擲骰子游戲的歷史

有考古研究表明，人類可能早在四千年前就開始玩和擲骰子有關的遊戲了。

Many of us have plenty of leisure time to devote to trying out the latest Wii game or even watching others play poker on TV. But this focus on play is nothing new, says a researcher at Sweden’s University of Gothenburg.

For her doctoral thesis, Elke Rogersdotter studied a 4,000-year-old city called Mohenjo-Daro in the Indus Valley, in what is now Pakistan. ["Gaming in Mohenjo-daro—an Archaeology of Unities"] It was the largest Bronze Age urban settlement in the region, thriving at the same time as the ancient Egyptian Middle Kingdom.

Play is not generally studied for its significance to ancient peoples. Rogersdotter says that archaeologists do often find game-related relics at dig sites, but they’re usually discounted as unimportant or considered a ritual object. But at this site, almost every tenth find was related to leisure—dice or gaming pieces.

And they’re not uniformly scattered. The artifacts are clustered together in what might have been ancient, say, gaming halls or courtyards.

Rogersdotter says that these games may have had real social significance and might be used to give us a better view of the lives of these Bronze Age individuals. Who very well might have hoped to roll double-sixes four millennia ago.

—Cynthia Graber

1. doctoral adj. 博士的

2. archaeologist n.考古學家

3. relic n.遺蹟

4. ritual n.(宗教等的)儀式

5. artifact n.人工製品, 典型產物

6. millennia n. 一千年 名詞millennium的複數

我們中的'大部分人有足夠的娛樂時間，要麼嘗試玩玩最新的Wii遊戲，要麼就在電視上看別人打撲克牌。瑞典哥德堡大學的一名研究人員指出，對遊戲的這種關注卻並非新鮮事物。

艾爾克.羅傑斯杜特在她的博士論文[摩亨佐達羅的遊戲專案—論人類學的一致性]研究的是摩亨佐達羅，這是一個有著4000年曆史的古老城市，它位於印度河流域，即今天的巴基斯坦境內。它是該地區在青銅時代時期規模最大的人類定居點，和古埃及中王國時期在同一時代興起。娛樂研究通常不是針對其對古代人類的意義。

羅傑斯杜特表示，考古學家們在考挖掘現場的確經常發現和遊戲有關的遺蹟，但通常都不會重視它們，或是把它們當成祭祀用的器具。然而，在這個遺址，幾乎有十分之一的發現都和娛樂相關—骰子或遊戲部件。它們並非不均勻地散落在地。這些古代器物緊湊地堆在一起，這很可能是古代類似於遊戲大廳或庭院的地方。羅傑斯杜特還指出，這些遊戲以前可能有著重要的社會意義，也可以讓我們更直觀地看到這些青銅器時代的人們如何生活。說不定在四千年前，當時的人們就盼著能擲出兩個六呢！