No one is certain what Roman bronze dodecahedrons were used for (2018) | Hacker News Reader

No one is certain what Roman bronze dodecahedrons were used for (2018)

mentalfloss.com

217 pointsevo_9207 comments

Gavin 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/2020/12/25/roman-dodecahedrons-part-i...

I 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.

The knitting tool does without adding a stick that was never found even near any romian dodecahedrons.

The 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.

If you look at modern shortcut knitting equipment like knittingboard.com it looks pretty similar. It sounds more and more like shark tank gadget of the roman empire.

With a staff, not on it.

The knitting theory is falsified by the existence of the icosahedrons, isn’t it?

the one without holes has different sized nodules which would also correlate with counting

A supporting tidbit that I didn't see mentioned is that these seem to appear not long after the switch to a 12 month calendar. Julius Caesar made the 12 month calendar official in 46 BC, and the earliest of these cubes appears around the 2nd century AD (though I saw a couple sources mentioning the first century).

The abundance in military sites still seems consistent. Up until then, the calendar was held in alignment with the seasons by adding months, nearly at random (for example, they were sometimes used to extend/shorten the tenure of politicians). They basically ignored 50 or 60 days a year, and made months up to cover that. If you're away at war, you don't get those messages, and your calendar no longer reflects the seasons or anything.

If I were taking a wild guess, I agree it's a calendar, and I would specifically guess it was used for pay schedules for the soldiers. Rome started paying its soldiers around the end of the 2nd century BC, and they paid monthly from what I can tell.

The evolution seems natural. Rome starts paying soldiers. Soldiers get upset that while at war, their months don't line up with Rome's months due to not getting the memo about randomly added months. Rome institutes a standard calendar for many reasons, one of which is to stop having hoards of armed people angry about not getting paid correctly. Now that the calendar is standard enough to follow while away from Rome, a device is invented to track the months so that soldiers get paid on time and it feels more transparent than the "just trust me" of old.

I think it also provides an adequate explanation for why they were made of expensive materials. The calendar was not just for tracking time, it was directly associated with the wealth of the Roman empire, their ability to pay their soldiers. It's more reassuring when they guy with the brass calendar says you'll get paid on time than when the guy with a wooden one does it.

But if they were used for pay we should have some sort of documentation. There would be mention of them in diaries, ledgers or artwork just like most every other aspect of Roman military life. There would be a story about one being lost on campaign, resulting in pay errors. There would a few on a mural depicting an accountant's or officer's daily life.

I think they are something more mundane. Pocket candle holder seems plausible. But the flip side is that with mundane items we should see greater diversity across the empire. The fact that we don't suggest a tie to something universal like religion or politics. Maybe they were a calling card, proof that the bearer was a member of a particular group or cult.

AFAIK, we don’t have a lot of “daily life” text from early Roman times. We have architecture and stone/tile art, from which we learn a lot about culture. And we have major milestones where those justified documentation. “Soldiers: how you get paid” is not likely in any of what we have. And it may not have been written; literacy was not high.

Just 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.

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.

So to do the same thing, I bet they'll be equally confused by all of those tungsten cubes everybody was buying last month.

Actually 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.

More 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.

"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 :-)

> 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.

I 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

A trinket used in trading maybe? They’re way too close to he a coincidence.

I'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-w75...

Or perhaps they will think they are so bizarre extinct ocean animal.

LOL. That's actually a really good example.

Sounds like the premise of David Macaulay's Motel of the Mysteries.

These 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.

Nice touch w the tide pod.

Almost any internal part of a large machine would be inscrutable. Most are inscrutable even now. If you handed an automobile carburetor to a person under 35 they would struggle to identify it, and even if you handed it to a car mechanic, 25 or younger, they would struggle to identify it, as fuel injection became standard by the 1990s and old cars with carburetors largely vanished by 2010 or 2015. And yet anyone 50 or older will remember seeing them in their cars any time they popped the hood.

A central fuse box has been standard in all new homes since at least 1945 if not 1930, so if you hand someone a disposable fuse from 1930, would they be able to guess the purpose?

