This thumbnail is a bit misleading – I saw two workers just a little taller than an Roman dodecahedron?!! That must be the biggest ever discovered!!! Severe disappointion followed suite...
this post was submitted on 23 Jan 2024
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I see DND is older than most people think!
I'm telling you, it's a decorative lamp.
Blacksmith. Benchy.
What about: a smith's graduation test?
This is a resonator. You put one or more fossils inside it to alch gear with a guaranteed set of affixes.
An ancient self sealing stem bolt analogue.
I love it when I buy a piece of gear from trade and it's got a resonator about to pop.
That's an incubator!
I saw someone using one of these to weave or knit or something, and it seemed to me a pretty good explanation.
Edit: If it's truly such a mystery, is it at all possible these only exist because they looked interesting? Just a knick-knack for your shelf?
"Did you see those things Caius Cosades is making down at the den? Not much you can with them, but they're neat."
It's not as though we don't make pointless and artistic things today.
Caius Cosades
Best game ever
If it’s truly such a mystery, is it at all possible these only exist because they looked interesting? Just a knick-knack for your shelf?
It's one of the most convincing theories, but also a bit unsatisfying. The question then becomes, why they were made in relatiely large numbers (so that hundreds could be found) with that very specific shape in different parts of the empire.
Except those objects were found in coin hordes and the graves of rich aristocrats, and must have been too valuable to be a simple knitting tool.
And for some reason, this style of knitting would have then disappeared until it was reinvented the 16th century.
Maybe it was the original NFT
They also almost never show any signs of wear and tear beyond having been buried for centuries.
I heard those are great for protection against Mindflayer larvae.
Be careful, though, they sometimes have mindflayers inside them who want to have sex with you.
I'm just waiting for some guy to come forward and explain that he's been locating dig sites ahead of archeologists for years and planting these around just to fuck with them.
No need, it's been solved basically. You knit gloves with them. Or rather the fingers. They are only found in colder climates / up north. There are videos of people using replicas of them to knit gloves.
There's not a scientific consensus on that. It's a good theory, but stating it as an accepted fact is inaccurate.
I feel like the point isn't that it MUST have been used for knitting (even if it could have been), but that we should be open to more possibilities before defaulting to a religious explanation.
Knitting is religious?
"It's been solved basically"
Almost always translates to "This is the theory I like most so it's the answer I'll run with."
Once they are all unearthed, the Old Ones shall return to reclaim the Earth.
The holes are all slightly different sizes. It's for measuring spaghetti servings
I wonder if a wooden dowel with a matching engraving wouldn't fit there or something.
Knowing the Romans, it might be for measuring cock girth of their house boys.
Sorry I prefer a size 3 not a size 6. What am I? Some barbarian like the Phoenicians?
Just a very old bumbleball
History Channel: Did they use that to communicate with Ancient Aliens? We might never know the full truth!
It's a D12, looks like people played RPG long before it was cool
Romans wielding a great axe
Goths = Orcs Celts = Pixies Romans = Humans Egyptians = Dwarves Slavs = Fairies Greeks = Elves
Its a knitting helper.
Yeah, makes total sense that rich aristocrats would have common knitting tools buried with them with other valuables.
If its expensive as hell, like the article says, it might have been a valued gift someone liked, man people get buried with a lot of stuff...
“A huge amount of time, energy and skill was taken to create our dodecahedron, so it was not used for mundane purposes,” writes the group, adding: “They are not of a standard size, so will not be measuring devices. They don’t show signs of wear, so they are not a tool.”
Instead, the group agrees with experts who think dodecahedrons were used for ritualistic or religious purposes. As Smithsonian magazine wrote last year, researchers at Belgium’s Gallo-Roman Museum have hypothesized that Romans used the objects in magical rituals, which could explain dodecahedrons’ absence from historical records: With the Roman Empire’s eventual embrace of Christianity came laws forbidding magic. Practitioners would have had to keep their rituals—and related objects—a secret.
“Roman society was full of superstition,” writes the Norton Disney group. “A potential link with local religious practice is our current working theory. More investigation is required, though.”
Smithing test.
I've seen cutlery made from pure silver with gold and diamond ornaments.
So... Why wouldn't it be used for mundane stuff? The entire case is based on assumptions.
A knitting helper the size of a grapefruit that would have cost more than what a shepherd earned in a lifetime.
My argument against this is they're all 12 sided. That's like finding out knitting needles were all the same length and shape.
Something used for a task like that will have variations in design.
These things are oddly specific. The lack of evolution leads away from it being an actually designed and optimal tool.
It's definitely designed to look good first. If it does anything while looking good that's a mystery so far.
In fairness, acheulean stone tool design didn’t really innovate between the earliest recorded find (~2 million years ago) and the latest (~160,000 years ago), which is a lot longer than the Romans existed. And they were much more basic tools, ripe for innovation.
Those stone tools are surprisingly effective and efficient.
The innovation block to improve was access to bronze.
That's different than a complex shape requiring rare resources and skills to produce appearing out of nowhere and disappearing again.
If people start using that shape for knitting I'll start to believe it. But all I've seen is that it can be used for knitting, not that it's even close to the best shape for it.
I'll bet a knitter could learn to use one of those and improve on the design almost immediately, creating a better tool.
I'll bet a knitter
Woah buddy, can't just be dropping hard Rs like that!
