Another Roman dodecahedron has been unearthed in England | Hacker News Reader

Another Roman dodecahedron has been unearthed in England

smithsonianmag.com

247 pointsBrajeshwar381 comments

I like the theory that it's an examination piece to qualify as a master metalworker. Casting a flawless dodecahedron could have been a way to demonstrate your skill. The shape is somewhat arbitrary: anything that's both difficult to cast and easy to examine for quality would work, but once people started making dodecahedrons that's what people expected and it became a kind of standard.

Interesting idea. I wonder if when comparing all 100 there’s indicators that each are effectively unique in their manufacturing.

I wonder if you could correlate where they're found to places with high quality forge/smithing operations

That theory works for me. Making a wooden hammer is a typical first project for the hand-tool woodworker — so perhaps the metal smith had a similar hello world.

My first thought was that the thing was some kind of "hub" for ropes used perhaps in some tent design. I was imagining rope loops passing through the holes and then looped over a stud on the other side. But the article says there are no signs of wear and so not a tool.

This is no Hello world, this is more like a doctoral thesis I think...

Maybe more like a Professional Engineering license or a medical degree; to show familiarity with the standards of a particular profession.

My thought was also to tents but used as a top point for wooden posts to enter / go through.

I’m not sure why there’s always so much focus on purpose. People build objects of geometric fascination as art objects all the time. I agree with you that there need not be any religious significance here.

But haven't these things been found all over the world? Like as far as Vietnam. We've found hundreds of them.

"Its a cool object" doesn't quite explain its ubiquity, or the fact that they are almost identical looking despite which side of the globe their on. That suggests purpose to me.

Wheels and balls have also been found across the world.

Dodecahedrons are fundamental shapes. Thus universal. And also expected size would be pretty much same. In general symmetry is pleasant. So I would expect symmetric shapes to come up when people have enough time and resources to build them, even if they have no use.

Dodecahedrons with nobs on the vertices aren't really fundamental shapes. As far as I'm aware there have been zero found without the nobs on, and hundreds found with the nobs.

They are not symmetrical, though.

Agree, why does it always have to be a religious object if an object doesn't have a clear and distinct purpose attached to it.

I guess when future archeologist dig up our junk they'd believe we were an extremely religious society, with many superstitions and strange beliefs. /s

"Ritualistic" doesn't mean "religious".

All it means is that the way the object was used has no relation to the functionality of the object itself.

The article explains that this helps answer the question of why they aren't written about in the historical record, which is a big question.

>why does it always have to be a religious object if an object doesn't have a clear and distinct purpose attached to it.

Worth looking at how the Romans themselves thought. They were incredibly superstitious, overbearingly and obsessively religious (this is Roman Catholicism's roots), they believed in magic and spirits, constantly consulted oracles, augury, and other signs to make important decisions, and key roles in the Roman government was run by people who were also priests, in the Republic and early Empire most civic functions were also religious, and after Caesar they regularly deified their leaders.

Given that this object was clearly precious to its owners (found in treasure hoards/graves), wasn't used as a tool where it would receive any wear, and no one discussed it at all, a cult object would make a great deal of sense. Perhaps Gallic Rome had a regional cult these are tied to. There's a massive number of other Roman ritual objects, magic tablet, amulets, curse tablets, and other religious ephemera, the Romans really loved their cults and rites, if you have an unknown Roman object that's conspicuously not spoken about like these things, that itself is a fair reason to suspect the object might be used in secret religious/cult rites.

That just doesn't work for me for two reasons, they would have been recycled almost immediately as all metals were relatively precious, and why don't we find as many other training pieces?

And of course it goes without saying that they've appeared made out of non-metal materials.

They're small enough that I can imagine people holding onto them. The hollow construction also reduces the quantity of metal used. And it's possible that we find other training pieces but don't recognize them as such, because the other ones could have practical uses.

Yes and no. I respect the "they would have been recycled" argument, but, there would still be some. If you were good enough to cast a Dodecahedron, you are probably rich enough to keep your best one, to show off to all the new hipster kids.

Any metal we find after 2000 years is a miracle. So the amount of these dodecahedrons indicate that there were a lot more in circulation at the time.

2000 years of poor and homeless people looking for any metal they can sell as scrap.

That's why I don't buy the apprentice argument that always pops up in these discussions.

In this case you'd be excused for saying it's some sort of ritualistic object. Because rituals are important in people's lives, important enough to create and carry around metal and stone objects with you. And rituals pervade all of society.

I don't claim to know what it is, but I think it was either very important to some ritual, or very practical to some trade.

>Any metal we find after 2000 years is a miracle.

That's not really true. There's regular finds of hoards of thousands of ancient coins that are in excellent condition, esp. Roman coins. You'll find there's an actually quite a large number of ancient metal artifacts archaeologists have discovered if you look into it. Certainly the preservation rate is very low since people tend to guard metal objects and recycle them, but things happen, today archaeologists estimate there's something in the order of 10-30 millions of Roman coins that have been recovered in museum collections and held by private owners.

This depends on the metal, of course, iron preserves poorly as does bronze, so those are rare, but gold preserves extremely well, and silver better than bronze, esp. in drier conditions.

Yes. Humans really liked burying things. Burying prized or expensive objects was pretty normal in human history. Layers of dirt only piled on with time. I don't think humans did much Archaeology pre-19th century. There are buckets of ancient coins. I leave this evidence of old metal laying around: "The Horses of Saint Mark, also known as Triumphal Quadriga, 2nd or 3rd century CE, via Basilica di San Marco, Venice"

But the very fact that people buried them proves how sought after they were.

And of course if something is buried, and everyone involved dies before retrieving it, then it survives. But a lot of circumstances have to line up for that to happen.

They were very sought after, but it was very common for folks to put their money in a sealed ceramic pot to protect and hide it, either buried under the floor of their home somewhere or outside in some secret spot. There were regular wars, plagues, invasions, and other civic chaos that left many of these hidden troves long buried until someone later found them. Ancient peoples buried a lot of metal artifacts for burials or rituals (the Celts buried a lot of weapons in their rites) that have been recovered as well. Lots of circumstances need to line up, but the ancient past had many very chaotic eras. With metal detectors large numbers of troves are being rediscovered.

> any metal they can sell as scrap

We’re talking about tiny pieces of copper, though. Would it really have been that expensive to be worth the trouble (unless you had a bag of them)

> but I think it was either very important to some ritual, or very practical to some trade.

Why? We know that premodern people often spent significant amounts of money/resources on things that were neither practical nor had any religious importance

They wouldn't be recycled if they were also used as a credential for quality of work. If you're a metal worker who wants to migrate to a new town, and wants to work at my forge, how do I know you can do quality work? Sure, these could be stolen but I'm assuming a master metal worker knows the right questions to ask to verify it's legitimate.

