Ice Age dice show early Native Americans may have understood probability

Archaeologist Madden identified 565 Native American dice and 94 probable dice from 45 sites.

The oldest dice come from Folsom deposits in Wyoming, Colorado, and New Mexico, dated about 12,000 years ago.

Madden argues the dice were used in one-on-one social exchange games rather than commercial gambling.

He says this evidence pushes the origins of probabilistic thinking in North America about 6,000 years earlier than Old World estimates.