Probability in the Pleistocene: Origins and Antiquity of Native American Dice, Games of Chance, and Gambling
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 April 2026
Robert J Madden

Abstract
This article investigates the prehistory of Native American dice, games of chance, and gambling and for the first time traces these artifacts and cultural practices to their earliest appearances. Uncertainty about whether prehistoric North American artifacts can be confidently identified as dice without objective criteria has meant that no prior attempt to accomplish this task has been undertaken. This uncertainty is addressed here by (1) deriving a morphological test for identifying prehistoric dice based on diagnostic attributes shared among 293 sets of historic Native American dice documented in Stewart Culin’s 1907 compendium Games of the North American Indians and (2) using this test to search the published North American archaeological record for matching artifacts. The results suggest that dice, games of chance, and gambling have been a persistent feature of Native American culture for the last 12,000 years, with the earliest dice appearing in Late Pleistocene Folsom deposits in Wyoming, Colorado, and New Mexico. Remarkably, these Pleistocene dice predate their earliest known Old World counterparts by millennia. These results suggest that ancient Native Americans possessed a basic working knowledge of chance, randomness, and probability and consequently were early movers in humanity’s emerging understanding and practical application of these concepts.

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First, the evidence developed here suggests that Native American groups on the western Great Plains of North America were making two-sided dice (binary lots) and using them as randomizing agents in games of chance and for gambling by the closing centuries of the Pleistocene, no later than 12,000 years ago. This evidence comes from Folsom deposits at the Agate Basin, Lindenmeier, and Blackwater Draw sites in Wyoming, Colorado, and New Mexico, where carefully crafted artifacts exhibit the diagnostic attributes of historic Native American dice documented by Culin (Reference Culin1907). Remarkably, these Folsom artifacts predate the earliest currently known dice in the Old World by millennia (Depaulis Reference Depaulis2021). The significance of this finding is amplified by the fact that the invention of dice and games of chance are recognized by historians of mathematics and science as an important early milestone in humanity’s evolving recognition and understanding of the probabilistic nature of the physical universe and the observable regularities that underlie it (Acree Reference Acree2021 9–82; Bennett Reference Bennett1998:11–26; Bru and Bru Reference Bru and Bru2018; Burton Reference Burton2011:443; David Reference David1955, Reference David1962:21–22; Stigler Reference Stigler2014; Todhunter Reference Todhunter1865:1).

Second, the evidence developed here shows that artifacts exhibiting the diagnostic attributes of historic Native American dice appear in archaeological assemblages from diverse groups throughout all periods of North American prehistory—from the Late Pleistocene / Early Holocene (aka the Paleoindian period), around 13,000–8000 years before the present (BP); through the Middle Holocene (aka the Archaic period), around 8000–2000 BP; and into the Late Holocene (aka the Late Prehistoric period), around 2000–450 BP. This evidence suggests that Native American games of chance and gambling represent cultural practices of remarkable antiquity and persistence that have survived to and thrive in the present, now serving as the foundation of one of the most visible expressions of modern Native American sovereignty: tribal gaming. This notable persistence also suggests that ancient Native American games of chance and gambling were highly adaptive for the groups that engaged in them, acting as “social technologies of integration” (Weiner Reference Weiner2018:2) that allowed disparate groups with little or no preexisting relationships to interact; exchange goods, information, and mates; and forge new social bonds (DeBoer Reference DeBoer2001; Janetski Reference Janetski2002; Yanicki Reference Yanicki2021).

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A significant implication of the findings reported here is that the earliest Native American dice appear to predate their earliest known Old World counterparts by millennia. As DePaulis (Reference Depaulis2021) has recently summarized, “The earliest objects we can understand with certainty as ‘dice’” appear from and after around 3500 BC (5450 BP) in Mesopotamia, the Indus civilization, and the Bronze-Age Maikop culture of the western Caucasus (DePaulis Reference Depaulis2021:11; see also Dales Reference Dales1968; Finkel Reference Finkel and Finkel2007; Piccione Reference Piccione1990:20, Reference Piccione and Finkel2007). Remarkably, these earliest Old World dice postdate the 12,000-year-old Native American Folsom dice discussed here by more than 6,000 years. Moreover, later Native American examples discussed here also predate the earliest-known Old World dice, including the 10,000-year-old die at the Agate Basin site in Wyoming (Figure 1c) and the six 7,000- to 8,000-year-old dice at the Sudden Shelter and Cowboy Cave sites in Utah (Table 1). Therefore, the findings presented here place prehistoric Native American groups at the forefront of the invention of dice, games of chance, and gambling.

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