Description: This is the story of dice, where dice originates and other interesting gambling facts about dice.

The History of Dice

Dice are as old to us as using fire. The precise origins of dice do not exist but overtime, it has been found that many cultures produced them of their own accord for religious or god fated results. Most of the so called ancient dice were just pieces of bones or rocks that were thrown to the ground and used the same way we use dice today.

In ancient times throwing dice was considered to be luck, it was the outcome of the gods and throwing dice had many other implications as well depending upon the society within which they were used.

The Greeks and Romans

The ancient Greeks claimed that dice and dice games were invented by the Greek, Palamedes, who took part in the Odyssey. But dice have been found in ancient burial tombs in Egypt lending belief that some of the tombs were in excess of 5000 years old giving dice a much more lengthy history.

Obviously games have been played with dice from the inception of games and gaming. Starting from sticks and stones and moving up to the more advanced symmetrical designs, dice have been played in many of the foremost ancient cultures that we know of today. We know that the Egyptians depicted themselves in fresco playing dice, and supposedly the Romans were playing dice obsessively as their empire crumbled to the ground.

Dominoes and China

Dominoes also descended from dice, but in China, and spread to the west during the 1700s while ordinary dice took hold to make all sorts of new and advanced commercialized games in the late 19th to early 20th century. Recently role playing games have brought new dice forms to us, including 8, 10, 12, 20, 50, and even 100 sided dice.

Dice have been a versatile gaming device for thousands of years with actually very little improvement upon the basic design and I do not see another change in design any time soon.