I don't think ancient roman society worked that way. Traveling is expensive first of all, carrying stuff if even more expensive. You carry what you need, not metal trinkets.

And also your reputation is based mostly on word of mouth. That's how it still works in rural societies today.

If there were any such certification for metalurgists it would have been a small one like a ring or a bracelet.

Ancient Roman society was not Medieval Europe, there was very little serfdom, especially among those with any skill whatsoever, so plenty of people moved from place to place, likely dozens or hundreds of times in their lives.

There were plenty of captured slaves from conquered peoples, but skilled metalworkers would hardly belong to that group.

The vast majority of people would never have willingly traveled far from their birthplace, in medieval Europe or the Roman Empire. This is especially true for those who had few skills. You could do basic labor in your own village, but how could you leave without any money or support network (e.g., a family)? Why would people trust you elsewhere? The dynamic was probably different in larger cities, of which there were more in Roman times compared to the (at least early) medieval period though.

This had little to do with serfdom, and practices that would fit under what we might call serfdom were extremely varied from time and place. It would have been very rare for someone to have the means, ability, and desire to move far from their home yet couldn't because they were somehow legally bound to land owned by a lord (who only had power over that one area anyhow).

The speculation is that there were created by advanced apprentices. What we’d now call “journeymen.” Most people didn’t move around maybe, but I wouldn’t be that surprised to find that they did.

They absolutely would have moved around since one of the most common ways to get the apprenticeships was to sign up to help with an army that was mobilizing for war. Militaries needed a lot of blacksmiths to tag along as support and they needed a lot of apprentices for manual labor. When they came back from, they often had a little more choice in where to go back to so they had quite a bit more mobility over all.

Not just that, but "head out with the military, stay where you end up (or somewhere along the route)" is a tried-and-true method of moving people throughout history. How else would you end up with Latin dialects spoken over a range from Portugal to the Black Sea?

> How else would you end up with Latin dialects spoken over a range from Portugal to the Black Sea?

Same way we ended with almost everyone in Ireland speaking English as their main language?

violent conquest, followed by a brutal subjugation and a cultural genocide.

Sure, but also (and corollary to the first three) "leaving people behind in power who speak English".

People definitely travelled. For business, religion, and pleasure.

There wouldn't be such extensive roads if they didn't.

Sure, but for the vast majority of workers and artisans they would most likely do a pilgrimage. And we have found tons of little charms, even penises, but they are all much smaller than any of the dodecahedrons.

Travel with luggage is what I was referring to as rare for most people.

Isn’t long distance “pilgrimage” more of a Christian thing and it didn’t really become that widespread until the 300s or 400s?

They sure are.

During roman period most likely people traveled for festivals.

Archaeologists have found what could be temporarily built up areas for festivals. And it is known that festivals were a big thing that gave the population a break from work.

Which is what I personally would like to connect with the famous penis pendants, but nobody knows for sure. They could just be fertility symbols related to courtship and marriage.

FYI I'm doing a lot of guessing here, which is apt when it comes to discussing dodecahedrons. In my opinion you can look at contemporary, or near contemporary, rural communities and see a lot of similarities with ancient society.

People travelled, but regular people didn't routinely travel to the other side of the empire. The road network was probably used more for "local travel" than "far travel".

The roads were mainly for the army though. And water travel was almost always preferable when traveling long distances (the cost of shipping for goods was a magnitude or more lower).

> there was very little serfdom

Serfdom (or a comparable system) and other strong legal limitations on social mobility were certainly a thing in the 300s.

> so plenty of people moved from place to place, likely dozens or hundreds of times in their lives.

I’m not sure how is it particularly different from medieval Europe in that way?

But there are other reasons why traveling and moving to different regions was relatively rare for most people (e.g. almost everyone was extremely reliant on their local social networks, so moving to a different community was very costly). Of course metalworkers and other highly skilled craftsmen were probably always one of the most mobile groups (in pre-Roman times and during the middle ages as well)

You're right that the master metal worker should be able to sniff out a fraud, but then what role does the dodecahedron play? It would be like me applying to a programming job by showing up with a ZIP file of some code I'd written in the past, which of course I promise I didn't steal from a better programmer. You'd probably give it very little credence compared to either personal references or work done in front of you.

If your dodecahedron were essentially your “resume”, you’d go out of your way to keep it safe from thieves. Besides, stealing one wouldn’t do you much good, as you’d be discovered as a fraud pretty quickly based on the quality of your work.

Having one of these in your possession would be enough to get you in the door, as well as giving your potential employer a quick and easy way to judge the quality of your work. The alternative would be to require a prospective employee to make a dodecahedron in front of you, which doesn’t really provide all that much of a benefit in the long term.

I don't see anything about the dodecahedrons being signed or stamped or branded in any way, so I can't buy them being a resume. Seems like if it were your personal proof of employability, and you cared a lot about it not being stolen, the first thing you'd put some mark on it to indicate it was yours. And then there's the fact that some of them have been found buried in coin hoards, which doesn't make sense (why would you collect a craftsman's portfolio piece and store it with your treasure?).

> found buried in coin hoards

Has anyone ever tried matching the sizes/circumferences of the coins with the holes?

Could have been used as a auto-coin sorting device?

> It would be like me applying to a programming job by showing up with a ZIP file of some code I'd written in the past

This is pretty much how it worked pre-internet

Lots of artifacts have survived that were made of metal that didn’t get recycled and didn’t serve a practical purpose. After coinage, the most common metal artifacts from that time period are simple pendants and jewelry. Most of them made from iron and bronze rather than precious metals.

There are numerous tokens that people hold on to even to this day, especially if it's a token symbolizing 'coming of age'.

my brother is a welder and he made a similar thing during his training (30 years ago)

One thing to keep in mind is the geographic distribution of these things. They're mostly found in the province of Gallia and Britain, and not in other regions. There'd be a lot of metalworkers in Rome and the surrounding cities in central and south Italy, but no artifacts like this have been found, and they've found > 100 of them now so the distribution is probably significant.

The cities likely had some form of guild system to prove claims like this.

The middle of nowhere you could prove yourself with a standardized piece of work.

___

Though personally I like the "glove grandma" video of her crocheting gloves with the pieces.

> The cities likely had some form of guild system to prove claims like this.

> The middle of nowhere you could prove yourself with a standardized piece of work.

Which is why it's significant that none have been found in Rome, or any of the major warmer cities.

Why? This could have been just some local system in that region.

I think you and the poster are in agreement. The significance is that you wouldn't need knitted gloves in Mediterranean climates. So if this was for some other use or as a novelty, you'd expect it evenly distributed throughout the empire

> you'd expect it evenly distributed throughout the empire

Why? Large premodern states were almost never strongly culturally homogeneous. Especially below the upper class/elite level.

