this post was submitted on 11 Apr 2026
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Archaeology

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Archaeology or archeology[a] is the study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of artifacts, architecture, biofacts or ecofacts, sites, and cultural landscapes.

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Archaeological record suggests hunter gatherers were playing games of chance at the end of the last ice age

It says dice were being made and used on the western great plains of North America at the end of the last ice age, more than 12,000 years ago.

It had been thought that the earliest examples of dice were in the bronze age societies of Mesopotamia and the Indus valley.

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[โ€“] lvxferre@mander.xyz 8 points 4 days ago

Their dice remind me the ones from senet (board game from Egypt):

See the sticks there? They might look different, but they're similar in spirit: two sided and uneven. Senet is way more recent than those Native American dice, though, probably from around 3000 BCE.