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Comment by jimmyed | Hacker News Reader

This article does the difficult job of actually saying nothing interesting but still giving the impression that it holds some great newly discovered insight about Roman doll playing.

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It just specifically lists how children could play with those dolls, not all articles must have "newly discovered insights". For example, I didn't know they had such precisely made and articulated dolls in those times.

I always wonder what kids could play with in other time periods. I guess that woodwork always was pretty excellent, so there could be all sorts of stuff that is lost by now.

There's an interesting note on this in "The World Until Yesterday" by Jared Diamond about traditional societies (typically he's talking about pre-contact primitive humans). Many children fashioned their own toys after the real tools/equipment/vehicles used by the adults in their lives.

I always found the quite interesting: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South-pointing_chariot

I'm pretty sure kids would do just fine with sticks, mud, pine cones and whatever scrap is lying around. At least mine did before they got engaged in the paychological warfare that is cartoons, toy stores and catalogs.

Even now they seem to stay interested in their paper boats/air planes much longer than the latest paw patrol truck.

For girls in all cultures, playing with some form of doll is a near universal. It's even true of young female chimpanzees.

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/travel/article/101220-chi...

My aunt growing up in Korea (just after WWII when it wasn't nearly as rich as today) used carrots that had two legs for her dolls. Kids can make anything work.

My daughter literally put a smiley face on a roll of tissue paper and used it as a stuffed toy, so yeah they can be pretty creative given the chance.

As a kid, the only real toy I had was Lego (and a bike, etc). I had other odds and ends but we didn't buy toys (my family was financially secure, my parents were just cheap/not into material stuff). Being the youngest grandchild of a large extended family, there was a lot of Lego. If I wanted to play "space", I'd build a rocket ship.

I had friends and cousins in a similar situation but because thier families were probably cheque to cheque or worse. They didn't even have Lego. We'd make toys with sticks or stuff we found on garbage day, etc.

As I got older, I had school friends with everything (full collection of Star Wars stuff, etc). They were always bored. "There's nothing to do!" :)

"It just specifically lists how children could play with those dolls, "

No, it doesn't at all do that.

Not even in one instance.

The article says 'these dolls have certain characteristics' - and then goes on to speculate bout the potential social ramifications of such playtime without any real evidence.

The article fails to hone in on the social nature of playtime at all.

True but I did appreciate the images of the wooden dolls.

Yeah, same here.

Welcome to most of academic publications in the humanities (and recently even in hard-science)

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