The knitting aid is persuasive. It fits with the geography, explains the different hole sizes, and it explains the knobs.

Here's one of those vids; there are many more: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=76AvV601yJ0

I don't really buy that theory. There's no explanation for why it needs to be this very-hard-to-cast bronze dodecahedron, instead of just a wooden board with pegs and holes, which is all that would be needed for the video above.

It's possible that most were made out of common materials. Only those made of something sufficiently resilient survived for us to find.

Basically a show off piece for those with enough coin!

Why not? If it was a common item, it would be natural that there a deluxe versions for e.g. the royal household.

The cheap and simple versions would have rotted away by now.

The article mentions that none of them exhibit wear marks that are characteristic of tools.

Do you think show pieces in rich households would be used?

I’d argue if they did, someone was getting fired immediately.

Have we found any other shows pieces for other household items? Because if not, it’s very unlikely that’s the case

Yes, all the time. Like silverware, ornamental swords/weapons like axes, jewelry.

I’ve seen many vases and other such vessels in the homes of rich people that are not used to store liquids, but instead sit there empty on a console table in the hallway!

In that case this isn't a tool, it's a decoration. And if none of them are worn, then the decoration isn't imitating a knitting tool, since some would show wear if that were its actual use.

Would the royal household also have decorative brass stone masons' chisels, carpenters' planes, doctors' scalpels, and farmers' sickles?

I don't really buy that theory. Do we have any other examples of fancy decorative versions of working class tools?

Anecdotally, I have seen decorative plates hanging on walls, spinning wheels, ships wheels, oil lamps, etc all used decoratively in contemporary settings.

Annoyingly, there's no wear. It's not a tool.

Also: the size of the tube in French knitting isn't controlled by the size of the hole, it's controlled by the spacing of the pegs. You have to pass the wool over the pegs, so logically the pegs should be cylindrical not round. Earliest evidence for French knitting is 1535. There's no evidence for knitting of any kind until centuries after these things.

I'm going with prentice piece, based on the lack of wear. You hang a diploma on the wall, you put a prentice piece on a shelf for 30 years and barely touch it. (Although the gold examples would argue against this, I think).

Why would there be wear in metal? Maybe from hands over years?

The peg spacing is a very good point and maybe the disqualifier.

I'm very dubious about the knitting claim. Woven textiles seem to go back 27,000 years. Knitting is just weaving, with fewer steps, using sticks.

I don't know if you've ever done French knitting or not, but you need to use a tool to lever the wool over the pegs. Something like a crochet hook. Traceology is the term sometimes used by archaeologists for examining this kind of wear, and they're pretty good at it - Aaron Deter-Wolf[1], for example, studies needles to determine if they were used for sewing or for tattooing.

Weaving, yes, and nålebinding is ancient (6500 BCE) but for some reason knitting doesn't seem to turn up until 10th century Egypt. Fabrics do get preserved sometimes, and knitting, like nålebinding, has the advantage of being portable. You'd think, if the technique was discovered significantly earlier, there'd be something to show it. A pair of knitting needles in a tomb somewhere, at least. After all the floors of iron age round houses seem to be littered with loom weights[2], and needles are also common finds. So where are the knitting needles?

For me, it's the gold examples that put the fly in the ointment of every theory (including my favourite). One imagines a Neopythagorean cult or something, but then you'd expect the geographic distribution to be different.

[1] https://tdoa.academia.edu/AaronDeterWolf [2] https://studenttheses.universiteitleiden.nl/access/item%3A26...

Is there any info about where the pieces were found? If they are apprentice pieces there ought to be clues in their found locations.

It's not persuasive, it's impossible. Knitting was unknown to the Romans.

You are trying to make the facts fit the theory.

Also, if we assume this were some kind of guild-related standard, it becomes even more odd that they are not mentioned in any accounts or records.

We have very few accounts or records surviving in general (and basically none at all from certain periods). There are a few books about agriculture, architecture, medicine etc. surviving but thats it. Basically all non political/military/religious/cultural texts had been lost

Why none in Roman North Africa or all the other provinces in the east which were also "the middle of nowhere" with the same needs of metal work as Gallia/Britain.

Cultures and traditions are different in different places, even with gigabit internet and ubiquitous literacy.

Roman North Africa was thoroughly Romanized by the era these start showing up, and the eastern provinces were as well. The might be some cultural reason these show up where they do, seems likely, it's very, very dubious that this cultural reason had to do with metalworkers identifying themselves since the sort of Roman metal working technology and culture around it was actually very standardized across the empire at this time.

Well, the regions the dodecahedrons have been found were mostly not thoroughly Romanised, right? From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_dodecahedron: "at least 116 similar objects have been found in Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Hungary, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Switzerland and the United Kingdom".

No, that's not right at all. Those areas were all part of the Roman empire and thoroughly Romanized as well. They used generally identical Roman technologies in Britain as North Africa or Italy, spoke the same Latin, used the same building styles, clothing styles varied primarily by how many layers they wore, they had the same legal system, and shared Roman arts and culture.

Man of those countries speak Germanic languages now since they were invaded by Germanic speaking people after the Western Roman Empire collapsed, but there's still Roman ruins and old Roman cities to be found in all of those countries.

>spoke the same Latin,

It depends.

* yes, roughly the same Latin, and only in N. Africa & the Western European provinces, not the eastern provinces

Actually have they collapsed ? The Germanic king actually follow Roman rule practices. Strange argument I knew. Especially after the famous history of the fall of the Roman Empire.

Germanic kings in Spain followed Rome's legacy.

Why would they need knit mittens/gloves in North Africa?

I don't think they would, geographic frequency actually does make the knitting tool idea more compelling, though none of the dodecahedra show any sign of wear from use which makes the knitting tool hypothesis sound unlikely - if the dodecahedra was a tool it wasn't used frequently at all. I don't think any hypothesis is all that compelling, they are very much a mystery.

> culture around it was actually very standardized across the empire at this time.

We really have no data at all to back such a claim.

We barely even know anything about how metalworkers and other skilled craftsmen organized themselves back in those days in any part of the empire

As someone from the former capital of Raetia ;-) I might add "Since then, at least 116 similar objects have been found in Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Hungary, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Switzerland and the United Kingdom"

PS: Still humbled and amazed to find my small hometown of Cambodunum (70k people) on maps of major Roman roads like

https://latin4everyone.files.wordpress.com/2017/09/roman_roa...

The Roman Empire wasn't homogeneous.

Going from Rome to Lyon was about two weeks of travel. Paris and London about a month. Possibly (much) longer depending on season and how much funds you had.

You can imagine how often the average metalworker from Rome visited these places.

Why are they often found in coin hoards then? This makes no sense.

They’ve got a lot of sentimental value to the original owners of those hoards. It actually makes more sense: master blacksmiths were far more likely to be wealthy enough to have coin hoards and considered the objects symbolic of the trade that made that wealth.

