A groundbreaking new study has revealed that the world's oldest known dice were crafted and used by Native American hunter-gatherers more than 12,000 years ago. These ancient gaming pieces, discovered in the western Great Plains of North America, predate the earliest known dice from Bronze Age societies in the Old World by over 6,000 years. The remarkable findings suggest that indigenous peoples were engaging in complex games of chance and exploring probability thousands of years before the concept emerged in written mathematics.
The research, conducted by Colorado State University Ph.D. student Robert J. Madden and published in the journal American Antiquity, identified the earliest examples of these dice at Late Pleistocene Folsom-period archaeological sites in Wyoming, Colorado, and New Mexico. These artifacts, dating back to roughly 12,800 to 12,200 years ago, provide fascinating insights into the social lives and intellectual achievements of early inhabitants of the Americas.
Rewriting the History of Probability
"Historians have traditionally treated dice and probability as Old World innovations," explained Madden in a press release. "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."
Unlike the modern cubic dice we are familiar with today, these ancient Native American dice were two-sided objects known as "binary lots." They were carefully crafted from small pieces of bone, typically flat or slightly rounded, and oval or rectangular in shape. The dice were small enough to be held in the hand and tossed in groups onto a playing surface.
To function effectively as tools of chance, the two faces of these binary lots were distinguished by applied markings, surface treatments, or coloration. Similar to the heads and tails of a coin, one face was designated as the "counting" side. When thrown, they reliably landed with one side or the other facing upward, producing a binary result. Players would cast sets of these dice together, and scores were determined by how many landed with the counting face up.
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Flat dice types illustrated by Culin: (left panel) “bone dice” (Reference Culin1907:Figures 21, 67, 189); (right panel) flat “stick dice” (Reference Culin1907:Figures 14, 30, 124). (American Antiquity)
The Social Power of Ancient Gaming
Madden's research involved a rigorous re-examination of the archaeological record. He developed a new attribute-based morphological test to identify North American dice, derived from a comparative analysis of 293 sets of historic Native American dice documented by ethnographer Stewart Culin in 1907. By applying this checklist of measurable physical features, Madden identified over 600 diagnostic and probable dice from archaeological sites across North America.
The study documents the remarkable breadth and persistence of Native American dice games, which appeared at 57 archaeological sites across a 12-state region. These games were not merely for entertainment; they served as powerful social technologies. Primarily played by women, dice games created neutral, rule-governed spaces that allowed people from different groups to interact, exchange goods and information, and form alliances.
"Games of chance and gambling created neutral, rule-governed spaces for ancient Native Americans," Madden noted. "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."
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Some of the earliest known examples of dice come from Native Americans. Examples E and G were found at the Lindenmeier site in Northern Colorado. (Photo courtesy of Robert Madden / Colorado State University)
A Deep Tradition of Understanding Chance
The discovery of these 12,000-year-old dice challenges the conventional timeline of mathematical thinking. While these Ice Age hunter-gatherers may not have been formulating formal probability theory, they were intentionally creating and relying on random outcomes in repeatable, rule-based ways. This early engagement with randomness represents a crucial step in humanity's evolving understanding of probability.
"These findings don't claim that Ice Age hunter-gatherers were doing formal probability theory," Madden clarified. "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."
The recognition of these ancient artifacts as dice highlights the ingenuity and rich cultural traditions of early Native Americans. It demonstrates that the human fascination with games of chance and the exploration of probability have deep roots, stretching back to the very end of the last Ice Age on the western Great Plains.
Top image: Late Pleistocene, Early Holocene, Middle Holocene, and Late Holocene diagnostic and probable prehistoric Native American dice. Source: Photo courtesy of Robert Madden / / Colorado State University
By Gary Manners
References
Irving, M. 2026. Scientists May Have Uncovered The World's Oldest Dice. ScienceAlert. Available at: https://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-may-have-uncovered-the-worlds-oldest-dice
Madden, R. J. 2026. Probability in the Pleistocene: Origins and Antiquity of Native American Dice, Games of Chance, and Gambling. American Antiquity. Cambridge University Press. Available at: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/american-antiquity/article/probability-in-the-pleistocene-origins-and-antiquity-of-native-american-dice-games-of-chance-and-gambling/E38C7B1F4CE7F417D8EFAC5AFEEF20A2
Nick, S. 2026. A roll of the dice: How Native Americans shaped gambling and probability long before the Old World. Colorado State University SOURCE. Available at: https://libarts.source.colostate.edu/how-native-americans-shaped-gambling-and-probability/
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