The origins of gambling point to a radically different world and a potentially better future for the activity.
New research shows that humanity’s earliest gambling practices date back 12,000 years in present-day North America, challenging the belief that gambling’s beginnings are tied to loss or exploitation.
Researcher Robert Madden of Colorado State University described far older and different games of chance in an interview with GamblingHarm.org. His research moves the history of dice and gambling back thousands of years, into societies not centered on wealth or social hierarchy.
“It’s roughly doubling the time,” Madden told GamblingHarm.org of the research published in the journal American Antiquity. “And not only that, it’s moving gambling from complex societies to hunter-gatherer societies.”
Previously, the earliest gambling was dated to 5,000 to 5,500 years ago in Mesopotamia and the Indus Valley, when a sharply stratified, class-based society existed.
Gambling’s Origins Before Inequality
Based on these findings, Madden said that gambling predates the emergence of social inequality. In other regions of the world, subsequent forms of gambling were intertwined with divination. However, evidence supporting this connection is not robust in the North American context, according to his paper.
Today, gambling is strongly associated with loss and exploitation, as casinos and online platforms operate in a profit-maximizing society. In contrast, Madden describes early gambling as non-exploitative.
“We normally think of gambling as kind of a zero-sum proposition,” he said. “It turns out that if you’ve got a fair game, gambling can really work as a leveling mechanism. Somebody gets something that other people don’t have, and it ends up getting passed around through gambling. That’s kind of how it spreads out. It’s how you keep these inequalities from showing up.”
In the Native American context Madden researched, gambling was not about taking resources but instead served as a way for strangers to interact.
“It was not usually used or played within groups,” Madden said. “It was something for outsiders, when we met up with somebody we didn’t know. This is a way for us to interact because we don’t have a relationship.”
He described this as “a shared fluency of gambling.” People who may not have spoken the same language could still understand the rules of a game and trust that both sides had “an equal chance.”
Did Gambling Addiction Exist?
Madden was clear when asked tongue-in-cheek whether there was evidence of gambling issues among people 12,000 years ago.
“Normally, no, we don’t have any of that,” he said (laughing). “They seemed to have kept it pretty well in check.”
It’s hard to imagine harmful play, as egalitarian societies did not foster conditions for financial loss.
“One of the nice things then was that people didn’t really have anything to lose,” he said. “So, you know, it’s hard to go broke when you don’t ‘own’ anything. It’s impossible to gamble yourself into poverty in an egalitarian society.”
Is Gambling Human Nature?
Gambling is ancient, but you shouldn’t say it’s in our nature. Moreover, gambling to exploit or amass wealth is not human nature, nor the reason it began.
The research on 12,000-year-old dice challenges a common argument in the modern gambling industry: that gambling is natural and acceptable in its for-profit, predatory form. Gambling’s age does not excuse a modern industry built on near misses, chasing losses, and false hope.
When asked whether ancient gambling supports the idea that humans have a kind of urge to gamble on anything, Madden pointed back to the evidence.
“The evidence that we have is that they’re using these games of chance in a social context to exchange goods and as a basis for interaction,” he said. “That’s what we can see.”
Gambling was not always rooted in loss and inequality. Whereas today’s gambling often centers on personal gain and accumulation, early gambling connected people and redistributed resources socially, making it fundamentally different from much of what we see now.
“It definitely can be very pro-social,” Madden said. “It’s all context, right?”
Q&A: Gambling Origins, Invention and the First Games of Chance
When was gambling invented?
Gambling may be far older than previously thought. Research discussed by Robert Madden suggests dice and games of chance may date back roughly 12,000 years, pushing the origins of gambling thousands of years earlier than the previous estimate of around 5,000 to 5,500 years ago.
What was considered the first gambling before Madden’s research?
Before Madden’s recent paper, experts tied the earliest known gambling evidence to dice from about 5,000 to 5,500 years ago, often associated with early complex societies in the Old World. Madden’s research challenges that timeline by placing early dice in Native American hunter-gatherer societies in North America.
Who invented gambling?
There is no known single inventor of gambling. Madden describes games of chance as something closer to a human discovery than a single invention. Different societies appear to have independently discovered chance, randomness and probability, then turned those ideas into games.
Where did gambling originate?
Experts will continue to debate this question. Traditionally, researchers said gambling’s origins were ancient civilizations in places like Mesopotamia, Egypt or the Indus Valley. Madden’s research suggests some of the earliest known dice may instead come from North America, in Native American hunter-gatherer contexts.
What was the first form of gambling?
The earliest gambling likely involved simple dice or two-sided objects used in games of chance. In the GamblingHarm.org interview, Madden said the early dice he studied were “almost” all two-sided, rather than the six-sided dice most people recognize today.
Was early gambling predatory?
The available evidence does not suggest that early gambling began as predatory. Madden described early games of chance as social tools used for exchange, interaction and redistribution — especially among people who did not already have a relationship.
How was ancient gambling different from modern gambling?
Ancient gambling, at least in the context Madden describes, happened in more egalitarian societies where people could not easily gamble away rent, savings or their livelihood. Modern gambling takes place in an unequal economy where online casinos, sportsbooks and prediction markets can turn human attraction to chance into continuous financial extraction.
Did Native Americans invent gambling?
Madden’s research does not prove that Native Americans were the only people to invent gambling. But it does suggest that Native American dice and games of chance may be among the oldest known evidence of gambling, potentially dating back around 12,000 years.
What is the difference between gambling and games of chance?
A game of chance depends on randomness rather than pure skill. Gambling usually means something of value is risked on that uncertain outcome. Early games of chance may have helped people exchange goods and interact socially, while modern gambling often involves companies profiting from repeated losses.