My dad was a photographer from 1950 to 2007 and he kept the "dark room" in the basement of our house, a large room full of thousands of objects. He was an expert and dodging and burning, decades before Photoshop. He created his own tools for the dodging and burning, typically by taking a coat hanger and bending to the right shape, then attaching some cardboard and wrapping it with tape. It was a specialist tool and even in 1970 or so, 99.99% of the people on the planet would not have been able to guess the purpose.

With respect, I’m over 50, and the only reason I know anything at all about carburetors is that my cousin has built them for decades for use in race cars. Still does, as a side job.

But Destin on “Smarter Every Day” taught me way more about them than I ever learned from my cousin.

carburetors exist on more than just cars. Lawnmowers, ATVs, motorcycles, etc.

Given that someone is already skilled in engine maintenance, seems unlikely they wouldn’t recognize a common engine component in all classic cars and most small engines.

Furthermore, what’s with the argument that someone would be completely unfamiliar with an object/event/concept that existed before their time? I see this argument used from time to time, and it’s baffling. Are you completely unfamiliar with everything that was not longer manufactured after you were born? Does it surprise you that a ton of young people are interested in restoring classic vehicles (and electric retrofits) and there is a large online community of such?

And aircraft.

Disposable fuses are a staple of horror movies, so more people could identify one than you might think.

The human species hasn't changed, the stuff they're familiar with has changed.

And I think you underestimate the younger generations, I'm under 35 and could trivially identify a carb or fuse.

Furthermore, I would be unsurprised if my 5 year old could also identify those inscrutable things, he 'helped' me get the snowblower ready for the season and winterize the power washer a month ago, and watched/helped while asking endless questions as I replaced the water heater last weekend. It sits adjacent to the furnace, which has a discrete Edison fuse; I don't recall if that was part of the litany but it probably was.

I think it was Carl Sagan who wrote about the 20th Century religious sites all over the world, each one with a giant yellow M.

Interesting, how do I search for this?

Researchers have plotted their locations but no-one is sure of their significance https://images.huffingtonpost.com/2011-11-09-mcsparenesness0...

I think the quote probably comes from "The Demon-haunted World" but I read it a very long time ago so I may be wrong.

Wikipedia:

“Smaller dodecahedra with the same features (holes and knobs) and made from gold have been found in South-East Asia along the Maritime Silk Road. They have been used for decorative purposes and the earliest items appear to be from the Roman epoch.”

Is it really surprising to find roman-style artifacts along a major roman trading route?

SE Asia was not exactly a known "major" Roman trading route. Do you know otherwise?

Rome had ports in the Red Sea, and during Trajan briefly also in the Gulf of Persia. I would think it was stranger if they didn't have exchange along that route.

Perhaps not as prolific as the trade along the landed silk road, but there's a smattering of roman coins and artifacts all over SEA.

But this is in Indonesia, etc...

They made contact with China during Marcus Aurelius but then plague came back and the trade collapsed. I don't think roman trade went so far

Interesting idea. I did a search for Latin words that have no known meaning and found this:

https://latin.stackexchange.com/questions/4683/what-is-the-m...

which suggests a corslet being stiffened with "pale mountain bronze". Perhaps the "pale mountain bronze" is in the form of a dodecahedron? Then did a search for ancient images of women wearing toga's and found this:

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/61/29/74/612974bb3612d3ccf9c9...

Look at her shoulders. Maybe these dodecahedra were ornamental fasteners for clothing, with the different hole sizes allowing them to be used with different weights of fabric. So perhaps they were a fad fashion adornment for rich women (due to the cost of the precision manufacture). I could see the smaller ones being used as a weight attached to clothing to control the drape and accentuate the figure as well. Pull some cloth through it, tie a knot and it pulls on the cloth in a certain way. A hair ornament would make sense also, with the different sized holes allowing for pulling differing amounts of hair through the holes and knotting the hair to hold the ornament in place.

Two 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.

