Worlds Oldest Dice Discovered in Native American Sites 12000 Years Ago

Archaeologists have uncovered evidence that Native American hunter-gatherers crafted and used the world's oldest known dice more than 12,000 years ago on the western Great Plains, predating similar artifacts from other regions by at least 6,000 years.

The findings, detailed in a study published April 2 in the journal American Antiquity, come from sites in Wyoming, Colorado and New Mexico associated with the Folsom culture at the end of the last Ice Age. Robert J. Madden, a Ph.D. student at Colorado State University and lead author of the research, analyzed over 600 artifacts previously excavated but often overlooked or misidentified as gaming pieces. By developing a systematic checklist of physical characteristics, Madden confirmed 565 as definitive dice and 94 as probable examples, spanning from the Late Pleistocene period through later prehistoric eras and even after European contact.

These ancient dice differed from modern six-sided cubes. Known as binary lots, they were small, handheld objects made from bone, shaped flat or slightly rounded in oval or rectangular forms. Each had two distinct faces, marked by etchings, color differences, textures or pigments to create a...