Dice Evolution History

"God does not play dice with the universe." Mysticism, history, poetry, science are united by one thing - so ancient that its evolution is connected with the evolution of all mankind: the dice.

Epochs and civilizations changed, the appearance of dices changed, but the essence remained the same - a person plays with the unknown with the help of a small man-made polyhedron and some signs indicated on its sides.

The result of such a game will be as honest as the dice themselves. The latter are honestly made: each face should have an equal chance of being at the top. The condition, as it seems, is obvious - however, this was not always the case. If you look carefully at an ancient dice the question immediately arises: didn’t they worry over the centuries that the players and their money were entrusted to these crooked contraptions? When and why did everything change? What happened in the history of mankind?

Yelmer Irkens and Alex de Vogt, American anthropologists of Dutch origin, not only put these questions, but were able to offer some answers. Fortunately, the sphere of interests of both scientists is not limited to one specialty: Yelmer Irkens - professor of anthropology at the University of California Davis, an archaeologist and a certified computer engineer; Alex de Vogt is an employee of the American Museum of Natural History, an anthropologist, linguist, ethnographer and specialist in ancient board games.

The result of the joint work is a very interesting study “Evolution of Dice from the Romans to the New Age in the Netherlands”.

Dice from the archaeologists’ point of view are relatively rare and random findings. They hardly come across during excavations of dwellings, but can suddenly “come up” when studying ancient dumps and garbage heaps. They are rarely found in burials, but they can be found on the surface of the cemetery land. As a result, dice are difficult to date. For several years, the American Dutch searched for material for their research, examined hundreds of copies in various museums and vaults, and as a result, 110 dices from different eras, starting from the ancient Roman, were selected. Almost all of them were found in the Netherlands and all match two conditions - the bones are precisely dated and have the shape that later turned out to be the most popular and successfully survived to our days: a cube with six labelled faces, the so-called Dice-6 or just D6.

Bones of this shape appeared in the 3rd millennium BC in Southwest Asia, but the Roman conquerors first brought the “cubes” to Holland when, around 55 BC, the troops of Julius Caesar occupied the lands in the south of modern Netherlands.

The fact of such a “cultural import” is not surprising: it is known that the Romans were passionate dice and backgammon players (in Rome they were called the “game of twelve characters” and “tabula”). The well known expression “Alea iacta est!” is attributed to Julius Caesar - in literal translation it means “the dice is thrown”: alea is one of three dice for playing backgammon, which can also be used for gambling dice.

Another thing is surprising: according to the authors of the study, despite the popularity of the game in Ancient Rome (craps continued to be played even despite severe prohibitions), there was no standard for the most important detail: the actual dice. The Romans made them from almost any available materials - glass, bronze, copper, lead, silver, wood, stone, bone, antler, clay etc. The impression that the ancient Roman cubes are cubic is deceptive. Asymmetrical faces, carelessly sanded sides with hollows and tubercles, crooked corners - and any irregularities affect how the bones lie on the playing surface and, ultimately, what result will fall out.

Nowadays it’s hard to understand why that was allowed. For some reason, the ancient Roman players were not worried about the inferiority of the main attribute of the game. Perhaps they believed that the result of the throw is determined by higher forces, for which such a trifle as curved side cubes does not matter. In any case, this explanation is offered by the authors of the study.

The dice of the Renaissance epoch reflect an obvious desire for uniformity. On the one hand, standardization may be associated with the transition from artisanal to mass production of dice. On the other hand, “the appearance of standard parameters of the die, such as the symmetry of the sides and the arrangement of points, could be one way to make the game more fair, reduce the chances of fraudsters and cheaters in manipulating bones to change the outcome of the throw,” says Yelmer Irkens.

European players for the first time began to realize that the result of the game is governed not by supernatural, but by some other laws. The first mathematical studies of the dices’ behavior were carried out in the 16th century by Italian scientists Girolamo Cardano and Nicolo Tartaglia, then Galileo Galilei.

“In the Renaissance, a new philosophical and scientific world view was born. Scientists such as Galileo and Blaise Pascal began to develop the concepts of chance and probability. From the written sources, we know that in some cases they actually consulted with the players. We believe that dice players also adopted new ideas regarding equal and fair conditions of the game, as well as the concepts of chance and probability,” Irkens explains in a press release on the website of the University of California, Davis. The mysticism that has surrounded the dice for thousands of years has gradually dissipated: faith in providence has given way to awareness of the randomness of what is happening.

Scientists regret that archaeologists do not consider dice to be a significant finding, conducting them in the category "... and other small artefacts." For most of the bones found, not only laboratory research data are missing, but even such elementary “signs of attention” as high-quality photos, measurements and description. There are very few studies on changes in the characteristics of dice by period and region.