Native Americans Created the World’s First Dice 12,000 Years Ago, Study Reveals

Native Americans may have created the world’s earliest known dice about 12,000 years ago, according to a new study that traces dice, games of chance, and gambling deep into North American prehistory.

The study, published in “American Antiquity,” was authored by Robert J. Madden of Colorado State University. It argues that ancient Native communities were making and using two-sided dice by the end of the Pleistocene, long before the earliest known dice in the Old World.

Madden set out to answer a problem that has long slowed research in this area: archaeologists have found many prehistoric objects that look like dice, but they lacked a clear test to identify them with confidence. To address that, Madden built a method from the historic record.

Native Americans and dice traced deep into prehistory

He studied 293 sets of Native American dice documented in Stewart Culin’s 1907 survey “Games of the North American Indians.”

From that record, Madden identified shared features. The objects were usually two-sided, made of bone or wood, marked so each side could be told apart, shaped to land in distinct ways, and small enough to be held and thrown by hand.

He then used that test to search published archaeological reports from across North America.

The results point to a long and striking history. Madden identified 565 “diagnostic” prehistoric dice from 45 sites and 94 more “probable” dice from 20 sites. Together, the finds came from 57 sites in 12 states and spanned about 13,000 years.

Oldest finds came from three Folsom sites

The oldest examples came from Folsom deposits in Wyoming, Colorado, and New Mexico. Those artifacts date to no later than about 12,000 years ago, the study said. Madden reported 20 diagnostic and probable dice from three Folsom sites: Agate Basin, Lindenmeier, and Blackwater Draw.

The study says those early objects closely match later Native American dice in shape, markings, and size. Many were made of bone. Some had incised lines or edge marks. A few also showed traces of red coloring on one side.

Madden argues the finds show more than the early use of gaming pieces. He says they point to a lasting cultural tradition. Dice appear in deposits from the Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene through the Middle and Late Holocene, suggesting games of chance and gambling remained part of Native life for thousands of years.

Study links early dice to chance and exchange

The study also says the early North American dice appear to predate the earliest known ‘Old World’ dice by several millennia. That makes the finding notable beyond archaeology, because historians of mathematics have linked dice and games of chance to humanity’s early efforts to understand randomness and probability.

Madden also suggests the dice may have had a social role. Their presence at major sites could signal places where groups gathered, interacted, and exchanged goods or information.

The study stops short of claiming a complete record. Madden notes that the archaeological sample is incomplete and limited to published reports. Even so, the paper presents one of the clearest cases yet that Native Americans were making dice far earlier than previously shown.