There is physical evidence that gambling as it is known today—playing games of chance for money—may be as old as 10,000 years. Archeological digs in the Near East and Mediterranean area have unearthed four-sided sheep hucklebones known as astragali, which were originally thought to be used in a fortune-telling practice called “throwing bones.” But the astragali have been discovered in such great quantity, accompanied by small coloured stones that could have been used as counters, that leading experts are now claiming the relics were also recreational, not just religious.
It is quite certain that the astragali were being used for gambling by 7,000 B.C. in Mesopotamia—what is present-day Iraq. Between then and 3,000 B.C., the practice began of filing the bones into cubes to make them roll more smoothly. And because the bone density was uneven, more appropriate materials were being used to make the cubes, such as ivory and wood. That’s how six-sided dice were born.
Ironically, dice are actually older than numbers. Six-sided dice with pips (dots) marking their faces became common around 1,300 B.C., predating the development of the Hindu-Arabic number system by at least six centuries.
The Mesopotamians also developed four-sided pyramid-shaped dice that they used with game boards. Rolling the dice determined how pieces were moved on the board’s surface. These boards were later adopted by Romans legions using two six-sided dice in a game they called “Duodecim Scriptorum” (or “twelve writer”).
By 300 B.C., that game evolved into another, more popular version called “Tabula” (or “tables”), which gradually spread to Arabia as “Nard,” to Iceland as “Ad Elta Stelpur,” England as “Taefle and Fayles,” France as “Tourne-case,” and Spain as “Sixe-Ace.” Today, the game endures worldwide as “Backgammon.”
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