A Comprehensive History of Gambling. PART 1 - Back to the very beginning
Billions of people play lotteries every day, but haven’t got a clue about how old they are.
Have you ever wondered what the first gamblers were like? Why they decided to start rolling dices? Playing bingo, slot machines, craps, and poker or betting on football, basketball, and boxing is a multi-billion dollar industry today. People spend nearly one trillion dollars worldwide on gambling a year. But did you know that gambling evolved from friendly bets on pedestrianism?
Did you know that there are historians of gambling like David G. Schwartz, who wrote an entire book on gambling, a 500-page-plus tome called The History Of Gambling: Roll The Bones? Did you know that there is a CENTER for Gaming Research, at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, conducted by the same remarkable historian of gambling, David G. Schwartz?
Gambling and casinos are not modern day inventions. Desire to become rich overnight is a theory which rules all the gambling centers worldwide. No one can deny the fact that there is an innermost desire in all individuals to get rich overnight.
Gambling has existed since ancient times. Archeological extracts and historians strongly prove the existence of gambling events carried out by our predecessors and there is evidence that most cultures supported gambling in some form or another. Gambling was also a popular entertainment activity for our ancestors.
Implements associated with the practice of gambling have been found in ancient China sites dating back to about 2300 B.C. A pair of ivory dice made sometime before 1500 B.C. have been found in Egypt. In fact, writings mentioning gambling have been discovered on a tablet in one of the pyramids at Giza. Inhabitants of ancient India, Greece and Rome also practiced some form of gambling.