'knuckle bones' ... you literally played with the knuckle bones of some food animal (?) so likely for agricultural age people

Interesting thing was they were NOT symetrical and when rolled fell with an irregular statistical pattern on the different facings (which had names of their shape rather than numbers).

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my mention of 'pre-tecnological' - that early hominids may have thrown rocks earlier than anything else. I recall a case of paleoarcheologists finding an fairly early hominid site in africa where there had been a large colony of baboons, and several tons of rocks of a convenient size (to throw) were deposited there where the hominids had been systematically trying to kill the baboons for food. I believe this was PRE stone age hominids...

rocks/slings/throwing spears/arrows/atl-atl all take more than a little practice to be effective at range

and probably stick fighting/clubbing as well -- even after the range weapons used above - (the monty python joke...) the target often

"wasn't quite dead" .

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I recall from a history book long ago, that for many Native Americans (and likely in many other diverse cultures) GAMBLING had a religious connotation ('luck' having some metaphysical connection).

I recall from a history book long ago, that for many Native Americans (and likely in many other diverse cultures) GAMBLING had a religious connotation ('luck' having some metaphysical connection).

Yeah, I think quite a lot of gambling culture around the world originated in religion/magic.

One historian of gambling said it's a probably a natural progression. You start out asking the opinion of the spirits about future good fortune and ill, about what you should decide, etc., and doing something (like casting shells on the ground) for your answer. Among those are questions of good fortune like "Who gets the best cut of meat from our successful hunt?", "Who gets the nice spear from that enemy we killed?" It's a gradual progression from "Who gets the nice stuff? Let the gods decide!" to "Let's bring our nice stuff and throw shells at the ground to decide who takes it home!"

(Also note that this fulfills a trade function in a world before currency or barter. Hunter-gatherer societies don't tend to have either, at least as their basic system of goods distribution, until they're in contact with another society that does.)