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No one is certain what Roman bronze dodecahedrons were used for (2018)
- _ph_ 5y agoI am surprised that it is not more widely known that the Latin issue of D&D did mostly use D12.
- garmaine 5y ago.
- ketralnis 5y agoOf course HN sees "no one in this enormous, old, well-studied field is certain" and immediately thinks, well I've thought about this for 8 seconds or so and here's my take. So to do the same thing, I bet they'll be equally confused by all of those tungsten cubes everybody was buying last month.
- narag 5y agoActually something similar happened to me in Latin class. The teacher was puzzled with the word tragula that was described as an arrow that was thrown with a string. How can you throw an arrow without a bow? Next day I brought one and we tested it outside.
- simonh 5y agoMore like a javelin really, as I understand it. The strap was used as a built-in spear thrower, like an atlatl. There are depictions of them in use on coins.
- narag 5y ago"Arrow" was the teacher's translation from the text, that could be Gallic Wars by Julius Caesar, the book that we followed most of the year. It's been a very long time... not sure if the word was (aprox.) missile o projectile, or something like that. Also my uncle taught me to make it the size of an arrow, maybe to prevent me from killing someone :-)
- dkarl 5y ago> Of course HN sees "no one in this enormous, old, well-studied field is certain" and immediately thinks, well I've thought about this for 8 seconds or so and here's my take. It's fun! I'm enjoying reading other people's suggestions as a little bit of light entertainment before I start work. I'm not thinking it would be an improvement to replace the archaeology department at my local university with the HN comment section.
- thrower123 5y agoI could have sworn that they'd figured out these were some kind of knitting template
- bondarchuk 5y agoIndeed: >Several individuals have suggested that the dodecahedra are knitting aids, specifically for knitting gloves, with different sized holes intended for the different sizes of fingers, and the pegs serving as a lattice to hold the yarn. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_dodecahedron https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_dodecahedron But of course just because someone has managed to make a glove using one, does not really prove that it was their primary purpose.
- masklinn 5y agoThis is mentioned in the article but treated as a joke: > Other internet researchers, perhaps less seriously, have used 3D-printed models of the Roman dodecahedrons for knitting experiments, and suggested that the true purpose of the objects was to create differently sized fingers for Roman woolen gloves. Although IIRC when it was first proposed the people who proposed it seemed very earnest and to see it as obvious. And it nicely explains a lot of the peculiarities e.g. the nubs make sense for attaching yarn, and different people have different finger sizes (up to layers) but the precise sizing is not super important as long as you have a gradation with steps which aren't too big. It also looks quite close to spool (or "french") knitting. Though there's the objection that the dodecahedra are serious overkill for those needs when a plank with a few nails would do the trick. There's also the "OOPArt" factor: knitting spools were invented in the 17th century or so, and known records for circular knitting are not that much older.
- sockfish 5y agoIt does also explain why they are not found all over the Roman empire but mostly in the north (the article mentions England, Germany, and the Netherlands) where it is probably COLD for the average Roman legionnaire
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- chongli 5y agoBaffled. There’s that word again. Journalists are absolutely in love with that word when it comes to science. So popular it’s got its own meme page [1]. [1] http://www.scientistsbaffled.com/ http://www.scientistsbaffled.com/
- wolfgang42 5y agoAs I’ve said before on HN (on the topic of “fuzzy green ‘glacier mice’” https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23280378 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23280378): > Being baffled is pretty much a scientist’s job. (What’s that old quote about “the most important phrase in science is ‘hmm, that’s funny...’”?)
- dang 5y agoOk, we've debaffled the title above. Let's stick to the topic now please!
- llovan 5y agoMaybe Romans were getting those for the cool factor, similar to how the tungsten cubes are en vogue today.
- ceejayoz 5y agoI wonder how many cheap plastic Happy Meal toys will someday thousands of years from now be dug up and deemed to have special religious significance to our culture.
- TuringTest 5y agoNo, it's the super heroes and Disney figurines what will be considered deities - their sheer volume will make them a frequent archeological finding.
- folli 5y agoPraise be Mickey.
- programmarchy 5y agoOur Gods Wear Spandex [1] is actually a super interesting book. [1] https://www.amazon.com/Our-Gods-Wear-Spandex-History/dp/1578634067 https://www.amazon.com/Our-Gods-Wear-Spandex-History/dp/1578...
