A recent study published in the journal *American Antiquity* suggests that humans have been using dice for gambling for over 12,000 years, pushing the timeline back by 6,000 years from the previously accepted origins in the Bronze Age. Robert Madden, an archaeologist at Colorado State University, examined artifacts from North America, including those from New Mexico, Wyoming, and Arizona, dating back to the last Ice Age. His research involved re-evaluating nearly 300 historic Native American dice and led to the classification of more than 500 artifacts as dice based on a newly developed checklist. The earliest dice were typically two-sided, made from wood or bone, with one side blank and the other marked. Madden suggests that the hunter-gatherers who used these dice likely gambled with valuable items like rare stones, fostering social connections and interactions among groups. This finding sheds light on the social role of gambling in prehistoric cultures, emphasizing its importance in building relationships and exchanging ideas.