So it's like a dev who's made themselves some money, getting buried with their C64?

I might just ask them to bury me with a Commodore 64 now that you gave me the idea.

It would be a shame to waste a working one, but maybe I can build a replica?

Symbolic of their trade is for me also a good explanation. Something like a guild symbol hanging on the front of their workshop.

Or perhaps they were playing dungeons and dragons and needed these multiple faced dice ;)

A lot of folks in this thread are latching on to this theory and making speculations to support it.

As is tradition in archaeology.

It's the archaeologists saying, “Nobody knows for certain how the Romans used them,” and offering a variety of competing theories, while people on this thread are trying to finesse the facts to support the theory they like.

So saying, "archaeologists are doing it" is demonstrably untrue here.

There are plenty of academic papers written by historians and archaeologists speculating about Roman dodecahedrons. That's where most of these ideas are coming from.

You just won't find them in HN comments for obvious reasons.

I didn't say they are merely speculating; that's a pretty normal thing to do. I said they are "latching on to this theory and making speculations to support it." In other words, they are starting with the conclusion, and making guesses to support that conclusion.

You incorrectly stated that's a tradition in archaeology, as if that would make any difference. It's not how theories are meant to be formed from evidence, regardless of whether or not you think it's a tradition in archaeology (which it isn't.)

>people on this thread are trying to finesse the facts to support the theory they like.

Explicitly so, given that the root of this thread is saying it is a theory that they 'like', not that they think is objective truth.

The original commenter was explicit that they liked the theory, not that they were willing to make things up to support it. Those are two completely different things.

it could be coincidence, since people with metal detectors looking for coins find them. there could perhaps be more, but not where coin searching with metal detectors is common?

That’s a neat idea.

> “It is an example of very fine craftsmanship, finished to a high standard.”

Nice, if there’s an afterlife that guy is probably beaming right now, haha.

https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/after-2

So basically its just leetcode interview testing but for metal workers :)

More like a take home project.

Maybe in some 2.000 years digital archeologists will wonder what in the world did we use fizzbuzz for

Wait until they unearth fizzbuzz enterprise edition...

Or monkey NFTs

I'm currently alive, and I still don't know what they're used for.

That wouldn’t really explain why the holes have different sizes on different sides, and why some of the dodecahedrons were found in wealthy women’s graves.

Maybe all of those variations are ways to demonstrate mastery, like asymmetry of all the holes might demonstrate a certain skill.

I don't have an opinion of the overall hypothesis.

Seems like a wealthy person's toy/puzzle to me. Maybe it came with a set of wooden balls to fit into the holes.

That doesn’t explain why it was predominantly found in military locations.

The equivalent today would be 3Dbenchy boats -- "we found an identical boat toy design in multiple sites made of different plastic materials, colors and sizes. It is spread universally around the World cities, found in sites of crafts, leading us to believe it is an idol of a new 21st century religion predominant among workers of the arts and crafts"

Along these lines, if you haven't ever seen it, check out _Motel of the Mysteries_ by David Macaulay. (Yes, that David Macaulay!)

A Canticle For Leibowitz touches on a similar theme.

I agree. I started with Anathem then went to A Canticle for Leibowitz. Together they were a fun read, I've put them both on my bookshelf.

I remember "reading" that as a kid, when I was too young to really understand the text, and thinking it was a horror story.

Is this the one where they find the toilet seat and think it's jewelry or something? If so, had the same experience. I was too young to understand it and thought it was something scary.

Yep, exactly! Tons of shadowy pictures of decayed skeletons lying in beds and bathtubs, and most of the humor is in the text.

“Also —and this didn’t make sense to us either— it doesn’t float, and there’s no engine. Our best guess is that it’s meant as a comment on the fulity of life.”

You can make Benchy float by slicing it with solid infill in the bottom/rear, and minimal infill everywhere else:

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:6076719

3D printed plastics only last a few centuries. Future archeologists are not going to find these in thousands of years.

In the joke world they will, along with the lost of all current knowldge of what the 3D boat is

In a few decades, 3d printed metals and other long lasting materias might be accessible to hobbysts

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EXhH6SbYILg&t=945s

Time to cast a Benchy in aluminium using lost PLA!

Just like the Lenna image used in a lot of Computer Science papers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenna

She actually showed up to an IEEE conference once, I think, in the late '90s, or early aughts.

She did indeed. Someone finally tracked her down recently. She's kinda over all the fuss :p

Any anecdotes about the conference? Did it surprise people?

There is this: http://www.lenna.org

If you try hard enough you could probably come up with some resemblances to male/female parts and thus classify this as belonging to a fertility cult.

"Yes yes the dodecahedron was considered a 'perfect' shape so this clearly represents a 'perfect' uterus surrounded by many ovaries, signifying overwhelming fertility." :P

or one of these: https://www.ebay.com/itm/304770714900?chn=ps&norover=1&mkevt...

That seems exceptionally cheap for the work that went into it?

Magic of Eastern European manufacturing, can probably turn them out in not too much time.

Or a welder's bend test:

https://victesting.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/img_031...

It might also be considered as a proof of very small humans who were known for sailing in their small boats.

I like that theory too and offer a followon explanation: to make a dodecahedron you must make an accurate regular pentagon and this is not trivial with ancient geometric methods, you need to have learned a thing or two to get there. This makes it a better test than, say, an icosahedron. But we do know that the Roman empire wasn't completely unfamiliar with icosahedral dice, probably for a magical or divinatory purpose rather than determining whether your wizard made her saving throw.

An analogy to this "masterpiece" theory might be the industrial-age "Turner's cube" that demonstrates a pretty solid level of ability with a lathe.

> probably for a magical or divinatory purpose rather than determining whether your wizard made her saving throw.

Why should I assume humans playing recreational games is a recent invention?

Board games are much older than the Romans, though possibly not older than writing - and texts give us a bit of a clue that some early ones were part recreation part ceremonial. By Roman times pure recreational games were common and reasonably often referenced in their literature. They definitely used cubic dice with numbers on for games (and gambling). The icosahedral dice usually have Greek letters rather than numbers (occasionally symbols IIRC) which make them hard to move a piece to or compare scores; we don't seem to find them with game boards like we do "Latrunculi" counters; there's no textual support for a game with them (weak evidence, true) but there's a fair bit for strong interest in divination and oracles that could use them. So not a dead cert, but fairly likely for the D20s. Whereas when you find a Roman D6, you can be pretty sure it's for gaming and/or betting (or a thief's hit points).

Greek letters were used as numbers during the time of the Romans.

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

also, sorry to be that guy, but D&D hasn't had a thief class since 3rd edition came out, in 2000.

