The Discovery of the World's Oldest Dice in North America

For thousands of years, people have played games of chance. They have used dice to decide outcomes. A new study shows that these games began much earlier than historians once thought. Researchers have found gaming pieces that are 12,000 years old. These artifacts are the oldest known dice in the world. They were discovered in western North America. Before this finding, the oldest dice were found in Mesopotamia. This was an ancient region in what is now Iraq. The Mesopotamian dice were only about 5,500 years old. This new discovery changes our understanding of human history. It shows that people were engaging in complex social games long before writing existed.

Many Native American cultures have a rich history of dice games. They still play these games today. These games are not just for fun. They serve important social roles. Robert Weiner is an archaeologist at Dartmouth College. He was not part of the new study. He studies how games help people connect. He says that such games can foster social bonds. When strangers meet, they need a way to interact. Dice games offer a structured way to bond. They allow people to communicate and build trust. This insight helps us understand why these games became so popular.

Until now, the roots of early American dice games were unclear. The history was fuzzy and poorly understood. Robert Madden hoped to track down those origins. He is an archaeologist at Colorado State University in Fort Collins. He started his search by looking through records of Native American artifacts. He was scouting for objects that might be dice. He needed a systematic way to find them. He set strict rules for sorting out possible dice. Most Native American dice are two-sided. They have at least one side marked. So, that is what Madden looked for. He rejected objects with holes. These might have been part of jewelry. Any die candidates also had to be small. They had to fit comfortably in one’s hand. This rule helped filter out larger tools or ornaments.

In all, 565 objects met all those criteria. An additional 94 objects were probably dice. They would need more details to be sure. The items came from 57 archaeological sites. These sites were spread across 12 U.S. states. They were located in the Great Plains and the American West. The dating of the objects varied widely. Most of the promising objects were 450 to 2,000 years old. About 31 were 2,000 to 8,000 years old. And at least 14 artifacts dated as far back as 12,000 years ago. Those oldest ones came from Wyoming, Colorado, and New Mexico. This wide range shows the long tradition of gaming.