Essay The History of Gambling in Ancient Civilizations
The History of Ancient Gambling
Gambling was present in almost every major, ancient civilization. From the
Mesolithic rolling of hucklebones, to the Mesopotamian invention of the six sided
die, and finally to the Chinese invention of the card, not only did gambling survive
through countless civilizations of ancient history, it evolved into a global
phenomenon. Stakes on these games could range from Quadrans, the Roman
equivalent of pennies, to betting an entire estate on a simple throw of the die.
Interestingly, as in modern times, ancient peoples and civilizations had varying
opinions of gambling. Some ignored it, some outlawed it, and some accepted it.
Despite the numerous stances on gambling, one thing held true for all ... Show more
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But after the hunt, the hunters might cast bones to determine who went home with
the most desirable cuts, (Schwartz, 7). Divination was only the beginning. The first
civilization in the world, Mesopotamia, was also the first civilization to gamble.
Mesopotamian fortune tellers filed down their hucklebones, originally used for
divination, and marked them with insignia, taking the first steps toward a modern die
(Schwartz, 8). Eventually, the Mesopotamians developed three styles of dice: a four
sided pyramidal die, a refined version of the four sided astragali, and our modern
day six sided die (Schwartz, 8). The earliest six sided die recovered dates back to
about 3000 BCE (Schwartz, 8). The Arabic number system was not created until
700 BCE. Therefore, dice are about two thousand years older than numbers.
Mesopotamians played a number of board games, one which might have been an
ancestor of parcheesi, along with one that greatly resembled backgammon, and
another called senet (Schwartz, 9, Wallenfels, 232). Five gaming boards dating
from 3000 BCE have been found in the royal tombs at Ur (Rofe, 92). Oddly, despite
countless artifacts and archaeological evidence, the Mesopotamians did not mention
gambling in any of their surviving literature (Schwartz, 9). Gambling has been a part
of Egyptian civilization for as long as Egyptians have been a