Bone dice from Skara Brae, Scotland have been dated to 3100–2400 BCE.
Perhaps the oldest known dice were excavated as part of a backgammon-like game set at the Burnt City, an archeological site in south-eastern Iran, estimated to be from between 28 BCE. The Egyptian game of senet (played before 3000 BCE and up to the 2nd century CE) was played with flat two-sided throwsticks which indicated the number of squares a player could move, and thus functioned as a form of dice. It is theorized that dice developed from the practice of fortune-telling with the talus of hoofed animals, colloquially known as knucklebones. Composite image of all sides of a 12 mm (0.47 in) Roman die, found in Leicestershire, Englandĭice have been used since before recorded history, and it is uncertain where they originated.
