications, much like heads or tails on a coin, with one face designated as the ‘counting’ side.

When thrown, they reliably landed with one side or the other facing upward, producing a binary (two-outcome) result.

Sets of these dice were cast together, and scores were determined by how many landed with the counting face up.

Madden said: “They’re simple, elegant tools, but they’re also unmistakably purposeful.

“These are not casual byproducts of bone working; they were made to generate random outcomes.”

Late Pleistocene (13,000 to 11,700 BP), Early Holocene (11,700 to 8,000 BP), Middle Holocene (8,000 to 2,000 BP), and Late Holocene (2,000 to 450 BP) diagnostic and probable prehistoric Native American dice: (a, d) Signal Butte, Nebraska (Middle Holocene). (b) Agate Basin, Wyoming (Early Holocene). (c, f) Agate Basin, Wyoming (Late Pleistocene). (e, g) Lindenmeier, Colorado (Late Pleistocene). (h) Irvine, Wyoming (Late Holocene). (Figures 1a, d, e, and g courtesy of the Division of Anthropology, Smithsonian Institution, American Museum of Natural History. Figures 1b, c, f, and h courtesy of the Department of Anthropology, University of Wyoming.) Credit: Photo courtesy of Robert Madden.

How the research was conducted

Rather than relying on subjective resemblance or guesswork, the study introduces a new attribute-based morphological test – a systematic checklist of measurable physical features – for identifying North American dice archaeologically.

The test was derived from a comparative analysis of 293 sets of historic Native American dice documented across the continent by ethnographer Stewart Culin in his 1907 Bureau of American Ethnology monograph, Games of the North American Indians.

The study then applies this test systematically to the published archaeological record, essentially re-examining artifacts long labelled as possible ‘gaming pieces’ or otherwise overlooked to determine whether they meet the new objective criteria for dice.

In most cases, the evidence had been in the archaeological record for decades, but without a clear standard for identifying dice, it had never been analysed as part of a larger pattern.

Using this approach, Madden identified over 600 diagnostic and probable dice from sites spanning every major period of North American prehistory, from the Late Pleistocene through and after the period of European contact.

Madden said: “In most cases, these objects had already been excavated and published.

“What was missing wasn’t the evidence, it was a clear, continent-wide standard for recognising what we were looking at.”

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

Rewriting the deep history of probability

Historians of mathematics widely regard dice games as humanity’s earliest structured engagement with randomness, an intellectual precursor to probability theory, statistics, and later scientific thinking.

Until now, the origins of these practices were thought to lie exclusively in Old World complex societies beginning around 5,500 years ago.

This study suggests a much deeper and broader history.

Madden said: “These findings don’t claim that Ice Age hunter-gatherers were doing formal probability theory. 

“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 cultural tradition with living descendants

The research also documents the remarkable breadth, as well as the persistence, of Native American dice games.

From Paleoindian times through the Archaic and Late Prehistoric periods, dice appear at 57 archaeological sites across a 12-state region associated with a variety of different cultures and subsistence strategies.

According to Madden, this breadth of use and endurance reflects their social importance: “Games of chance and gambling created neutral, rule-governed spaces for ancient Native Americans.

“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.”

The study is published in American Antiquity.