They have been made from pebbles, walnut shells, moose bone, beaver teeth, agate, ivory, rock crystal, onyx, marble, jade, amber and porcelain. B.C. Ancient Greek and Roman mythology often portrayed the gods playing dice, sometimes deciding the fate of the world on the whim of a roll of the bones. Iacta alea est, the die is cast. Mark Antony was known to while away his time in Alexandria playing dice, and even Claudius, the emperor of Rome in the first century A.D., wrote a book about how to win at dice. Today's craps can be traced to the game of hazard, first played by English crusaders during the siege of an Arabian castle in the twelfth century.
Modern craps is mostly of African-American origin.
Sometime after 1800, the blacks of New Orleans picked up on hazard but they modified many of the complicated rules into a rough equivalent of modern craps. The game soon found its way up the Mississippi, where it was immediately embraced by the large number of riverboat gamblers patrolling the river. It soon spread from the river to the wharves and docks and then finally fanned out from the banks of the Mississippi into the heartland of the country. This one-way action led many gambling operators to fix the dice so that they always came out a winner against the players. Most savvy dice players stayed away from the tables.