6 ms·
A theory I saw recently suggested that they may have been used to hold candles, as night lights (could still have had some religious or ritual component too).
by anentropic 3y ago
A theory I saw recently suggested that they may have been used to hold candles, as night lights (could still have had some religious or ritual component too).
The holes all being different diameters would then relate to different sized candles being needed to last all night, for longer and shorter nights at different times of the year. The twelve faces presumably corresponding to 12 months on the Julian calendar, which was used from 45 BC - 1582 ("Some Roman dodecahedrons date to as early as the first century C.E")
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- zilti 3y agois CE the same as AD?
- jffry 3y agohttps://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=+is+CE+the+same+as+AD%3F+&ia=web https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=+is+CE+the+same+as+AD%3F+&i...
- anentropic 3y agoyes, just a non-Christian way of referring to it apparently "CE (Common Era) is the secular equivalent of AD (Anno Domini)"
- rickcecil 3y agoCE means “common era” which refers to the same time period that AD does, which stands for Anno Domini and means “the year of our lord,” which is rooted in the Christian faith. You will also see “BCE” and it means Before Common Era, which replaces BC, which means “Before Christ”. The newer terms are more inclusive.
- gboone 3y ago> The newer terms are more inclusive. To me it seems to exclude the only person referenced in the original form.
- mc32 3y agoYou’re right. It’s the nature of things, being inclusive often means excluding an other. On the other hand I’m glad we’ve all converted on one common reference for dates and don’t have one for each sphere of influence, cuz then something published in China vs Japan vs Taiwan vs Europe and the Americas vs Egypt vs… who knows what would be messy.
- KMag 3y ago> I’m glad we’ve all converted on one common reference for dates At least most places that use other calendars also keep track of the Western year in parallel. My Thai wife was born 543 years after me, even though we were born in the same year. ("Hi, this is my wife, from the future!") Our wedding certificate contains only the Thai year. As I remember, for official purposes, Japan counts years of the current emperor's reign, along with an official name for each reign.
- chrisco255 3y agoWe never canceled other religious names in our calendar, including the months named after Roman gods or the days of the week named after Nordic / Celtic gods.
- AlotOfReading 3y agoThe problem becomes more evident if you write the meaning out in full: "anno domini nostri Christi", or the year of our lord Christ. Recognizing Jesus Christ as lord obviously presents some theological issues to non-christians. Saying Wednesday doesn't have the same issue of recognizing Odin's divinity.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- weakfish 3y agoIt’s not being “cancelled”
- mnw21cam 3y agoI quite like Neil deGrasse Tyson's take on this. In science, we usually let the person that invented something name it. The Christian church invented the current calendar, therefore we should accept the name they gave it.
- trackflak 3y ago"Inclusive" but meaningless. The Georgian calendar (at least in the numbering of years) is a Christian construct, and it therefore makes sense to name year 0 after the year of Christ's birth. Whether or not one acknowledges his lordship or whatever, you are still operating in the Western tradition which is impossible to understand without Christianity. It's just petty power tripping. Some people have that need to feel superior by swapping the dating system to something meaningless and arbitrary. What makes this era "Common"? Presumably the birth of Christ, since that's still when you are setting the origin of years. So the rename is utterly pointless. It's still A.D and should be referred to as such. I'd have more respect if these revisionists went full Jacobin and plonked Year 1 down as some new date, and named the calendar after something new.
- Khaine 3y agoIt doesn't fundamentally change the fact that we date things based on Jesus Christ. It doesn't make it inclusive, since its still rooted in Christianity. Papering over it doesn't change that fact. It's just stupid.
- SketchySeaBeast 3y agoYes. "Common Era" instead of "Anno Domini". More religiously neutral.
- cityofdelusion 3y agoIt’s start date is still a religious event, so I’m not sure it’s more neutral as much as it’s more obfuscating.
- drewcoo 3y agoIt was not exactly methodically chosen by Dionysius Exiguus in the 6th century. Mostly to replace Diocletian's calendar. Jesus was most likely born before 1 AD.
- CobrastanJorji 3y agoSure, but it's an incredible amount of work to change the year numbering, and it's easy to change the word we use for the calendar. The French revolutionaries tried it, and they discovered that no matter how much people agree with the idea and want to switch in theory, it's really, really hard to do. Mind you, the French Republican calendar was a LOT of changes, all at once. First, they started counting over at year 1. That'd be a big enough change, but they also decided to use a calendar with 12 months with nice secular, names, each with 3 weeks, where a week had ten days with nice, secular names (plus some extra days on the end of the year as needed). That'd be a huge change, but they also decided to switch to the decimal system, so a day would have exactly 10 hours of 100 minutes each. And that turned out to just be way too much, and the whole thing fell over. Anyway, that's kind of tangential to your point, but I just like thinking about the French Republican calendar. I hope you have a happy 4th of Pluviôse, Ere Républicain 232.
