A Short Gambing History

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The history of gambling

Gambling was a ubiquitous recreational activity among the ancients. Archaeologists have found gambling records and paraphernalia in ruins from pre-historic Egypt, the early Roman and Greek empires, and in ancient India and China.

Many of the games that are popular today have their origins in very, very old games. For example, the predecessors of Blackjack and Poker are thought to have originated several thousand years ago in China. The earliest playing card ever found, in fact, hearkens from Chinese-controlled Turkistan in the 11th century.

Playing cards were brought to the Western world via the Mamluke Empire. The Europeans put their own distinctive stamp on these games by putting drawings of members of the Royal Court on the playing cards. Cards as we know them today, with spades, diamonds, and hearts, were first developed by the French and reluctantly copied by their perpetual enemies the English.

Historians believe that the very oldest forms of gambling involved dice. The oldest dice were in fact animal bones or pieces of stones or sticks, which the ancients often used as channels for divine wisdom and to predict the future. The Native populations of both North and South America, such as the Maya, Aztec, Eskimo, and American Indians, all had their own forms of dice games. The ancient Greeks, and Egyptians, as well as Turkmen such as Chenkis Khan, all used dice as divination mediums. The ancient Romans were notorious worldwide for their skills in cheating at dice. In fact, the Emperors Augustus, Nero, and Caligula were infamous for their deceitful dice playing. The modern form of dice is derived from a Korean Buddhist game called "Promotion."

One of most popular dice games is Craps, which originated in England in the 1700s. Craps was originally called ?Hazard,? and was a favorite parlor game of Britain?s 18th and 19th century aristocracy.

As civilizations grew organized and began to have standing armies, gambling became a problem. Soldiers would spend so much time gambling, and lose so many possessions, that army leaders began to impose betting bans. This happened in the 11th century with the Crusader armies, and again in England during the reign of King Henry XIII. Ironically, King Henry XIII was himself a prolific gambler, who was rumored to have bet the church bell of London.

In more modern history, many nations used state-operated lotteries to develop their infrastructures. Soon after winning the Revolutionary War, the brand-new American government called a lottery whose proceeds were to be used for the beautification of Washington, D.C.

The only form of gambling that was invented in the United States is the slot machine. Invented by Charles Fey, the slot machine began to be mass-produced in 1910. The original machines were made of iron and wood, and featured pictures of traditional playing cards. It was only in the 1970s that the first video slot machines were invented.

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