{"id":4312,"date":"2026-04-02T14:04:09","date_gmt":"2026-04-02T14:04:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bangbizarre.com\/index.php\/2026\/04\/02\/humans-started-gambling-12000-years-ago\/"},"modified":"2026-04-02T14:04:10","modified_gmt":"2026-04-02T14:04:10","slug":"humans-started-gambling-12000-years-ago","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bangbizarre.com\/index.php\/2026\/04\/02\/humans-started-gambling-12000-years-ago\/","title":{"rendered":"Humans started gambling 12,000 years ago"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><b>2026-04-02 14:04:08<\/b><br \/>\n<BR>Humans have been rolling the dice for a very long time.<BR><br \/>\nExperts say gambling dates back at least 12,000 years \u2013 after ancient dice made from bone were discovered in North America.<BR><br \/>\nResearchers from Colorado State University uncovered the tiny two-sided dice at sites across the western Great Plains, pushing the origins of games of chance back more than 6,000 years earlier than previously thought.<BR><br \/>\nThe artefacts date to the end of the last Ice Age \u2013 meaning prehistoric humans may have been taking risks long before casinos existed.<BR><br \/>\nThe study, published in American Antiquity, identified nearly 600 probable dice from different periods of North American prehistory.<BR><br \/>\nUnlike modern cubes, these were flat or slightly rounded pieces of bone, often oval or rectangular, with markings to distinguish each side \u2013 similar to heads or tails on a coin.<BR><br \/>\nThey were likely tossed together, with scores based on how many landed a certain way.<BR><br \/>\nResearcher Robert Madden said: &#8220;Historians have traditionally treated dice and probability as Old World innovations.\u201d<BR><br \/>\nBut the findings tell a different story.<BR><br \/>\nHe added: &#8220;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 recognised.&#8221;<BR><br \/>\nScientists stress these early gamblers weren\u2019t crunching complex maths \u2013 but they did understand randomness.<BR><br \/>\nThe team said: &#8220;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.\u201d<BR><br \/>\nMadden added: &#8220;They&#8217;re simple, elegant tools\u2026 These are not casual byproducts of bone working. They were made to generate random outcomes.&#8221;<br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/bangbizarre.com\/\" target=\"_blank\"> Visit Bang Bizarre (main website) <\/a><br \/>\n<br \/><script src=\"https:\/\/geo.dailymotion.com\/player\/xtbac.js\" data-video=\"\"><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>2026-04-02 14:04:08 Humans have been rolling the dice for a very long time. Experts say gambling dates back at least 12,000 years \u2013 after ancient dice made from bone were&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4313,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4312","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bizarre"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bangbizarre.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4312","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bangbizarre.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bangbizarre.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bangbizarre.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bangbizarre.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4312"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/bangbizarre.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4312\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4314,"href":"https:\/\/bangbizarre.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4312\/revisions\/4314"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bangbizarre.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4313"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bangbizarre.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4312"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bangbizarre.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4312"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bangbizarre.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4312"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}