Fatalism is widespread, but not nearly universal enough that we can say it was the norm 15000 years ago.

For that matter, people who were pretty fatalist were still capable of using chance for purposes of fairness. The democrats in ancient Athens come to mind. I'm also pretty sure the (Christian) apostles' use of chance was also more about avoiding a human making the decision, than about divination.

Yes, but so too is a modern western framing of these “dice” as “gambling” objects.

And also, the esteem in recognizing them as prefiguring a skill or system of thought that fund managers and FDA panels use today. In a roundabout way, it praises our own society’s systems by recognizing an ancient civilization for potentially having discovered some of their mathematical preliminaries.

Yes, I meant to mention that but forgot in my eagerness to respond. Sorry and thanks for clarifying!

yeah man these boys were definitely doing bayesian probability and gaussian distributions to operate their sea shell based barter economy