Native Americans Used Dice 12,000 Years Ago, Study Finds

Archaeologist Robert J. Madden of Colorado State University has announced evidence that Native Americans crafted and used dice for games of chance more than 12,000 years ago, predating the earliest known dice from Bronze Age societies in the Old World by over 6,000 years. The findings, detailed in a study published on April 2, 2026, in the journal American Antiquity, point to artifacts from archaeological sites in Wyoming, Colorado, and New Mexico during the Late Pleistocene Folsom Period, roughly 12,800 to 12,200 years ago.

These ancient dice differed from the familiar six-sided cubes. Known as binary lots, they were flat or slightly rounded, oval or rectangular objects made from bone, wood, or sometimes teeth. Each had two distinct sides: one marked with carvings, burn marks, paint, or notches for scoring, and the other plain. When tossed, typically from a basket or by hand, they reliably landed on one side or the other, producing a simple binary outcome similar to flipping a coin. Players often threw multiple lots at once, tallying scores based on how many showed the marked side up.

Madden identified these items by developing a systematic checklist of physical features,...