The history of dice is incredibly long – dice are as old as human civilization itself, judging by the oldest dice found in Egyptian tombs and archaeological excavations in ancient Sumeria.
A Brief Timeline of Dice History
| 3100 BC | Early hieroglyphs depicting Senet boards found. Senet used two-sided throwing pieces to introduce chance. |
| 3000 BC | Oldest confirmed dice found, originating from ancient Turkey. |
| 2600 BC | Pyramidal four-sided dice found in the board game "Royal Game of Ur" from ancient Sumeria. |
| 2000 BC | Standard-shaped dice found in Egyptian tombs. |
| 1333 BC | Simple dice shaped like animal knucklebones found in Tutankhamun's tomb. |
| 1188 BC | Approximate date when Sophocles claimed that Palamedes invented dice during the Siege of Troy. |
| 900 BC | Tuscan dice found near Rome. Standard cube shape with common markings. |
| 600 BC | Standard dice found in Chinese excavations. |
| 400 BC | Oldest written records of dice in the Sanskrit epic Mahabharata. |
| 300 BC | Oldest twenty-sided die of Egyptian origin, from the Ptolemaic period. |
| 150 BC | Egyptian twelve-sided dice from the Ptolemaic period. |
| 100 AD | The second oldest twenty-sided die. This ancient Roman d20 sold at auction in 2003 for 17,000 dollars. |
| 1000 AD | Dice found in Viking graves. |
| 1600 AD | Galileo and Girolamo Cardano subject dice to mathematical analysis. |
| 1888 AD | Eight-sided poker dice. |
| 1906 AD | Ten-sided die patented in the USA. |
| 1950 AD | Oldest plastic twenty-sided dice, numbered 0-9, patented by the Tokyo-Shibaura company. |
| 1974 AD | Dungeons & Dragons releases a set of polyhedral dice. |
| 1980 AD | The first ten-sided die, as claimed, appears at GenCon. |
| 1985 AD | Release of the first Zocchihedron, a 100-sided die. |