- devnullbrain 3y agoMy patriotic side hopes we will all use this reasoning to revert to using GMT instead of UTC.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- bregma 3y agoYes. It's the plain English version of "AD", which is Latin. English was good enough for Jesus in the Bible to speak, so it should be good enough for the rest of us instead of this high-falutin' shibboleth language they only teach at the likes of Oxford and Cambridge.
- mc32 3y agoUhhhhm my high school had it as an elective, and it was no Oxbridge school. Over the last few decades Latin has been defunded though.
- cityofdelusion 3y agoThe plain English is “in the year of our Lord”, if anyone else is confused with the dripping sarcasm.
- anentropic 3y agoOTOH: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_dodecahedron#/media/File:2018_Rheinisches_Landesmuseum_Bonn,_Dodekaeder_&_Ikosaeder.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_dodecahedron#/media/File... it's interesting that one has no holes but varying sized corner knobs instead, and 20 faces instead of 12 the objects seem related, but the purpose of the latter can't have anything to do with candles presumably
- drewcoo 3y ago20 faces and 12 verts is an icosahedron. Both have 30 edges. Geometry magic?
- jcranmer 3y agoThe icosahedron and dodecahedron are duals of one another: each vertex of one corresponds to a face of the other and vice versa. All convex polyhedra satisfy the property that V + F = E + 2, and since the dual polyhedron conserves the quantity V + F, consequently, dual polyhedra have the same number of edges.
- dpig_ 3y agoHmm - roll me a History check.
- JKCalhoun 3y agoThis internet ... I had only to wonder if someone had created a 3D model of one, search, and I hath found (first hit): https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/roman-dodecahedron-235a956d172a4c57968128bb2d0cdfde https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/roman-dodecahedron-235a956d1...
- Towaway69 3y agoThanks for sharing. It shows that the holes had various sizes and it could also possible be that they had lids to vary the hole sizes. Edit: sorry didn't read original comment. But various hole sizes could also make it a toy where a child had to figure out which fits to the object inside... Hm. Maybe not but hey!
- krisoft 3y ago> The holes all being different diameters would then relate to different sized candles being needed to last all night, for longer and shorter nights at different times of the year. I don't know. There are stranger things of course, but why would you care about that? If you need light you just burn the candle until you no longer need the light. If it gets too short you get a new candle. If you no longer need light (for example because the sun has risen) you put it out. Having a bunch of candles with different thicknesses, and a complicated and presumably expensive tool to measure them does not feel like the way to go forward.
- Loughla 3y agoCould still hold, though. Rich people need things to spend money on to indicate wealth and status. Arbitrarily difficult candle holder seems like it might check that box pretty well.
- bee_rider 3y agoCandles have been used as timers (stick a nail in a correctly sized candle and it’ll fall at the right time). But I heard of that in regards to the colonial era US, no idea how far back it goes. Edit: > The candle clock is an ancient technology. The first recorded reference was in 520 CE in a Chinese poem by You Jiangu. He described six uniform candles of equal weight and thickness—each 12 inches tall. https://mymodernmet.com/candle-clock-alarm/# https://mymodernmet.com/candle-clock-alarm/#
- berkes 3y agoBut then the versions found would have to be the same size. Which they are not, according to the article.
- godshatter 3y agoThe pegs do seem to lend themselves to steadying the object on a flat surface, placing one side up and one side down. This would make it easier for standing something up on the top side like a candle or letting something on the bottom side through (not sure what). If this were a candle holder, then it doesn't make a lot of sense. Wouldn't a candle just slip through to the bottom side, losing much of it's length inside the dodecahedron? It also doesn't do anything to help if the wick gets too long and the wax runs down the side. The variations on diameter of the holes makes me wonder if it wasn't a stand for a pole of some kind to stand upright. The different diameters of the internal holes would correspond to different sizes of poles to hold up. Maybe it's a flag holder or something similar?
- throwway120385 3y agoIf it's for a night light, you might want the light to go out while you sleep but before the candle is completely burned. You could save money on candles that way.
- otteromkram 3y agoI was reading a comment up about them being a masterpiece (eg - final exam project before graduating apprenticeship), but the geographic distribution made me think they could be hand warmers, bed warmers, or room warmers. Like, light something and "hang" it in the middle. But, I like this theory, too, so it has my support.
- nemo 3y agoRomans used oil lamps for lighting generally, they had dipped tallow candles but the only uses we've seen of them in the imperial era are ritual use at altars, and dip candle use was generally later than the period the dodecahedra come from. The use of tallow dip candles that look something like a modern candle for illumination was adopted later than these artifacts, and those candles weren't well quality controlled, you can find images of them from the 500s, there's no apparent standardization on size.