LOL. Can’t figure it out = religious object, because religion can contain arbitrary nonsense.

Some people would find the explanation apt.

It was a desperate time, and people were turning to increasingly futile computation-based superstition to save themselves.

The criticism is quite old: 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.

Nobody is going to be confused what computer parts are for

The parent poster is poking fun at cryptocurrency mining rigs specifically here.

It is thought that these tribes worshipped Satoshi Nakamoto, who they believed to be the creator of Bitcoin, and that when the final bitcoin was "mined", a new era would begin.

It is unknown if Satoshi Nakamoto was in fact a real person, as there is there are no surviving primary sources or direct evidence of his existence.

I 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.

Anyone 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/

Second. It's the best thing on the internet.

Ok what's the first best thing on the internet?

Thanks so much for this link, I started listening and I immediately love it.

Weird that these are the exact dice used to play a game of Dungeons and Dragons.

Not so weird, you want your dice to be maximally symmetric for fairness. When you add easy manufacture to the qualifications, only the platonic solids will do.

The d10 is not a platonic solid.

That is correct, I'm an idiot. Almost only the platonic solids will do? Honestly it seems like the platonic solids are the easiest to work with, except percentile dice are nice for people using base-10 so you have to throw in a 10-sided die too. There are non-platonic versions of the other dice too, but you don't see them I assume because they're harder to manufacture. Less cut and dry than I though though!

The original D&D dice were the 5 platonic solids, the 10s were added later. But there are lots of shapes that can be "fair". You can stick 2 pyramids with any number of sides together, you can make a long prism with any number of sides since it will never land on the long ends, a coin can be considered to be a 2 sided die. I seem to recall somebody made a 30 sided die where the sides were parallelograms, although I never had one.

> The original D&D dice were the 5 platonic solids, the 10s were added later.

True; IIRC, the rules used d10 but it was a way of reading the d20 before d10s were manufactured.

yup the original d20's were labeled 1-10 twice, and you used a crayon to colour the on set differently. If it landed on your "blue" 10 it was a 20, if it landed on the uncoloured 10 it was 10 for example.

Any regular bi-pyramid would be technically fair. I think it's just that you tend to get rounder dice by using platonic solids or tesselating / modifying platonic solids.

By the way, you can get d100 dice.

> By the way, you can get d100 dice.

Can you get fair d100s, though?

I know the “Zocchihedron”, one of the first and best known commercial ones, is not fair (after this was proven, they were renumbered so that the over-/under-weighted results were better distributed over the range, but it's still not fair.)

Wow, I'd seen one but never actually checked whether it was fair.

Yes. By trivial example, two fifty sided pyramids joined at the base. These can be purchased.

Most players use d10 pairs with a tens die, though, because they roll better.

Also a 100-sided cylinder. Probably hard to read though.

Do you have a link for the pyramid one?

No. I bought it 25 years ago in a game store called "Games Unlimited" in Pittsburgh, PA.

> Most players use d10 pairs with a tens die, though, because they roll better.

There's also a nifty trick used in many RPGs based on d100 to roll once and have 2 d100 numbers (by inverting the result).

So for example in Warhammer you roll d100 for attack, you hit if your result is lower than your Melee Combat attribute, and the inverted result shows which part of the enemy body you hit (that influences critical hits and armor).

All that is required for fairness is equal faces and equivalent reach behavior.

Every total symmetry fits. You don't need a platonic solid. By example, every even number six or up can be fairly represented as two pyramids joined at the base.

Many fair non-platonic dice exist besides the d10, such as the d30. Go ask at the game store

I actually own a d30, as well as a super weird looking d3. But you don't generally see non-platonic solids for anything but a d10. Why? My guess was ease of manufacture, but honestly IDK.

There are only 5 platonic solids, and dungeons and dragons dice use all of those. So it's not weird.

The pentagon and dodecahedron are also very interesting mathematically. Squares and triangles tile the plane, and have nice "round" number angles 90° and 60°. Pentagons don't tile and feature 108° angles. The diagonals of a convex regular pentagon are in the golden ratio to its sides. The inscribed pentagram has a very recursive feel for this reason, "tiling" (nesting) off to infinity.