- trhway 5y agoif history is any guide then the future archeologists looking at the content of our internet will conclude that we're living in matriarchate these days (with Pamela Anderson interpreted along the lines of "religious figures,[5] an expression of health and fertility, grandmother goddesses") like the today's scientists conclude that about past societies upon finding this Venus figurines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus_figurine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus_figurine Or like for example another interpretation there produced by scientists who seem to have never seen that Kim Kardashian Instagram post :) "It has been suggested that they may be a sign of an earlier prevalence of steatopygia, now associated principally to women of certain African or Andamanese ancestry. However the Venuses do not qualify as steatopygian, since they exhibit an angle of approximately 120 degrees between the back and the buttocks, while steatopygia is diagnosed by modern medical standards at an angle of about 90 degrees only.[21]"
- bondarchuk 5y agoPeople disagree with the rangefinder theory because "no two Roman dodecahedrons are the same size". But the only thing that matters for a rangefinder is the ratio between the sizes of opposing holes (edit: and face-to-face distance). Anything we know about that? edit: this paper includes some measurements https://www.researchgate.net/publication/225187575_Roman_Dodecahedron_as_dioptron_analysis_of_freely_available_data https://www.researchgate.net/publication/225187575_Roman_Dod...
- swamp40 5y agoYou would still need markings on them though, I would think.
- bondarchuk 5y agoMaybe there were markings in charcoal, paint, chalk or whatever, but they didn't last.
- masklinn 5y agoGiven the intricacy of the smithing that seems less than sensible, it's not like the size of the items changes significantly, so having markings you can just wipe away and needing to re-measure and re-mark the item regularly sounds far from optimal.
- Certified 5y ago> having markings you can just wipe away and needing to re-measure and re-mark the item regularly sounds far from optimal. Unless the delibility of ink was a feature they desired. Hypothesizing that they were trying to prevent a working ranger from falling into the wrong hands wouldn't strike me as absurd. Dropping them in a firepit or stream to remove the ink would be pretty handy if you know your military encampment is about to be over-run and you can't save everything.
- kloch 5y agoFrom the picture in the article each hole seems to have rings of different widths and possibly counts.
- actually_a_dog 5y agoFor most of the uses posited in the article, it seems like icosohedra (coincidentally, the dual of the dodecahedron) would have made more sense. After all, if 12 pairs of opposite faces are good, wouldn't 20 be better?
- nathias 5y ago12 is better, it's special - the lowest superior highly composite number
- actually_a_dog 5y agoHow would that matter for any of the uses suggested in the article? 12 and 20 have the same number of divisors.
- nathias 5y agousing it as a base makes it so you aren't dealing with fractional values that much, and a lot of other neat properties ...
- kzrdude 5y agoPentagonal faces are rounder and work better with holes that way
- smolder 5y agoI think they could just be pretty, ornate keepsakes, or maybe a sort of teaching tool in the direction of geometry. My qualifications: none at all, but I enjoy pretty, ornate things, and I would keep one of these on my desk. They're also clearly interesting geometrically.
- achn 5y agoI’m sure this is not an original theory, but when I saw the device i immediately thought that it may be a tool to sort / check the size of coins. Each size lines up to a known gold or silver piece. The largest hole allows all to be removed easily.
- ertian 5y agoI believe these dodecahedrons come in a whole variety of sizes, and aren't particularly consistent (i.e. there's not 3 standard sizes, just a whole range). That undermines a lot of potential explanations.
- lostlogin 5y agoNot sure if it adds or detracts from your theory, but coins were sometimes clipped to change their value. I’ve got a silver one that had the edge clipped off to alter its value.
- proee 5y agoOne of my engineering friends devoted a large portion of his life studying the dodecahedron. He believed it was used as a "fluid scanner" to measure the displacement of 3d objects using water. https://www.eeweb.com/interview-with-john-ladd/ https://www.eeweb.com/interview-with-john-ladd/
- Flankk 5y ago
- pnw 5y agoDid anything ever come of it? The interview has some wild claims.
- bbqmaster999 5y agoUnfortunately one of the principals died of a brain aneurism a few years later https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/billingsgazette/name/john-ladd-obituary?pid=198264677 https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/billingsgazette/name/jo...
