Prehistoric dice suggest that Native Americans may have been gaming since the last ice age | CNN

The traditional six-sided die has been around since the Bronze Age, with the earliest known pieces from approximately 3000 BC uncovered in Mesopotamia and the Indus Valley. Now, a new study has found evidence that Native Americans were likely using dice for gaming and gambling more than 6,000 years earlier, since the end of the last ice age. The dice looked different than the polyhedral shapes we’re used to playing with today. The oldest ones identified in the study were known as “binary lots.” These artifacts — found at archaeological sites from the Folsom Period in Wyoming, Colorado and New Mexico — date back roughly 12,800 to 12,200 years. The pieces were flat, two-sided dice crafted from wood or bone and could be tossed, similar to how we flip a coin today. The findings were reported in a paper published April 2 in the journal American Antiquity. Lead study author Robert J. Madden, a doctoral student of archaeology at Colorado State University in Fort Collins, argued that the evidence has been hiding in plain sight. “We’ve had a great record of this subject during the historical period after Europeans got here,” Madden said, referring to the past 1,000 to 2,000

Apr 8, 2026 → Apr 8, 2026