To be fair there's a Thief subclass

re: being That Guy: I know. It's a weak "Romans were old school" joke.

ps good shout on the letters, which I had thoroughly forgotten. The d20s still are odd though.

Come now... Saving rolls use icosahedrons. Old-school paladins used D12 for hit points, I don't know about 5E.

If your DM had you use these icosahedrons for saves...

https://mymodernmet.com/roman-20-sided-icosahedron-dice/

then you really ARE old-school.

>probably for a magical or divinatory purpose rather than determining whether your wizard made her saving throw.

From a certain point of view these are the same thing

I had that possibility in mind, yes :-)

To add onto this, the dodecahedron was considered a mystical object, the encapsulation of the highest conceivable realm, that of the etheric or eternal. [1]

[1] https://www.math.lsu.edu/art/quantum-connections/pythagoras

I think the current view of many scholars is that the Roman D20s were for gaming use as well, if not primarily for gaming use. I would love to see the most recent scholarship on this, though. I assume the actual game is somewhat lost to time: game rules don't generally get written down in any medium that is durable enough to survive thousands of years.

That's interesting, I thought the case made for oracular use when I read about it was reasonable, but I may be a bit put of date. There was a fair bit of weird belief washing around in later Roman times before Christianity won out, though.

As for game rules - we have a tiny enough fraction of all non-elite-literary writing from antiquity that we probably wouldn't have a complete game's rules if they had been in the habit of writing them down - but we have so many surviving bits of writing that we ought to have fragments of rules. They seem rather thin on the ground, which leads me to suspect that written rules just didn't seem that important to most Romans. From Vindolanda to Oxyrhynchus they wrote bills and doggerel and love-life complaints and demands for new socks... but nothing at all that attempts to explain THAC0.

We don't even really know how they played Ludus Latrunculorum, despite finding quite a few sets and more boards - but there are several reconstructions from literary references. One of them I find quite engaging, so I hope it's on the right track.

> you must make an accurate regular pentagon and this is not trivial with ancient geometric methods

Does it need anything else besides some kind of protractor and ruler?

Making a triangle or square or even hexagon with rule and compass is fairly easy. Making a really regular pentagon also only needs rule and compass, but noticeably more knowledge with them. Try it.

https://sciencevsmagic.net/geo/

The "Turners Cube" of the day.

And that dodecahedron would be a challenge to 3d print

That was my immediate thought when I first saw the article about these. The whole 'it was probably something religious' is such a cop out and I can't believe scientists continue to push that anytime they can't explain something.

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")

is CE the same as AD?

https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=+is+CE+the+same+as+AD%3F+&i...

yes, just a non-Christian way of referring to it apparently

"CE (Common Era) is the secular equivalent of AD (Anno Domini)"

CE 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.

> The newer terms are more inclusive.

To me it seems to exclude the only person referenced in the original form.

You’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.

> 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.

We 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.

The 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.

It’s not being “cancelled”

I 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.

"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.

It 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.

Yes. "Common Era" instead of "Anno Domini". More religiously neutral.

It’s start date is still a religious event, so I’m not sure it’s more neutral as much as it’s more obfuscating.

It 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.

Sure, 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.

My patriotic side hopes we will all use this reasoning to revert to using GMT instead of UTC.

Yes. 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.

Uhhhhm my high school had it as an elective, and it was no Oxbridge school. Over the last few decades Latin has been defunded though.

The plain English is “in the year of our Lord”, if anyone else is confused with the dripping sarcasm.

OTOH:

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

20 faces and 12 verts is an icosahedron.

Both have 30 edges.

Geometry magic?

The 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.

Hmm - roll me a History check.

This 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-235a956d1...

Thanks 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!

> 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.

Could 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.

Candles 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/#

But then the versions found would have to be the same size. Which they are not, according to the article.

The 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?

If 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.

I 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.

Romans 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.

I thought it was determined to be a glove finger knitting apparatus.

thought so too

Hmm, I'm not convinced.

The only geometry the knitting demonstrations justify is "pins around hole". I don't see an argument for the dodecahedron shape or the cast metal. A vastly cheaper wooden jig with nails would service just as well and offer much better ergonomic possibilities, like a handle. The knitting with the finger growing inside the dodec looks unhelpful and implausible.

Romans had mass production facilities for some things. Possibly gloves. So a durable permanent jig is not an unreasonable suggestion.

I think the objection is not about unnecessary durability, but unnecessary complexity; you don’t need so many faces to make a glove.

If the thing was for making gloves, the faces would be for different finger sizes.

The holes in them are of different sizes.

Unnecessary complexity & expense, and if it were part of a mass production process you'd expect to find them clustered in production centers or something. These are found scattered randomly and individually in graves and border forts.

> The knitting with the finger growing inside the dodec looks unhelpful and implausible

There are also examples without the big holes in, which would make knitting pretty much impossible.

> There are also examples without the big holes in, which would make knitting pretty much impossible.

Gloves for children?

See the icosahedron here for example

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_dodecahedron#/media/File...

The glove is inverted, the fingers are inserted into the holes separately and sewn into the glove using the pins.

When you’re done, you take it off and unfold it.

It was suggested and some old bird even showed it was possible to do it, but it was not a complete explanation, especially given some variations in designs that made glove making hard. Another plausible option is it served as a calendar of sorts. Equally mundane explaining the broad distribution.

Related, video showing its use in knitting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=76AvV601yJ0

I love this idea! Looks like it works brilliantly too

Even if that's the case, some mystery remains, discussed at this point: https://youtu.be/76AvV601yJ0?si=JQi4K8w9ZvphZ1wV&t=460

Presumably you'd find similar jigs for finishing the glove nearby.

You also wouldn't need such a complex object for that. These things were extremely difficult to cast in the years that they were made. It would be far easier to carve a similar device out of wood as a glove-making jig.

I don't think knitting existed during the time of Roman Britain.

I love seeing all of the nerdy (and wrong) explanations of it, when in reality somebody’s grandma took a look at it and said “oh that’s for sewing gloves”.

No mention in the article for this purpose, but sometimes it takes a bit for grandma info to reach the researchers.

That's a heartwarming story. Unfortunately it's bullshit.

Roman dodecahedra predate knitting by almost a thousand years. The earliest known knitting was from the 11th century (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knitting#History_and_culture), while the earliest dodecahedra are from the 2nd century (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_dodecahedron#History)

Meanwhile, elsewhere on Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_knitting

>Earlier pieces having a knitted or crocheted appearance have been shown to be made with other techniques, such as Nålebinding, a technique of making fabric by creating multiple loops with a single needle and thread, much like sewing.[4] Some artefacts have a structure so similar to knitting, for example, 3rd-5th century CE Romano-Egyptian toe-socks, that it is thought the "Coptic stitch" of nalbinding is the forerunner to knitting.

