Dice Are 6,000 Years Older Than Previously Believed, Study Says

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New research identifies more than 600 objects discovered in the United States as two-sided dice crafted by Native Americans.

A recent study in the journal American Antiquity suggests that dice were first used over 12,000 years ago, significantly earlier than previously thought. These Pleistocene-era dice, crafted by Native Americans, precede other archaeological dice findings, predominantly from the Bronze Age, by more than 6,000 years.

Dice are seen as tools for understanding randomness. Colorado State University archaeologist Robert J. Madden, who led the study, told Hyperallergic, “At the end of the last Ice Age, these are not the people we think are going to be diving into complex intellectual concepts. But they seem to be doing exactly that.”

Madden’s research focuses on the classification of these artifacts. Despite a historical record of Native American dice dating back 2,000 years, archaeologists faced challenges connecting older, less distinct findings. Madden noted, “Early in the process, I started finding some of these really early pieces, and there was this sense of, ‘Well, we don’t know what these things are.’”

Madden relied heavily on Stewart Culin’s 1907 book, Games of the North American Indians, which detailed diagnostic features for 293 sets of Native American dice across North America. Using these guidelines, Madden developed criteria to analyze archaeological archives, identifying over 600 pieces from 57 sites in the American West, primarily in Colorado, Wyoming, and New Mexico, believed to be dice.

However, not everyone agrees with Madden’s conclusions. Jelmer Eerkens, an anthropology professor at the University of California, commented to CNN that more context about where the pieces were found is necessary to understand their purpose.

Unlike the typical six-sided dice, Madden’s prehistoric dice are two-sided, known as “binary lots,” and were likely used for social and cultural interactions between unfamiliar tribes. Madden suggests, “The games created a neutral space. Everybody understood they had an equal chance of success.”

These pieces, made of wood or bone and occasionally teeth, have one side marked and the other blank. The decorations on them are unusually ornate compared to other artifacts from Pleistocene sites.

Madden believes this indicates that early ideas of chance also inspired artistic expression. “Probability, chance, randomness — these aren’t just ideas,” Madden explained to Hyperallergic. “They’re real features of the physical world, and through these games the dice bring randomness out into the open, they clean it up, they make it so that you can see these patterns.”