Native Americans Invented the Game of Dice 12,000 Years Ago When we think about the origins of dice, almost everyone imagines Egypt, Mesopotamia, or ancient China. But a study published in April 2026 in the journal American Antiquity overturns that assumption: Native Americans were deliberately making and using dice more than 12,000 years ago, making the American continent the birthplace of organized gambling — and of probabilistic thinking. A Discovery That Rewrites the History Books Robert J. Madden, a researcher at Colorado State University, is the author of the study. His conclusion is unambiguous: historians have long treated dice and probability as inventions of the Old World, but the archaeological…