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

The lack of signs of wear is a bigger problem for this hypothesis IMHO

To doubt that knitting existed in Roman Times is preposterous. Thats like saying they could not weave baskets. Instead your incredible hypothesis lends credence to recent studies by internet sleuths that indicate history as we are taught may have an extra 1000 years added simply because dates have been mistranslated or misconstrued to read a 1 (one) where there is indeed an I or J symbol, denoting years since the Christ; IOW that that 1999 is actually J999.

Knitting is from the Neolithic. The Chinese were already knitting silk about 3000 years ago.

Not the most credible theory, but it reminds me of the "Hedgehog in the cage" mechanical puzzle:

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

So maybe there's a wooden/metal piece that goes inside, and the challenge is to get it out?

Just because a measuring device is not standards referenced does not mean it can not be used to measure.

If I need a peg to match the size of a drill bit, any collection of 12 holes is likely to have one the size of the drill bit that lets me tell my peg maker to "make the pegs this size."

Handymen are just cussed enough* to not label any of them, and to expect the FNG (new guy) to remember which of the 12 unlabeled holes was the one.

* Cussed enough is a slang adjective that describes someone who does things that annoy people. We say it in Texas, but I do not expect everyone uses that phrase. I can not think of a standard term that carries the same connotations.

implicit knowledge is everywhere.

the trick is realizing that this isn’t a bad thing.

This was indeed, cussed knowledge.

Furthermore this article only states: “They are not of a standard size, so will not be measuring devices.", which is incorrect since for use as a coincidence rangefinder (standardized to some standard) only the ratios between sizes of opposite holes would need to be standardized, not the size of the thing as a whole.

The paper "Roman Dodecahedron as dioptron: analysis of freely available data" (https://arxiv.org/abs/1206.0946) collects measurements of opposite hole pairs for 7 artefacts for anyone wanting to do their own analysis.

Measuring devices do not need to be standard size if you're not comparing them or following a recipe of sorts.

You can use anything as a "ruler" to measure something and transfer that measurement to something else. It's what a jig or form does, after all.

Seems to me the "experts" have no experience in construction, so they dismiss it - which makes me dismiss them.

'Of course it's a Whitworth screw, look at it!'

Pet theory:

With future advances in material analysis science we will be able to sift through the soil surrounding artefacts as this, and understand and digitally reconstruct what soft materials were around it.

This folows a trend where as time progresses we are able to deduce more and more information from archeological finds.

As this progresses, there will be step changes in our understanding of our pre-historical past.

Previously on HN:

What were these Roman objects used for? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25237271

Thanks! Macroexpanded:

The mysterious dodecahedrons of the Roman Empire - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35937540 - May 2023 (100 comments)

No one is certain what Roman bronze dodecahedrons were used for (2018) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29717215 - Dec 2021 (207 comments)

What were these Roman objects used for? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25237271 - Nov 2020 (37 comments)

The Mysterious Bronze Objects That Have Baffled Archaeologists for Centuries - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21439351 - Nov 2019 (7 comments)

I remember seeing someone’s demo of using them for knitting.

Absent any better explanation, this seems pretty reasonable to me.

Example video: https://youtu.be/76AvV601yJ0?si=7qk7VWBHJnxubs1j

I like the idea that there is some sort of thread manipulation going on here, but the videos using this for knitting don't require it to be a dodecahetdron as they only use one hole and five of the bulbs on the verteces.

Unless there's a much more complex knit happening, this isn't the explanation. Maybe with multiple colors or something. Also, if it were used in this common way, it's more likely that there would have been many more made of wood and the device would have passed down from mother to daughter rather than having been lost.

This is a theory that keeps coming up on the internet. However, roman dodecahedra predate knitting by almost a thousand years. The earliest known knitting was from the 11th century (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knitting#History_and_culture), while the earliest dodecahedra are from the 2nd century (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_dodecahedron#History)

yarn rots

To doubt that knitting existed in Roman Times is preposterous. Thats like saying they could not weave baskets. Instead, your incredible hypothesis lends credence to recent studies by internet sleuths that indicate history as we are taught may have an extra 1000 years added simply because dates have been mistranslated or misconstrued to read a 1 (one) where there is indeed an I or J symbol, denoting years since the Christ; IOW that that 1999 is actually J999.

This video gives a good overview over different explanations and why they were dismissed: https://youtu.be/BNrhlQE-EMg?t=30s

Did people not just buy things for decoration in the Roman empire? Seems like we try to attach deep meaning to everything discovered in older civilizations. When many could just have some mundane meaningless purpose like decoration.

Imagine the poor future people that seek to find meaning in the unearthed funko pops and gold spray painted pine cones of our time.

Reminds me of the guy that buried flaming hot cheetos in an elaborate coffin

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6_C7z4XvOQ

Yeah, someone probably made it out of passion once, others liked it so much they offered him lot of money or fame, the art proliferated. Some artists created similar models, some modified on top of it.

Yes they made decorative objects, but those objects were written about and depicted in art. these aren't.

Respectfully, I find it hard to believe that every decorative object was in turn immortalized in art, that seems pretty recursive.

Not every object but every type of object. There have been hundreds of these things, and none of them have been depicted elsewhere, nor described in writing that has survived.

I like the security device theory: it’s a bag lock or something like that and rope(s) was going through of it in a certain pattern. So couldn’t be tampered with.

Having given my brother a Tungsten cube once for Christmas, it's possible they just made these because they were fun and looked cool.

It's obvious: xkcd Voynich Manuscript.

https://xkcd.com/593/

I used to invent gibberish languages and writing as a kid.

Of course, it is a joke, but… RPG books are generally written to be comprehensible to the people running the game. Or at least, that is the goal.

Clearly you've never played Shadowrun.

That's the intent, but boy oh boy, is that not always the result.

Metals were very resource and labour intensive to make in those days, I don't think there was much making these for laughs and giggles. That also would would not explain why they are only found in the colder parts of the roman empire.

It seems like the location these are generally found in could offer clues. If they were blacksmith related I would expect them to be found closer to the buildings where they would be used or stored. If they’re for a military related purpose (approximating distances) then I would expect to find them more alongside roads, and strategically relevant places. Thoughts?

Not sure about "grapefruit-sized" when compared to the hand holding the object in the picture. Assuming it's the one they are writing about. I'd say it's closer to the size of a lime. Unless that person has a uniquely large hand of course.

Really interesting find though, never heard of these artefacts before.

Quite. I suspect the narrator might have confused grapefruit with satsuma - easy to do if you ignore size and colour ... morphology and a few other things but all citrus so all good.

Much better to stick with silly old normal and sensible measurements. This thing is roughly 0.9 linguine across - https://www.theregister.com/Design/page/reg-standards-conver...

Standards are important, that's why we have so many of them.

Hahaha. I've never seen this standards page before. I work in Australia's building industry so I find this page particularly enjoyable.

