Hacker News Reader

Comment by bondarchuk | Hacker News Reader

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...

View on HN

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.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com