- zppln 5y agoI don't usually bother to complain about ads, but this site is really atrocious. It auto-played me 6 ads (including the same one several times) before playing the video (that I'm not interested in anyway). Then it keeps following me around as I scroll through the ad infested article. Someone somewhere should be shot.
- kzrdude 5y agoThat's just evidence that the authors use adlock themselves or somehow just don't care about user experience
- laurent123456 5y agoIt also managed to add dozens of entries to my history (probably as I was scrolling), making it impossible to go back to the HN thread. That website should be on the Chrome malware list.
- femto 5y agoGavin Smith (Robots and Dinosaurs) has a theory that they are calendars. He has an interesting series of articles in which he tries to recreate their use. https://tinkerings.org/2020/06/17/roman-dodecahedrons-part-i/ https://tinkerings.org/2020/06/17/roman-dodecahedrons-part-i... https://tinkerings.org/2020/06/17/roman-dodecahedrons-part-ii/ https://tinkerings.org/2020/06/17/roman-dodecahedrons-part-i... https://tinkerings.org/2020/12/25/roman-dodecahedrons-part-iii/ https://tinkerings.org/2020/12/25/roman-dodecahedrons-part-i... https://tinkerings.org/2020/12/25/roman-dodecahedrons-part-iv/ https://tinkerings.org/2020/12/25/roman-dodecahedrons-part-i...
- specialist 5y agoJust terrific. Not the just content. But the whole process of speculation, digging, testing theories, sharing ideas on a blog. Scholarship outside of academia. Feels old school somehow. I hope he's proven correct.
- fiestaman 5y agoI really like this theory, especially because it accounts for the varying hole sizes, adjoined balls, and the 12 sides and 30 edges that only a dodecahedron could provide. None of the other theories account for all of these unique attributes.
- YXNjaGVyZWdlbgo 5y agoThe knitting tool does without adding a stick that was never found even near any romian dodecahedrons.
- fiestaman 5y agoThe mental floss article mentions one was found on a decayed staff. The knitting theory seems like it could be fulfilled with a far simpler instrument IMHO.
- YXNjaGVyZWdlbgo 5y ago
- richardfey 5y agoI am baffled that nobody is thinking about the most common interests of humans: sex and food. This was either a sex toy where you can insert your penis or a portable sausage maker.
- usui 5y agoWouldn't the metal be quite... cold?
- dylan604 5y agoYou've never played with ice?
- richardfey 5y agoI don't understand why the downvotes...puritanism or did I break a spell?
- erhk 5y agoHow would you use this as a sex toy
- kzrdude 5y agoJust seems to be a less serious comment in this thread. There are lots of ideas.
- richardfey 5y agoThanks; I think that's core to the problem of us not finding a solution: we are biased to think about complex and fancy ones. My comment intent was absolutely serious and a humbling attempt to study the problem without bias. (but as others have said in the comments here, I also do not think that a casual discussion on HN is as good as the studies done so far)
- dr_dshiv 5y agoI immediately thought of Plato and western esotericism. These look magical. Plato's atomic theory in Timaeus was that atoms should be the simplest geometric forms possible. These are what we now call the Platonic forms: the tetrahedron, the cube, the isocahedron, the octohedron and the dodecahedron. Plato associated each with an element, based on the intrinsic material properties of the geometric shape. For instance, earth was cubic because cubes stack well and fire was tetrahedric because the sharpness of the pyramid-shape was destructive like fire. Dodecahedra were the 5th element, the quintessence, which was the aether beyond air. Totally magical. These things would have impressed people and communicated philosophical prowess.
- berkeleynerd 5y agoAnyone interested in this kind of stuff (i.e., the Western Esoteric Tradition) would enjoy The Secret History of Western Esotericism podcast. Lots of great scholars and scholarship on this understudied aspect of Western civ. https://shwep.net/ https://shwep.net/
- dr_dshiv 5y agoSecond. It's the best thing on the internet.
- ddalex 5y agoOk what's the first best thing on the internet?
- aptsurdist 5y agoThanks so much for this link, I started listening and I immediately love it.
- wincy 5y agoWeird that these are the exact dice used to play a game of Dungeons and Dragons.
