Games seem to have been a part of hunting and gathering lives for a very long time. Most games among generalized (or simple) hunter/gatherers are non-competitive as might be expected in egalitarian societies where most things are shared and individual ambitions are derided if not proscribed. However, as shown in James Woodburn’s film, The Hadza, even among egalitarian groups in East Africa, gambling was adopted and tolerated as long as the stakes were relatively inconsequential–at most, a few arrows or other implements that could be easily replaced. As such games, and perhaps simple forms of gambling seem to have a fairly long history.
The situation changed, as you might guess from previous discussions, when complex hunter/gatherers appeared, beginning in Europe about 32,000-10,000 years ago. With them, individual property became established together with substantial individual or family wealth, and economically based competition (for instance, in feasts, marriages, and funerals). Given these conditions, gambling proliferated among complex hunter/gatherers and took on an entirely different allure.
People not only wagered large amounts of wealth, but gambling success became associated with individual spirit power–the power to guess or determine outcomes. Individual reputations and support bases were being determined by successes or failures in gambling. Along the Northwest Coast and in the Northwest Interior of North America, the standard gambling game was “lahal.” It was a bit like a shell game with one marked bone in a set of three, and the goal was to guess which hand of an opponent held the marked bone. Individuals’ supernatural helpers were called upon to assist in determining the correct guess. Stakes could involve literal life changes. People could go into deep debt from a losing streak, to the point where they sometimes lost all their wealth, their children, their wives, and even their own freedom–becoming indebted servants or slaves.
Because of its importance in most complex hunting/gathering societies, gambling is a central feature in the relationships between the boys portrayed in my adventure book about life in the Stone Age: The Eyes of the Leopard.