Thank you for sharing the page and your sharp wit with me.

Those "standards" were the result of long forum threads back in the day. Some of the discussions are hilarious.

Did you spot the Other units are links, eg: https://www.theregister.com/2016/10/25/oz_trams_equivalent_t... Searching the Register for other keywords should yield some gems.

Is this not the Githyanki artefact?

No, it's a delve resonator, and its function is very well understood: https://www.poewiki.net/wiki/Prime_Chaotic_Resonator

Let's show it to the guys in Ask This Old House https://youtu.be/5LrTuXcVfWc?si=AsjtAKtVSVQ2fE8U

To me it looks like a paperweight / scroll holder.

The knobs are possibly for holding keys or other such items.

Perhaps it's an administration tool - used in hotels or for the army when they've received news.

The protruding nubs are clearly to ensure an air gap when it's pressed against some surface, for whatever that runs through the holes (such as rope) to be able to slide in/out without pinching.

Which makes sense for paper, because if a table surface gets wet then you don't want the bottom of the scrolls touching a wet table.

Also if you have different sized holes you can rotate the device to have the most used holes facing upwards.

Why wouldn't it just be a 12 sided die for gambling?

I think they would have mentioned if 1) each face had a different symbol of some sort and 2) if the knobs showed signs of having been tumbled upon.

I quite like this and could imagine the expense of the object was because it signified an officially taxed and legal gambling operation or something.

However, I think we might we would see some wear if they they were die. Might see some blobs dented or knocked off if they were regularly being rolled in taverns and such.

It could be a symbol of gambling status, such that by having one your money is acceptable thus allowing entry to certain gambling facilities all over the place.

They had no wear and tear. A die that expensive would be used every 10 seconds for decades.

Contrary to published work comments, many dod openings DO show signs of chips/dents, scrapes and cuts (especially some of the larger opposing openings and the largest opposing openings – damage is not just from oxidation). This damage is due to the weapon heads being removed, and in some cases from using as a jig (see Corbridge dod), or ‘can-opener’ pry bar when ‘in-service’ weapon heads are broken-off at the head and wood needs to be removed in anticipation of a new shaft being inserted.

It's the original 'Swiss Army' multi-tool created by Gallic blacksmiths (ordered by Negotiatores/Roman arms merchants in conjunction w/ Roman Auxiliary troop arms officers) for measurement/procurement/maintenance of Auxiliary troop, polearm weapon shafts.

https://www.quora.com/What-was-the-use-of-the-Roman-dodecahe...

Casting this would be really hard; if that were the case you'd also have expected to have way more versions of it in wooden (or other similar easy to fabricate) form.

Plus, grapefruit-sized feels like way too big for this purpose.

Sure, but rich people love to gamble. Rich Romans even more so. And we all know how much rich people love blowing their money on meaningless status symbols. This is honestly the highest probability IMO.

If it's for gambling, why isn't it mentioned anywhere? Why are there no mentions of games using these devices?

No numbers on the sides is probably a clue. Now, on many of them each hole is a different width, it is hard to understand the culture and mannerisms that long ago but i find it improbable that could be used in a quick game of chance to see what has been rolled.

My guess is a tentpole crown fitting. Somewhat similar to the one discussed here: https://outdoors.stackexchange.com/questions/16155/what-is-t...

Perhaps only used for the grandest of tents, otherwise there'd be a lot more of them.

For those in the UK, the BBC show Digging for Britain recently covered the discovery of this artefact in S11E04 at the 30min mark, available on iPlayer.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001ttqr

1. glove knitting

The dodecahedron Wikipedia article already mentions spool knitting [1]. This awesome video shows knitting for different-sized fingers on a 3d-printed replica [2]. An initial question could be whether 6 equally-sized holes align with each other, or if there are 12 different hole sizes for finer sizing options (hard to tell from internet images). And as for no wear on the tool, hardness of wool << metal. It's not as if the dodecahedron is being used as a pulley block.

2. Hair braiding

layer8 mentioned these dodecahedrons being found in wealthy women's graves; I'd offer they could have been for braiding hair -- seemed important to wealthy Roman women back then [3].

Speculative scenario:

Could sit in a chair with back to a table (or just lie down on the floor), with hair strands laid outward from the person's head. Selected strands are pulled through the dodecahedron tool, and braided. The dodecahedron tool moves incrementally away from the person's head as the braid forms. The knobs on the top-side help organize each strand, and the knobs on the reverse (bottom) side creates standoff for the braided hair to emerge. Hands-free tool for making perfect mini-braids.

I wonder if some statues might be realistic enough to depict braids [4] (and from similar time periods as dodecahedrons' manufacture date) to match with a 5- or 10-strand sinnet pattern (e.g., ABOK#3037) [5].

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_dodecahedron#Purpose

[2] https://youtu.be/76AvV601yJ0&t=517 | from: https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/514246/are-roman-dodecah...

[3] https://unpodipepe.ca/2017/01/31/hairstyling-ancient-roma/

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_hairstyles#/media/File:K...

[5] https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Ashley_Book_of_Knot...

What if we "under-feather"[1] them, like dinosaurs? Then dodecahedrons could be just the skeleton of the actual tool.

Does the spacing of the knobs allow hinging wooden elements like on a Rubik's cube?

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20230726232243/https://www.atlas...

I thought these were thought to be looms for knitting finger sections for woollen gloves? I seem to recall someone testing this theory and actually producing very well-fitting gloves - and each of the holes in the design are a different size, to support the different finger-sizes of the customer.

That's about as valid a guess as any other of the hundreds of guesses in this thread, which are probably not valid at all.

There's no reason such a complex and expensive to make object would be used for knitting when a simple thing carved out of wood would do the same.

*Knitting tool- interesting, but some dods are too small for this; also some holes are too small; finally, that type of 'French' knitting tube size is based on number of knobs(pins), not the opening/hole sizes.

https://www.quora.com/What-was-the-use-of-the-Roman-dodecahe...

They look like anchors for fishing nets.

One theory (albeit contested) is that they were used as a jig to knit gloves: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=76AvV601yJ0

That's kind of neat, but it looks too complex of an object for that purpose. A knitting spool (aka a jig to knit gloves) can be as simple as wood ring with nails around it. Even though it might work, it looks way too precious for such a common tool.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spool_knitting for pictures

> The Historian Richard Rutt conservatively suggests that knitting originated in Egypt between 500 and 1200 A.D.

Haven’t watched the video but the evidence for knitting in England under Roman rule certainly isn’t there. There were other methods to make knitting-like garments though so maybe this is explained in the video but I doubt that Romans knitted with this

I never considered that knitting might be so relatively new. Knitted wool clothing seems like an essential item for staying comfortable in cold wet weather. Did Europeans just rely on furs and skins before then?

No, they used woven wool garments (or felt).