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- ursuscamp 5y agoHe doesn’t know how to use the seashells!
- Buttons840 5y ago> Although dozens, and perhaps hundreds, of explanations have been offered to account for the dodecahedrons, no one is certain just what they were used for. There's no shortage of ideas, and it's ok to share your ideas, but the interesting point is we just don't know which of the many ideas is correct.
- alserio 5y agoIf any of them. In archeology you can go pretty far assuming that any elongated object was used as a sex toy. However, this object is a dodecahedron, so we are all baffled.
- dr_dshiv 5y agoI know this story is baffling enough, but these things are nearly identical to gold dodecahedra found in South East Asia. See figure 3. https://journals.openedition.org/archeosciences/2072 https://journals.openedition.org/archeosciences/2072
- sen 5y agoA trinket used in trading maybe? They’re way too close to he a coincidence.
- jjeaff 5y agoI've long wondered if several millennia in the future people might find frequent fossilized remains of certain mundane objects from today and try to ascribe some deep social significance or complex technical function to them. For example, these decorative balls that seem to be in bowls on so many American dinner or side tables. https://secure.img1-fg.wfcdn.com/im/13146084/resize-h755-w755%5Ecompr-r85/1516/151626206/9Pcs+3.5Inch+Woven+Wicker+Rattan+Balls+Decorative+Ball+Twig+Orbs+Green+Orbs+Vase+Bowl+Filler+For+Tabletop+Decoration.jpg https://secure.img1-fg.wfcdn.com/im/13146084/resize-h755-w75... Or perhaps they will think they are so bizarre extinct ocean animal.
- kingcharles 5y agoLOL. That's actually a really good example.
- couchand 5y agoSounds like the premise of David Macaulay's Motel of the Mysteries.
- labster 5y agoThese undersea creatures were so highly prized that the ancients kept them in small caches, or “tide pods”, in their living quarters. The surviving sources recommend strongly against swallowing anything in a tide pod, so it is assumed they were poisonous unless properly prepared.
- WalterBright 5y ago12 sided die for playing D&D, Roman Style.
- poulsbohemian 5y agoI can't help but think of the fidget spinner craze from a few years ago... humans (and perhaps other hominids before them...) have always made little trinkets for decoration and entertainment, with usage being individualized. Maybe some people wore them as jewelry while the kids made little dice-like games with them? Think of like a hackey-sack - one person squeezes it as a "stress toy" while another kicks it around with their friends as a game. Same basic thing, multiple uses, none of which really require documentation in history.
- almog 5y agoTwo thousand years from now an article might read: No one is certain why tribes all across planet in the midst of a pandemic and the a looming extinction became so obsessed with computer hardware that seemed to have achieved no practical function other than to perform intensive compute operations. Some researchers suggest that these instruments had a special cultural significance, and perhaps even a religious function.
- spoonjim 5y agoLOL. Can’t figure it out = religious object, because religion can contain arbitrary nonsense.
- saalweachter 5y agoSome people would find the explanation apt.
- kzrdude 5y agoIt was a desperate time, and people were turning to increasingly futile computation-based superstition to save themselves.
- thaumasiotes 5y agoThe criticism is quite old: https://www.amazon.com/Motel-Mysteries-David-Macaulay/dp/0395284252/ https://www.amazon.com/Motel-Mysteries-David-Macaulay/dp/039... It hasn't gotten anywhere; I assume that's mostly because making assumptions tends to let you publish papers, while not making assumptions tends to stop you from publishing papers. There's no incentive in the system for accuracy.
- JohnHaugeland 5y agoNobody is going to be confused what computer parts are for
- pimlottc 5y ago
- wly_cdgr 5y agoI would bet these are dice. The Romans are known to have played a variety of dice games, including in the backgammon family, a family of games known to sometimes use 12d dice (Source: Oxford History of Board Games by David Parlett)
- frosted-flakes 5y agoThe different size holes means its not evenly weighted and thus makes for a poor and unfair dice. This is explained in the article.
- wly_cdgr 5y agoThat is anything but conclusive. It is easy to imagine why someone might want a die to be unfair
- mtdewcmu 5y agoCould there have been glass lenses over the holes and it was a kind of microscope? Here's my guess: it's a magnifier to examine coins.