I'd have to go looking for the paper now but this is fascinatingly true of some kinds of viral envelopes.

Weren’t the Pythagoreans complete number worshippers? Maybe they are related to them?

Yes, like Max Tegmark, they believed the world was made of math. Where harmony means wholeness, they believed in harmonies in numbers (1+2+3+4=10), harmonies in numbers in space (geometry), harmonies in numbers in time (musical ratios) and harmonies in numbers in space and time (astronomy; harmonies of the spheres).

They also conducted the first hypothesis driven experiment in western science when they cast bronze chimes with corresponding ratios of thickness (1:2, 2:3) to see if the pythagorean tuning of strings was a generalizable property.

Plato extended pythagoreanism to make the world of math into the world of pure forms—a universal, immortal realm. He also continued the esoteric tradition of the pythagoreans, who had to keep their practices secret because they kept getting slaughtered.

It's just the best history. Pythagoras was also gender inclusive—not only were there many female pythagorean philosophers, he also (according to aristoxenus) openly credited his moral doctrines to Themistoclea. For integrating science and spirituality at the start of western civ, pythagoreanism is pretty much the coolest.

It’s interesting that such a “scientific” group was readily persecuted. Power fears knowledge it seems.

However very interesting group! Wish they were still around :)

I 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.

My 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-r...

Why 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.

Linked article mentions wax, as does 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.

Whoops, 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.

No 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)/h...

> 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.

> > 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...

Yep, military keep their secrets very well you see ;-)

Lava lamps are functional as lamps - that is what they were originally designed for.

> 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.

Today noodles are mostly cheap mass products. Maybe back in the days the object (noodle) was much more valuable and so the objects surrounding noodles.

First 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.

I could have sworn that they'd figured out these were some kind of knitting template

Indeed:

>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

But of course just because someone has managed to make a glove using one, does not really prove that it was their primary purpose.

This 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.

It 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

If this was the explanation, there would be wear patterns on the waist of the nubs, and inside the rings just near the nubs.

Many of the potential suggestions can be discarded because they would cause very specific wear patterns that would be repeated across many dodecahedrons.

This seems plausible. I wonder if they could identity any particulate from the fibers around the knobs that might corroborate this.

On the wikipedia page there is an icosahedron pictured next to these that does not have finger size holes but I suppose that could be unrelated to this artifact's purpose.

This seems plausible. Here's a modern spool knitter of similar design.

https://i.etsystatic.com/5608782/r/il/81ee17/366269940/il_79...

Similar, but made with wood and nails, which makes way more sense for a knitting aid. Much cheaper and easier to produce.

Also, the dodecahedrons are found in sizes ranging from "4 to 11 cm" in size (according to Wikipedia). That _might_ make sense if there were specialized ones for everything from kids to very large adults, but then...why aren't they found in clusters? You'd expect some towns in the Roman Empire, where gloves were made, to be full of them (in sets, not individual pieces). Instead, they turn up individually and fairly randomly throughout much of the Empire. They often turn up in coin hoards, too, which is an odd place to store a glove-making doodad.

Compare to needle cases, which were similar womens' tools. Most of them were wooden or bone, but rich women would get fancy ones made of bronze, and pretty commonly be buried with them.

Clothing production in historical contexts (including Roman) is usually a household activity. This mostly means it's done by women of all classes, if only perhaps as a show of virtue. A glove-making device, as a personal item, might show up randomly any place they were used.

Conspicuously expensive household items would also not be unknown. It makes some sense that the bronze survivors may be those owned by wealthy women, where the bulk of those used may be (unlikely to survive) wood.

The knitting thing just doesn't add up at all even if it's kind of clever. Why would you make it from bronze? Why don't you find orders of magnitude more of these made from wood? Why would someone want to be buried with a knitting jig?

Whatever wooden artifacts we have from back then usually have a lot of trouble making it to today; think professional tools versus apprentices' tools.

