你有没有想过赌博和赌博游戏机的起源？是谁发明赌博的呢？赌博游戏，几乎跨越了所有文化和世界各地国家，没有多少人认识到这一根本问题的普遍现象。只是知道赌博的存在，然后玩赌博游戏，就是这样而已。但它有一个非常有趣的历史… …

　　回到希腊神话，宙斯，哈迪斯和波塞冬曾一起玩骰子。看考古证据，他们似乎是赌徒？？，甚至我们的穴居祖先。骰子的历史已追溯到公元40,000年，早期的游戏场景已经表明。即使如此，我们在洞穴的墙壁上发现了的我们所喜欢的扑克。

　　中国人，当然，一直被认为是狂热的赌徒。回到公元前2300年，他们就已经会玩麻将游戏。在希腊已经发现骰子游戏等一些赌博游戏，在埃及，日本，印度和意大利也同样发现了一些赌博的历史痕迹。

　　著名的罗马帝国是一个赌博的温床。古拉也许是第一个著名的狂赌者 - 幸运的是他是一位皇帝，他是能够没收任何赌博输掉的财产。英格兰国王亨利八世是另一个著名的赌徒，这样的例子不胜枚举。

　　在新的世界，赌博的普及爆炸是显而易见的。人们甚至以赌博作为生计的手段。无论如何，你可以说，赌徒的基因横跨美洲大陆的西部。赌场在边境城镇如雨后春笋般涌现。

　　1931年，内华达州赌博被认为是合法的娱乐游戏，拉斯维加斯赌场诞生。接着是大西洋赌城出现。这是关于赌博的一段历史。

　　那么，赌博从何而来？为何如此普遍？好了，有人说，它仅仅是我们周围的世界一些反映。赌场游戏只是我们周围的物理世界反映。这是我们的理论，无论如何，这可能是正确的，但有一个概率，这也可能是完全错误的…

　　译文：

　　Where does gambling come from? Who invented it?

　　Have you ever wondered about the origin of gambling and games of chance? Who invented gambling? Games of chance are such a widespread phenomenon across all cultures and countries across the world, that not many people think about this fundamental question. Gambling just exists, and always has done, and that?s that. But it?s got a pretty interesting history……

　　Going back to Greek Mythology, Zeus, Hades and Poseidon are said to have shared out the known Universe by playing dice. Look at the archeological evidence, and it seems that even our caveman ancestors were gamblers. Dice have been found that have been dated back to 40,000 years, and early scenes of games have been discovered on the walls of caves that suggest that we liked a flutter even then.

　　The Chinese, of course, have always been avid gamblers. Go back to 2300 B.C., and they were playing a game of chance using tiles, a precursor to Mah jong. The Greeks used to love dice games and gambling paraphanelia has been found in Egypt, Japan, India and Italy.

　　The Roman Empire was famously a hotbed of gambling. Caligula was perhaps the first famous High Roller – luckily （for him） as Emperor he was able to confiscate property to cover any gambling losses. King Henry VIII of England was another famous gambler- the list goes on.

　　The popularity of gambling exploded, though, in the New World. People were gambling with their livelihoods anyway, by heading west across the American continent, so it was in their genes, you could say.

　　Riverboats and frontier towns sprung up in the new states of America with legal and illegal gambling dens that made many a legend. And although things calmed down a bit after Prohibition which drove drinking and gambling underground, things didn’t stay that way for long.

　　In 1931, Nevada legalized gambling, and Las Vegas was born. Atlantic City followed in 1978 and the rest, as they say, is history.

　　So where does gambling come from? Why is it so pervasive? Well, some say, that it is merely a refelction of the world around us. Chance and probability are everywhere- they are the building blacks of who we are and the universe we live in, even down to the behaviour of sub atomis particles. Casino games are just a refelction of the physical world around us. That?s our theory, anyway, and chances are we are right but there is a probability that we could be completely wrong too……