Drawing straws is one of the oldest selection methods known to humanity. As far back as Antiquity, the Greeks used the kleroterion, a mechanical device employing bronze rods to randomly appoint magistrates in Athens. The Romans resorted to the sortitio, a drawing of unequal sticks or rods, to distribute conquered lands and designate soldiers for decimation — a military punishment where one legionary in ten, chosen by lot, was executed by his own comrades. The Book of Jonah in the Hebrew Bible describes sailors drawing lots to identify the person responsible for a divine storm, a scene that testifies to the universality of this practice in the ancient world.
In the Middle Ages, drawing straws became an everyday tool in European villages. People would cut pieces of straw, hay, or rushes to different lengths; one person held them in a closed fist so that the visible ends were perfectly aligned, and each participant drew one in turn. Whoever got the shortest straw was assigned communal chores: road maintenance, night watch, ditch clearing, or military service during mass levies. The French expression "tirer à la courte paille" appears in literature as early as the 13th century, notably in fabliaux. In medieval England, the practice was known as "drawing of lots" and often used matchsticks of unequal lengths.
In the modern era, drawing straws took on a tragic dimension in maritime history. The "custom of the sea," codified as early as the 17th century, authorized shipwrecked sailors to draw straws to determine who would be sacrificed and cannibalized for the survival of the others. The most famous case is that of the Mignonette in 1884: Captain Thomas Dudley and his crew, shipwrecked in the South Atlantic, killed cabin boy Richard Parker without drawing lots, which led to the trial R v Dudley and Stephens, a landmark ruling in English criminal law on the defense of necessity. The case established that drawing straws, though imperfect, was the only "fair" method recognized by maritime custom.
Mathematics has formally proven the fairness of drawing straws. Regardless of the order in which participants draw, each person has exactly the same probability k/n of getting one of the k short straws among n total. This counterintuitive result — many believe the first person to draw is disadvantaged — relies on Bayes' theorem and the fact that all possible permutations of the straws are equally likely. French mathematician Pierre-Simon de Laplace formalized these probability calculations in his Théorie analytique des probabilités (1812), where he analyzes several methods of drawing lots, including the sequential drawing of rods. The Monty Hall paradox, popularized in 1990, illustrates how misleading our probabilistic intuition can be in such situations.
Drawing straws has played a role in social psychology and the study of group dynamics. Experiments conducted in the 1960s by researchers John Thibaut and Laurens Walker showed that individuals perceive the results of a random draw as fairer than those from a human decision, even when the outcome is identical. This phenomenon, known as "procedural justice," explains why drawing straws is still used today: it neutralizes accusations of favoritism and defuses interpersonal conflicts. Anthropologist Clifford Geertz observed that in many cultures, from Bali to West Africa, variants of drawing straws serve as a social mechanism to avoid direct responsibility for an unpopular decision.
Today, virtual straw drawing is enjoying a revival thanks to digital tools. Apps and websites faithfully reproduce the drawing experience while adding animations and suspense. In businesses, the method is used to designate the person who writes the meeting minutes, distribute customer support tasks, or choose who buys the coffee. In Japan, Amidakuji (a grid of lines on paper) is a popular variant of drawing straws, used for everything from assigning classroom seats to selecting karaoke order. In France, the Civil Code recognizes drawing lots as a valid method of division in cases of joint ownership, a direct survival of centuries-old traditions.