Survivorship bias. All the wooden ones disintegrated over the millennia.

It was found in a woman's grave goods: https://sci-hub.st/10.1007/s00283-013-9403-7

Sewing, spinning, weaving, and knitting tools are fairly common grave goods to find in women's graves: spindle whorls, needle cases, bone beaters, etc. As far as wood vs. bronze, almost certainly survivorship bias. The only wooden objects that survive that long are those that have fallen in bogs, where the anoxic environment prevents rot. Normal wooden grave goods will have rotted away by now.

I think knitting is supported by

"They have been found across a northwestern swath of the former Roman Empire from Hungary to northern England, but not in other Roman territories such as Italy, Spain, North Africa, or the Middle East."

as these are lifestock producing cold regions (and back then were more colder and swampy than today) where probably knitted wool was used instead of the textile that was used in the warmer regions where agriculture produced source fiber for the textile.

He doesn’t know how to use the seashells!

I’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.

Not 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.

One 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/

Did anything ever come of it? The interview has some wild claims.

Unfortunately one of the principals died of a brain aneurism a few years later https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/billingsgazette/name/jo...

Oh man, that brings back memories. Roman System Engineering a.k.a. "TimeCube with Tits"! They still have the original promo 'marketing' on Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/29490154

I 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.

Isn't this dramatically over-engineered though? Here's what they use today: https://static-numista.com/forum/images/58fa1df58e689.jpg

I was going to say, a flat object (out of wood or metal for 'genuine-ness') would be a lot more practical, and they'd be using them everywhere.

In western Europe, they would use scales to determine the weight of coin, since size itself doesn't mean much - that's logic used by modern day vending machines.

Of all the theories, this seems plausible. Has anyone done that to your knowledge? The easy way to test this is to take an assortment of Roman-era coins and see how well they match up to the holes and ring sizes. The pegs that protrude could easily help not only to stabilize the system but prevent coins from sliding off if placed in a stack.

they did mention they appear to be of widely varying sizes... I imagine if the holes were meant for specific coins they'd all have matching sizes...

I like the idea that the ratio between the incoming and outgoing holes allow you to get correct angles while looking through regardless of how the object is held (look through one of the smaller holes hold it far enough that the larger hole matches, and you have an exact angle viewer)

The big counterpoint to the coin theories are the ones that have very small holes, if none at all: https://www.historicmysteries.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03...

If it was a tool for commerce you would expect them to appear all over the old Roman empire and especially in Italy but according to the article they are only ever found in the northwestern parts of Europe. Also, if the purpose was validating currency the holes would need some markings indicating which hole matches what coin, wouldn't they?

Most of my tools around the house have minimal markings, if any. There are a zillion sizes of Allen key, and very few have the decency to mark themselves.

My measuring cups have markings are marked in paint, most of which has already worn away. Wouldn't stand a chance over millenia.

That said, you'd expect at least one or two to have informative notches for sizing. The universal dearth of text for such a common device is surprising.

And also, wouldn't they be a standard size for the region if they were for measuring coin? It sounds like each dodecahedron was different sizes.

It could have been carried by tax collectors.

The 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?

People 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_Dod...

You would still need markings on them though, I would think.

Maybe there were markings in charcoal, paint, chalk or whatever, but they didn't last.

Given 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.

> 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.

From the picture in the article each hole seems to have rings of different widths and possibly counts.

I'm just wondering if this tool is for taking the measure of finger size to make rings? but then it seem kinda odd to be inside of wealthy woman grave.

What if it was the finger measurements of all 10 fingers of a specific person? As in they have so much jewelry made they can’t be bothered to constantly go to the jeweler, so they send their dodecahedron instead?

Of course that leaves the question of the two extra holes. But it would certainly be a status symbol.

Ah 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.

So these are some kind of fidget spinner?

your 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.

I was thinking this thing might be useful somehow for dealing with ropes perhaps. Maybe some way to carry rope around in a ball maybe?