- vidarh 5y agoWhile the principle of a lens was known, I don't think any glass lenses of that age has been found.
- zoomablemind 5y agoThe other day I stumbled upon an episode of 'Tougher than nails', some kind of 'Survivor'-type show for craftsmen. One of tasks to complete involved using metal templates to properly shape the diameter of a round wooden rod. Well, this required a lot of hammering... So just as a guess, could that be used to smoothen some rods, like arrows or spires? It would be rather a manual tool, like a sanding block. Another guess, is some kind of junction holder. Like a wheel/spokes hub or some sliding rope knot in harnesses, or tent-pitching aid. Made of bronze there must be some reason for durability, hardness, water contact?
- briandilley 5y agothey put them in their butts
- imiric 5y agoThe only way to achieve oneness with multidimensional beings[1]. [1]: https://deephighlands.wordpress.com/2012/02/17/achieving-the-oneness-of-multi-dimensional-consciousness-part-1/ https://deephighlands.wordpress.com/2012/02/17/achieving-the...
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- vinnymac 5y agoThis site was unbearable to read. So I dropped it in https://archive.today https://archive.today for convenience, and it helped a lot. See for yourself: https://archive.ph/wNMDd https://archive.ph/wNMDd
- acchow 5y agoUnbearable how? Site works well for me on Chrome on Mac
- vinnymac 5y agoOn desktop the site was covered in ads and auto playing video. With blocking enabled, the experience was even worse, with stylesheets and images missing. I don't know why this article in particular was so bad, but I've personally never experienced this from a site I visited here before, fortunately the workaround above allowed me to read the article as they intended.
- Waterluvian 5y agoWhat was unbearable about it? It seems unusually clean and fast loading on mobile. I didn’t even have to use Reader mode.
- vinnymac 5y agoI was using Chrome on macOS Monterey when I attempted to read the article. I am not sure why, but I had a large number of ads, and blocking them resulted in missing stylesheets and images. So I opted to use the solution above as a workaround.
- kubanczyk 5y agoYours has captcha, which can be worse.
- akomtu 5y agoIt's probably related to the ancient worldview where the solar system consists of seven spheres that loosely correspond to planets. Romans weren't cristians until the very late: they removed the statue of Jupiter from their capitol only because the Church wanted to erase all traces of ancient religions. Dodecahedron probably had occult meaning: "the entire skies are arranged according to this shape" and the circular holes must be those planets or spheres, so if one puts a candle in the middle, it would cast "planetary" images on the walls. This would have the symbolic meaning of arranging skies with dodecahedron, and the candle would be the sun.
- Schiendelman 5y agoYou’re close! The best theory I’ve seen handles all the specific features and variations found, and believes it’s a calendar (used with a stick/cone).
- jimmydoreornot 5y agoKnobs to turn on and off the water spouts. Spouts were of varying diameter, so you had to try different holes to find one that fit. The little balls grab the spout so you can turn it. You can't let any old peasant mess with the water supply.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- mlb893 5y agoCould it have been some kind of sharpening tool to progressively make a point on a lance?
- Findecanor 5y agoOr perhaps it was just a template for making lances with known relative thicknesses at different parts.
- erhk 5y agoWhy keep a utility object alongside wealth objects?
- thehappypm 5y agoDoesn’t explain the dodecahedron, though. Would be far easier with holes in a plank.
- riffic 5y agoreminds me of the lost Roman herb, Silphium https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silphium_(antiquity) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silphium_(antiquity) https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20170907-the-mystery-of-the-lost-roman-herb https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20170907-the-mystery-of-t...
- ck2 5y agoHa probably just a child's toy: imagine sending a rubiks-cube back in time and unearthing it now and the sheer amount of man-hours that would be invested into decrypting its "sophisticated" purpose
- chmod775 5y agoAh yes. Found an artifact? Must be either a weapon, otherwise a military thing, or it must be religious. If it was any of these, you'd have found them mentioned in texts. It's probably just some largely irrelevant garbage. A fad people back then went through. A toy, not necessarily a children's toy, or a tool of probably questionable use (like that apple slicer you bought). Anything actually useful wouldn't have been forgotten that quickly. Those people with the knitting/sewing tool explanation might be onto something.
