Irwin Bross, in his book, Design for Decision, sketched the first three historic stages of human decisionmaking -- ANIMISM, LOGICISM, EMPIRICISM -- to lead into the stage he preferred, STATISTICAL DECISIONMAKING, with which his book is concerned. A vast subject, but its "seeds" (along with other seeds) were planted in The Garden of Eden.

Adam and Eve are aware of the UNCERTAINTY and RANGE OF VARIABILITY of some events and objects, even in Eden.

"Adam, is it going to rain tomorrow? It's been raining every day for over a week! Will it rain again tomorrow?"

"How should I know? Go ask The Archangel."

"You know I can't do that. The Archangel is so sensitive. If I ask him that, he'll think it's criticism and say, 'Do you object to the rain? The rain is good for The Flowers. And it refreshes The Animals. Why do you object to the rain?'"

Eve chews on her little fingernail.

"And I'll have to say I'm not objecting. That I just want to know, so I can decide whether or not to wash my hair. And he'll give me a lecture on my vanity, and go flying off, and I'll never know if it's going to rain. Will it rain again, Adam?"

"Oh, miracle! You know exactly what The Archangel will say, You know exactly what he'll do. You usually think you know what I'm thinking and why I do what I do. Most of the time you think you know everything, as if everything balanced on the tip of your nose! Except you don't know if it's going to rain tomorrow. And you think that's my responsibility. Well, ask your nose about that one!"

But, in the end, Adam has to go out under the stars and take a reading of the sky and return to Eve with his considered opinion that it will not rain tomorrow. In so saying, Adam depends on a fallacious belief which has come down to our time, labeled "The Law of Averages". If there has been a "run" of one type, people argue that "the opposite" must now occur "to even out the average". (A friend said to me, "I've had four boys. So the next one HAS TO BE A GIRL!" But I showed her a book with a photograph of one family that had a run of x boys; and a photograph of another family that had a run of y girls.)

So, trusting Adam's forecast of no rain, Eve collects some nuts and fruit, placing them in a shell, to take tomorrow for a picnic by the brook. (This is her real plan -- not washing her hair.)

It begins to rain steadily a little before dawn. Eve's nuts and fruit sail away boat-fashion in their shell.

At dawning, uncharacteristically silent, Eve goes to the other side of The Grotto, to eat breakfast alone.

In the following days, Adam tries to remember how often his weather forecasts had been correct, or not obviously wrong.

As we note, in "There (But for Love) Go (Screaming) I", the descendants of Adam and Eve often cast or drew lots, if the Oracles seemed close-mouthed. But no one guessed how to look for bias or vested interest of these occulties. Only in the 17th and 18th centuries AD are means developed for measuring nonrandomness in allegedly randomizing devices. And an effective theory of sampling developed only in the 20th century. But all of this may have started with DICE, thought to be the oldest GAMING DEVICE.

The Greek dramatist, Sophocles (496?-406 BC), wrote that Palamedes invented dice from boredom during the siege of Troy. But historian, Herodotus (484?-425? BC), attributes dice to the Lydians in the days of King Atys. Both stories have been discredited by numerous archaeological findings of dice used in many earlier societies, as magical devices primitive people used for casting lots to divine the future.

The probable forerunner of the die were made from a knucklebone (in Greek "astragalos", the anklebone of a sheep), marked on four faces. (OLD DICE)

And thus dice originate in our CHRONICLES with a descendant of Adam and Eve, Shemp the Shepherd. A shiftless rascal, Shemp's flock is as skimpy as his garment because his sheep stray or are stolen by other shepherds or eaten by wolves while he dozes, head on shepherdstaff.

Instead of reforming, Shemp thinks to make it up by bets with other shepherds. Shepherds inventory flocks by pebbles in a bag, usually tied to the rope belt fastened around the waist. Shemp holds his bag high before some of the shepherds and shouts, "How many pebbles in this bag? Wanna bet?" Either no betting, or Shemp is beaten by some shepherd who counts better than Shemp, or bluffs him. (Shemp can only best these shepherds by his cacaphonous voice, with overtones that make you wince.)

Today, seating frustrated on a rock, his pitiful flock grazing the meadow grass, Shemp spies something interesting. It's a knucklebone, from the ankle of a sheep skeleton. A sheep has just tripped over it, making it spin until it falls face-down on the other (darker) side.