> It's probably just some largely irrelevant garbage.

bronze is not something they'd throw around for trinkets, if it were, it'd be iron or lead.

Could 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.

While the principle of a lens was known, I don't think any glass lenses of that age has been found.

> 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.

If 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.

This site was unbearable to read. So I dropped it in https://archive.today for convenience, and it helped a lot.

See for yourself: https://archive.ph/wNMDd

What was unbearable about it? It seems unusually clean and fast loading on mobile. I didn’t even have to use Reader mode.

I 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.

Unbearable how? Site works well for me on Chrome on Mac

On 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.

Yours has captcha, which can be worse.

I 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.

It'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.

I 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-r...

Knobs 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.

For 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?

12 is better, it's special - the lowest superior highly composite number

How would that matter for any of the uses suggested in the article? 12 and 20 have the same number of divisors.

using it as a base makes it so you aren't dealing with fractional values that much, and a lot of other neat properties ...

Pentagonal faces are rounder and work better with holes that way

The 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.

Candleholder 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.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icosian_game

With a bit of string you'd have a game.

Doesn't really account for the varying sizes of holes.

Yeah. 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.)

reminds me of the lost Roman herb, Silphium

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silphium_(antiquity)

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20170907-the-mystery-of-t...

Maybe Romans were getting those for the cool factor, similar to how the tungsten cubes are en vogue today.

I 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.

No, it's the super heroes and Disney figurines what will be considered deities - their sheer volume will make them a frequent archeological finding.

Praise be Mickey.

Our Gods Wear Spandex [1] is actually a super interesting book.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Our-Gods-Wear-Spandex-History/dp/1578...

if 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

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]"

> > I 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.

> No, it's the super heroes and Disney figurines what will be considered deities

The use of “No” here suggests a dearth of experience with Happy Meal toys, because these aren't opposed ideas.

Some people believe that it is useful for knitting:

https://ancientworldsmanchester.wordpress.com/2015/07/29/dod...

There are videos in YouTube showing how to use it

I am surprised that it is not more widely known that the Latin issue of D&D did mostly use D12.

I’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.

My 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.

This 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%20Dru...

His take is that they were used for conversion between regional dimension standards, like imperial:metric today.

Has anyone tried polishing one and putting it on a necklace? Could be a fashion piece, how does it look when the sun hits it?

That could be what the southeast Asian gold versions are! They don’t have the workmanship of the originals.

Imagine in a few thousand years someone finds a rubik's cube… it might similarly confused

Could it have been some kind of sharpening tool to progressively make a point on a lance?

Or perhaps it was just a template for making lances with known relative thicknesses at different parts.

Why keep a utility object alongside wealth objects?

Doesn’t explain the dodecahedron, though. Would be far easier with holes in a plank.

My first thought is gambling.

Roll a D12 for initiative to decide if this is worth further research

looks 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

Ha 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

Decorative paperweights?

Paperweight.

Baffled.

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/

As I’ve said before on HN (on the topic of “fuzzy green ‘glacier mice’” 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...’”?)

Ok, we've debaffled the title above. Let's stick to the topic now please!

I 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.

That's just evidence that the authors use adlock themselves or somehow just don't care about user experience

It 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.

they put them in their butts

The only way to achieve oneness with multidimensional beings[1].

[1]: https://deephighlands.wordpress.com/2012/02/17/achieving-the...

12 sided die for playing D&D, Roman Style.

I don't see bronze age in the title or or in the article.

I appear to have misread.

The objects are made of bronze.

Oh this ridiculous myth again? We know exactly what it was for: knitting.

This is far from unsolved.

I 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.

Wouldn't the metal be quite... cold?

You've never played with ice?

I don't understand why the downvotes...puritanism or did I break a spell?

How would you use this as a sex toy

Just seems to be a less serious comment in this thread. There are lots of ideas.

Thanks; 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)

I 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)

The different size holes means its not evenly weighted and thus makes for a poor and unfair dice. This is explained in the article.

That is anything but conclusive. It is easy to imagine why someone might want a die to be unfair

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