掷骰子游戏的历史

有考古研究表明，人类可能早在四千年前就开始玩和掷骰子有关的游戏了。

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.考古学家

3. relic n.遗迹

4. ritual n.(宗教等的)仪式

5. artifact n.人工制品, 典型产物

6. millennia n. 一千年 名词millennium的复数

我们中的'大部分人有足够的娱乐时间，要么尝试玩玩最新的Wii游戏，要么就在电视上看别人打扑克牌。瑞典哥德堡大学的一名研究人员指出，对游戏的这种关注却并非新鲜事物。

艾尔克.罗杰斯杜特在她的博士论文[摩亨佐达罗的游戏项目—论人类学的一致性]研究的是摩亨佐达罗，这是一个有着4000年历史的古老城市，它位于印度河流域，即今天的巴基斯坦境内。它是该地区在青铜时代时期规模最大的人类定居点，和古埃及中王国时期在同一时代兴起。娱乐研究通常不是针对其对古代人类的意义。

罗杰斯杜特表示，考古学家们在考挖掘现场的确经常发现和游戏有关的遗迹，但通常都不会重视它们，或是把它们当成祭祀用的器具。然而，在这个遗址，几乎有十分之一的发现都和娱乐相关—骰子或游戏部件。它们并非不均匀地散落在地。这些古代器物紧凑地堆在一起，这很可能是古代类似于游戏大厅或庭院的地方。罗杰斯杜特还指出，这些游戏以前可能有着重要的社会意义，也可以让我们更直观地看到这些青铜器时代的人们如何生活。说不定在四千年前，当时的人们就盼着能掷出两个六呢！