A new study published in American Antiquity reveals that early Native Americans used two-sided dice in games of chance over 12,000 years ago, predating known Old World dice by millennia. By applying a morphological test to archaeological artifacts, researcher Robert Madden identified hundreds of "binary lots" used in structured, rule-based games. These activities suggest that Ice Age hunter-gatherers understood and relied on random outcomes long before formal probability theory emerged. Rather than commercial gambling, these games likely served social functions, fostering reciprocal relationships and gifting between different groups through fair, one-on-one competition.