- number6 5y agoSo these are some kind of fidget spinner?
- monkeywork 5y agoyour thought process makes sense looking at the problem through the eyes of someone used to mass production and cheap materials. these were made during a time that the expertise to create plus the material itself was expensive, and these have been found in a wide area so not some incredibly niche item. tools of questionable use would quickly fall from use and not spread beyond the first few creations, toys or trinkets would likely not be made of metal nor stored with other valuables like coins etc. this doesn't mean it is of military or religious significance but I do think this is more than a toy. The fact that it seems to be geographically locked (thus culturally locked) leads me to think this is a cultural item or something that was more useful for that geography - there have been those who have linked it to a calendar. This makes sense given the geometry of the item (12 months [sides], 30days [edges]) and in the northern area's it would be of greater need to time crops - especially for feeding large armies from Rome. The idea of expensive toys / fads can definitely have it's place in very small numbers and incredibly narrow regions, beyond that I think you have to look for more useful needs.
- wsc981 5y agoI was thinking this thing might be useful somehow for dealing with ropes perhaps. Maybe some way to carry rope around in a ball maybe?
- avereveard 5y ago
- taf2 5y agoImagine in a few thousand years someone finds a rubik's cube… it might similarly confused
- obert 5y agolooks like a counter or calculator, to be used in combination with a long string knitted on the spheres, with the holes designed to fit different finger sizes or sticks to hold it
- a-nikolaev 5y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icosian_game https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icosian_game
- rbobby 5y agoWith a bit of string you'd have a game. Doesn't really account for the varying sizes of holes.
- a-nikolaev 5y agoYeah. Maybe enclosing a particular type of hole could give more points or something like that. Also, one could put wooden pegs with numbers or other tokens in the holes to specify points that can be gained, or those tokens that can be collected. Such modifications can make the game more replayable. (One could also use this game as a sort of fortune-telling device, since solving a game requires randomization, and a player may end up in one or the other configuration at the end of the game.)
- userbinator 5y agoDecorative paperweights?
- jhoechtl 5y agoNo one is certain what lava lamps were used for. Certain things just are. Looking at these objects again they seem like noodle portioner. https://images.pamura.com/unsafe/350x/filters:format(webp)/https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0063/8631/9433/products/5x7h31zgbgcg8k8k.jpg https://images.pamura.com/unsafe/350x/filters:format(webp)/h...
- jhgb 5y ago> they seem like noodle portioner Wouldn't you expect such a mundane tool to have some kind of "minimum practical design"? Your noodle portioner is just a flat object with holes; a hammer is just an object with a long part and a heavy part; etc. This object seems too complicated for any obvious single purpose like that.
- jhoechtl 5y agoToday noodles are mostly cheap mass products. Maybe back in the days the object (noodle) was much more valuable and so the objects surrounding noodles.
- eitland 5y ago> No one is certain what lava lamps were used for. Nitpick: I'm fairly certain lava lamps have been used as secure random number generators. Edit: a quick search on kagi confirms it.
- mburee 5y ago> > No one is certain what lava lamps were used for. > Nitpick: I'm fairly certain lava lamps have been used as secure random number generators. > Edit: a quick search on kagi confirms it. But that use case came about in the ~90s? The patent for lava lamps was filed somewhere around the 60s...
- eitland 5y agoYep, military keep their secrets very well you see ;-)
- User23 5y agoMy first thought is gambling.
- shironandon 5y agoFirst they take the dinglebop, and they smooth it out with a bunch of schleem. The schleem is then repurposed for later batches. They take the dinglebop and push it through the krumbo, where the fleeb is rubbed against it. It's important that the fleeb is rubbed, because the fleeb has all of the fleeb juice. Then a schlomi shows up, and rubs it, and spits on it. They cut the fleeb. There are several hizzards in the way. The blamphs rub against the trumbles, and the plubus and grumbo are shaved away. That leaves you with a regular old plumbus.
- thuridas 5y agoSome people believe that it is useful for knitting: https://ancientworldsmanchester.wordpress.com/2015/07/29/dodecahedron-mystery-solved/ https://ancientworldsmanchester.wordpress.com/2015/07/29/dod... There are videos in YouTube showing how to use it
- erhk 5y agoHas anyone tried polishing one and putting it on a necklace? Could be a fashion piece, how does it look when the sun hits it?
