Robert Madden, author and archaeologist: “What was your favorite children’s game?”

Robert Madden is an author and archaeologist at Colorado State University in Fort Collins. For many years, he sifted through existing records of Native American artifacts to look for the oldest dice in the United States. His research led him to the conclusion that dice, games of chance, and gambling have been a persistent feature of Native American culture for at least the last 12,000 years, with the earliest examples appearing at Late Pleistocene Folsom-period archaeological sites in Wyoming, Colorado and New Mexico. These artifacts predate the earliest known Old World dice by more than 6,000 years. ••• https://libarts.source.colostate.edu/how-native-americans-shaped-gambling-and-probability/ https://www.libarts.colostate.edu/people/rmadden/ https://edition.cnn.com/2026/04/08/science/native-american-earliest-dice-gambling-probability https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/american-antiquity/article/probability-in-the-pleistocene-origins-and-antiquity-of-native-american-dice-games-of-chance-and-gambling/E38C7B1F4CE7F417D8EFAC5AFEEF20A2 ••• Interview conducted by Marco Rixecker https://www.amazon.com/author/marcorixecker ••• Radio Aula Mundi, June 2026 https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL0J-iNFOJ5e7pEH8ldsVqlM272Ly4wwBQ&si=Db9cnIDPtz9uNC8O ••• At the moment, Radio Aula Mundi is an evolving podcast station where no language and all languages are spoken… It’s a multilingual mix of music, poetry, lectures, languages, interviews, documentaries, recipes, and a lot more, co-produced with the students of the ‘Aula Mundi International Cultural Center’… ••• Radio Aula Mundi Centro Cultural & Turistico Aula Mundi Aula Mundi Cultural Travel Center https://linktr.ee/radioaulamundi •••