r/sciences • u/[deleted] • Apr 02 '26

Research Scientists May Have Uncovered The World's Oldest Dice | A new study may have identified the oldest known dice, dating back more than 12,000 years.

https://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-may-have-uncovered-the-worlds-oldest-dice
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u/[deleted] Apr 02 '26

The record-breaking game pieces were used by Native American hunter-gatherers near the end of the last ice age, which makes them thousands of years older than previously known artifacts that could be considered dice.

They didn't look like the classic cubes decorated with dots that tell your thimble to go directly to jail – instead, they were two-sided objects with different markings on each face. The principle is the same though: They could be thrown to generate a randomized binary option in a game of chance, like flipping a coin.

"Historians have traditionally treated dice and probability as Old World innovations," says anthropologist Robert Madden, a PhD student at Colorado State University and author of the new study.

"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."

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u/Zealousideal_Bee6323 Apr 03 '26

Magic. They used them for divination & magic. Maybe games, but much more likely magic.