- Schiendelman 5y agoThat could be what the southeast Asian gold versions are! They don’t have the workmanship of the originals.
- picsao 5y ago
- outsomnia 5y agoThis guy has a huge and interesting article about them with a bunch of extra hi-res pictures directly from the 1987 discoverer mentioned in the mentalfloss article. https://www.celticnz.co.nz/Dodecahedron/Decoding%20the%20Druidic%20Dodecahedron1.html https://www.celticnz.co.nz/Dodecahedron/Decoding%20the%20Dru... His take is that they were used for conversion between regional dimension standards, like imperial:metric today.
- eurasiantiger 5y agoCandleholder seems the most likely explanation for the holes. It could also explain why these were not found everywhere; maybe parts of the empire already used oil lamps.
- ryanmercer 5y agoPaperweight.
- jimnotgym 5y agoMy first thought is that it must be something to do with DnD. Although I can further imagine that it is for some other more steampunk table top game.
- theodric 5y agoRoll a D12 for initiative to decide if this is worth further research
- arcbyte 5y agoOh this ridiculous myth again? We know exactly what it was for: knitting. This is far from unsolved.
- throwawayninja 5y agoMy 8-second take: I imagine candles weren't all that standardized, and obviously a candelabra can only hold one size. If this was used to hold candles it has the advantage of being small, versatile (12 diameters), but the pins will ensure each face is flat with respect to the ground below it (even on rocks etc, you can rotate to find a stable surface). The candle holder theory accounts for the different sizes, because you don't need it to match identically just close enough for whatever candles you usually use/are around your location. Thoughts from any archeologists? Edit: I'm late to the party, this article lists the candle theory but dismisses it without presenting any evidence why - https://www.legendsandchronicles.com/ancient-artifacts/the-roman-dodecahedrons/ https://www.legendsandchronicles.com/ancient-artifacts/the-r...
- yeetaccount4 5y agoWhy wouldn’t they just stick it on a short nail with a wide flat base? It would be a lot more economical. Also, there’s no mention of wax on them, which can take a long time to break down. Edit: oop.
- throwawayninja 5y agoLinked article mentions wax, as does https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_dodecahedron https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_dodecahedron : Speculative uses include as a candlestick holder (wax was found inside two examples); dice; survey instruments for estimating distances to (or sizes of) distant objects;[5] devices for determining the optimal sowing date for winter grain;[6] gauges to calibrate water pipes, legionary standard bases,[7] or a coin measuring device for counterfeit detection. Several dodecahedra were found in coin hoards, providing evidence that their owners either considered them valuable objects, or believed their only use was connected with coins. I'd imagine merchants counting money would want a non-destructive way to hold candles. Tons of great theories though.
- yeetaccount4 5y agoWhoops, read it last night, must have missed the wax. I still have a hard time imagining it’s a candle holder though. You and all your soldiers have got to haul all this heavy shit across a continent, and somebody wants to bring a candle stick holder? Even if you had slaves, they could be hauling something more useful than that.
- vertnerd 5y agoThe rangefinder idea seems interesting, but I think it would be easily refuted if the extant dodecahedrons weren't all geometrically similar. With that in mind, I did a brief hunt for an exhaustive listing of dodecahedron dimensions but found nothing. I did find detailed information about a single dodecahedron, but not all of them. It seems like an important bit of information to have when speculating about their function and I wonder why this hasn't been compiled, and if it has, why it isn't widely known.
- aptsurdist 5y agoI found this fascinating! I found some 3D models claiming to be exact replicas, and I found it VERY interesting to note that the largest hole appears to be an ELLIPSE and not a circle? Can any verify this and has anyone heard a theory about that? If it is indeed an ellipse that of course immediately makes me wonder if it represents an orbit or some other mathematical or geometrical shape. Super fun. https://www.shapeways.com/product/S3YNU5MNR/super-accurate-roman-dodecahedron-exact-replica https://www.shapeways.com/product/S3YNU5MNR/super-accurate-r...
- egberts 5y agoI’ve always thought that the Roman dodecahedrons were like a badge of government finance ministry activity and were carried exclusively by tax collectors traveling far from Rome.