How Did Gambling Originate

Gambling has been around for thousands of years. It’s true – the first evidence of gambling date back to the Paleolithic era, a period that spanned 2 million years ago to 2,000 BC. This is a huge period of time. While proving that gambling was available in the millennia before written history existed, scientists seem to agree that this is the case. Today, you can learn all about individual aspects of gambling by simply visiting Roulette77, but in the past, you would need to test your luck and not be entirely certain what to expect. Still, the origins of gambling may actually surprise you.

Hated by God, But Used to Read His Will

While many religions around the world oppose gambling in principle, an often-ignored fact is that gambling didn’t start as a way to divvy up loot or plunder, or even as entertainment for that matter. This is our modernistic interpretation of the activity. No, gambling was meant to serve an entirely different purpose altogether.

The activity involved ill-cut dice of sheep, buffalo or other animal bones, or knucklebones that were used to actually read the will of the gods. Highly-spiritual societies were the biggest gamblers because they would pronounce sentences, make decisions about crops or even waging war on a neighbor by simply rolling the dice and having the shaman, prophet, or divinator read what the dice would advise rulers and empires.

Naturally, many innocent people were sentenced on the roll of the dice and empires have fallen because a self-styled shaman saw something that wasn’t there. This aside, it’s an interesting insight into gambling what actually is. For example, did you know that the Swedish word for justice is actually derived from the Greek verb “to throw.” This just goes to show how in seeking randomness we actually wanted to understand divinity.

Gambling and Its Modern Origins

But while the fortunes of empires and civilizations changed and gambling was more or less forgotten in certain parts of the world, it definitely continued to thrive in much of Europe. Europe will become a bastion of gambling. Games such as baccarat, blackjack, and roulette were all invented in the Old World, and they continue to be part of the gambling industry as we know it today.

Baccarat was invented in the 1400s and it was associated with another phenomenon – the invention of playing cards which became popular in 1397 and were attributed to traveling merchants from the Middle East. This quickly led to the game of baccarat being created. Of course, there were many gambling games over the centuries, but not all remain.

Blackjack, the other true staple of gambling today, was invented – or at least mentioned by the Spanish author of Don Quixote. “Twenty-one,” de Cervantes wrote in one of his books, was mentioned as a game that people commonly played. That is why blackjack (even though a favourite in the United States) is cautiously attributed to Spain. But Italy and Spain both had a role to play in the invention of card games so it’s not entirely clear if the game was invented by one nation or the other. Probably both did at the same time.

Roulette came much later, though, in the 1800s when the modern roulette wheel was born. But it was Casino de Monte Carlo in 1865 that really reinvented the game introducing a single zero to the wheel and giving players the feeling that they have a better chance to win. In fairness, they did as single-zero roulette is the best possible version of the game you can play if you are expecting to win.

Gambling crossed the Atlantic Ocean around this time and it did so with all of these games. However, new ones were born as well. Poker was very popular across the Wild West and it is a staple of the gambling experience today – all with good reason!