Shemp drops his staff and rushes to the bone. He spins it around. It falls back to show the lighter side of the bone. He starts to spin it again, but it slips from his sweaty hand and arcs through the air to tumble over twice, resting darker side up. Shemp grabs it and tosses in across the ground, where it again lands dark side up. He discovers that only after several flips does the lighter side appear. Then Shemp sees a run of light sides. Tiring, he sits back to rest.

While resting, Shemp's eye is diverted to another bone on other side of him. Still holding the first bone, he picks up the second. Thinking a moment, Shemp throws the two bones in an arc away from him. They fall in a matching of dark sides. This is more interesting than what happens to just one bone! Throwing them again, the bones fall differently, one dark, one light.

Several runs of similars or differences excite him, but the sight of his sheep straying to the far side of the meadow demands his return to his daily work. Seeing the sun go down, Shemp pens away his few sheep, eats his meager supper, and lies down in a skin for the night.

All night Shemp dreams of bones arcing through the air and turning up this face or that. Waking just before dawn, he is shaken by a strange longing. There must be something he can do with these bones. Something that will attract the other shepherds.

Driving his sheep ahead of him, Shemp goes over the hill to the big meadow arrogated to the other shepherds, now breakfasting around a fire. Before they can shake their staffs in banishment, Shemp startles them (and himself) with a great roar, "Blutt-Ahooga!", tossing the two bones into their circle.

Shemp's gesture and exclamation appear so (uncommonly) magisterial that the uppity shepherds freeze into a breathless audience. Thus cued, the showman in Shemp popinjays forth as he seizes the day.

"BLUTT-AHOOGA! BLUTT-AHOOGA! Which way will the bones land? Dark side up? Or light side up? BLUTT-AHOOGA! Can you guess? Betya can't guess. Betcha! Betcha! Betcha! BLUTT-AHOOGA! Let's see your bets, Shepherds. Are you men or sheep?"

Ears ringing, stung by the challenge to their humaness, each of the shepherds casts down some pebble-bets from his belt-pouch. (For, just as a poker chip denotes some denomination of money, a pebble denotes a bet of one sheep.)

As the betting-and-casting progresses, Shemp wins some and loses some. But soon, Shemp has lost half of his little flock. He runs towards his home meadow to escape their jeers and staff-blows on his hapless form.

Slumping in defeat on his sitting rock (hollowed to fit his bulky bottom), Shemp remembers something which made him laugh. His "BLUTTA_HOOGA" so offended the shepherds' ears that they closed their eyes until his noise-making ceased.

Slapping his side and roaring with laughter, Shemp notices some other knucklebones. Collecting them, he discovers one whose darker side has worn so much that it is almost as light as its light side. Later, he finds a knocklebone with two sides of almost the same darkness. Interesting! But what can he do with these anomalous knucklebones?

That night Shemp has a riotous dream in which both his hands turn into knuckbones, dark on both sides. Turning over in his sleep, he lapses into another dream in which the knucklebones at the ends of his arms are now light on both sides. Awakening in stentorian gibberish, the sight of his tightly gripped (normal) hands gives Shemp a hoky idea. What if he palmed a pair of these anomalous knucklebones and slipped them into the game? But how could he make use of that?

All day Shemp snips away at that thought as if he were shearing one of his sheep. At evening, eating his meager supper, the voices of the shepherds return to memory. They became the most excited after a run of two dark hucklebones, saying almost in unison, "The next time, they gotta both be light!" Or, st other times, after a run of paired light knucklebones, "Next time, they gotta both be dark."

That's it! That's it! He could use a pair of anomalous hucklebones to set them up for making that next-time time prediction. Then Shemp could fool them the next time, and take their bets, by throwing down the same knucklebones.

But how slip in the anomalies? Then, the memory of the shepherds' voices reminded him of his own voice and its effect upon the shepherds. His loud "BLUTT-AHOOGA" made them all shut their eyes, and even cover their ears. Shemp need only to sing his shout out a little longer and he would have plenty of time for his fakery. "BLUTT-AHOOGAAAAAAAAAA!" (Hey! You can open your eyes now.)

And Shemp's high-handed high-sounding hokery succeeds! Cunningly, he stops each day's game when he's won enough sheep from each shepherd to make him wish to "get even" in the "next game". In a few days, Shemp has taken possession of all their sheep and jurisdiction over the big meadow.

Shemp sends his large herd of sheep to be marketed by his brother, Unkempt. For Shemp now goes out of the sheep herding business. Gambling in the big meadow is now his livelihood, as word-of-mouth fetches the suckers daily.

And Shemp sets the RULE for all future gamblers: GUMPTIOUS GAMBLERS NEVER GAMBLE! BLUTT-AHOOGA!