HISTORY OF GAMBLING. PART 1
Gambling history in Britain numbers centuries of successful development. British people have always enjoyed a cheeky gamble, even if it has been against the law. The longing for a guileful or crazy bet has never decreased from the time, when the Anglo-Saxons played the knucklebone dice to the bare fisted enforcers in London’s Victorian casinos. It is bred in the bone.
From prehistoric Britain to the XII century
Primitive men believed such religious rituals: if you throw the things like sticks, stones, bones, their location on the land will predict the future. This ritual has become later a sort of gambling. Primitive gamblers made their personal sacrifices or bets, which were offered to try to embolden positive results. In the end the rewards on offer turned into a real material benefit, such as a right to eat the best peace of the bag got during a hunting, which was received by the person with the best position of items. It was the beginning of gambling in the UK.
The only contribution of the Romans to the development of the gambling in Britain was their help in introducing dice games. It’s quite clear, considering that gambling was prohibited in Ancient Rome, except chariot races during Saturnalia.
Playing dices and Knucklebones became a favored pastime for the Anglo-Saxons. Knucklebones or Fivestones is a distraction consisted in flinging animal knuckles into the air and catching them on the back of the hand. The person who caught the most of knuckles is proclaimed winner. So we can see that gambling was very popular in Britain in those days, it is also proved by gambling bones and dices found in graves dating this period.