Any Roman male would use only woven wool clothes. Thinner fabrics, like linen or expensive imported silk or cotton were normally used only by women. Men who used them were derided as effeminate.

Moreover, knitted wool is mostly suitable only for undergarments, as it does not offer enough protection against water and wind.

Knitting provided more comfortable clothing, but it was not a necessity. There is no surprise in its late development.

there are other ways to make yarn into flexible clothes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N%C3%A5lebinding is fairly old — mid-bronze age

Felting and weaving (or both) are also quite old.

Interestingly, the spinning wheel isn’t: woven textiles produced in europe before the 13th century would have been produced with yarn or thread made on drop spindles: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spindle_(textiles), and anything spinning-wheel-esque probably developed no earlier than c. 200-1000 globally.

and naalbinding needs simpler tools.

Are prior methods 'not knitting' the way that most insects aren't technically 'bugs' (ie. a technical difference but still largely the same idea)? I find it hard to believe that anatomically modern humans have been around for allegedly 200+k years and yet didn't figure out "making cloth out of knots" until around 1500 years ago.

The use of these for knitting the fingers of gloves is obviously correct. It explains so many things about them:

Their distribution (northern Europe - where you might need gloves). The knobs (to loop the wool round). The differing sizes of the holes (to fit fingers of different sizes).

To say that the functions of these is unknown is just lazy journalism.

I am sure if one of these had been handed to my late grandmother, who was a keen knitter, she would have recognised what it was for immediately.

It’s a good theory, but not obvious at all.

- It is not known that that the Romans used knitted clothing. Knitting was invented later.

- Knitting can be done with cheaper, easier to craft tools that are just as effective. Knitting doesn’t explain the cost and skill required to craft the dodecahedrons.

- There is no wear on these dodecahedrons that we’d normally expect from a well-used tool.

Technically, this is not necessarily knitting, its crocheting ..

There are examples known without the big holes in, which seem pretty much impossible to use for knitting.

Some dods are too small for this; also some holes are too small; finally, that type of 'French' knitting tube size is based on number of knobs(pins), not the opening/hole sizes.

It's the original 'Swiss Army' multi-tool created by Gallic blacksmiths (ordered by Negotiatores/Roman arms merchants for trade w/ Roman Auxiliary troop arms officers) for measurement/procurement/maintenance of Auxiliary troop, polearm weapon shafts.

https://www.quora.com/What-was-the-use-of-the-Roman-dodecahe...

My guess:

Wax, wooden, or cork plates plugged into each side via the large holes.

On the the replaceable plates were some sort of painted or engraved label, indicating something such as:

- a dice or other game piece

- a fortune or God (some other mythical image)

- some other game of chance type option

Just because it's not a standard size does not mean it's not a measuring device. Angles, Pythagorean helper tool, construction of archways... We have so many modern tools that come in lots of sizes.

The Roman-Gallo dodecahedron was created for the Roman troop arms merchants (Negotiatores) & Auxiliary troop arms officers. It was used to measure, procure & maintain the Roman Auxiliary troop polearm weapon shafts; to ensure standardized specs for the varying Auxiliary troops (they were allowed to use their own weapons which varied by troop origin). This would include the diameter - mid shaft, the taper of the shaft just outside/away from the joint at the weapon head socket & the taper of the wood shaft, just inside the head socket. Seach Quora under my name (Richard Allday) for more info.

https://www.quora.com/What-was-the-use-of-the-Roman-dodecahe...

Can a metallurgist weigh in on this? That casting looks really good to me.

There is no mention in Roman/Latin texts anywhere of this particular object, it's quite a specific thing...? Some merchant probably sold it and had an inventory...right?

They mention this in the article - one line of the reasoning is that the lack of mention lends a little evidence to a non Christian religious or folklore practice that would have made a written record forbidden or liable to destruction by authorities.

This must have been the inspiration for the dodecahedrons in the show "Raised by Wolves". Lots of influence from Roman history and mythos (and a bunch of other places).

I thought it was a tool to make fingers for gloves.

Another armchair idea, could they have been used to detect coin clipping?

It seems so easy to test that I feel the idea must have some readily apparent flaw.

But why would it be a dodecahedron and not just a metal plate with a hole in it? Seems overkill.

Some of them don't have any holes

I'll admit to knowing little, but the Wikipedia article says they all have

>... twelve flat pentagonal faces, each face having a circular hole of varying diameter in the middle, the holes connecting to the hollow center.

I thought the same, that it could be used to either mint new coins or test existing coins were the correct dimensions.

My next thought was that each side held a face-plate, maybe painted wood, that could be pressed in to the face, the knobs would help there. The holes underneath the panels could have been used to just make it weigh less, which could explain the differences in hole sizes found.

>which could explain the differences in hole sizes found

There were multiple denominations of Roman coins, and I assume some variance in size at each mint over the centuries. That could explain why each hole is a different size, and why the sizes aren't uniform between each one found.

*It appears that it could be used to measure coins, but old Roman coins in that time period were not very round. They were hammered on a die, not cast, so they weren’t a perfect circle. Weight and material constitution was more important to the value of an ancient coin, not a perfectly round shape (especially since the coins were debased of their silver so much during the 3rd century). In addition, some dods had triangular and oval holes.

https://www.quora.com/What-was-the-use-of-the-Roman-dodecahe...

How much Roman writing has survived? If this item was so common, it's strange that it isn't mentioned more in literature.

Quite a lot.

Lots of stuff isn't mentioned in writing. Combine the "Why would I write that down, everyone already knows that?"-effect with "most people weren't literate" and lots of banal every-day stuff like this gets lost in time.

https://imgur.com/A1nuz55

If they are important, they should appear in drawings, paintings, carvings, statues, etc.

Someone should really be searching in these areas.

I wonder if anyone is AI for stuff like this? You could fairly easily train a model to look through a huge number of historical resources for potential visual matches to review.

Every old drawing, painting, carving, statue, etc., is eagerly pored over by historians of that era. Roman historians know about these dodecahedrons and would recognise them if they appeared.

> A huge amount of time, energy and skill was taken to create our dodecahedron, so it was not used for mundane purposes

That's the idea! Being difficult to make increases its value, it doesn't need to have a special purpose, it could be just a desk toy, a sort of mental puzzle, a showcase object of their current technology.

Yeah, fidget spinner was my second thought as to the "utility" of the thing.

There were rich people around. And they can pay for something that is essentially art.

One thing is for sure, whoever made that thing got laid more than the average.

Looks like a good thing to store kindling in for a torch.

Kinda did something similar for fire arrows

Some of them don’t have big holes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_dodecahedron#/media/File...

One of those things is not like the others, and is actually very much different, so much that I have to wonder if it's not some kind of cheap knock-off that isn't actually fit for purpose, whatever the purpose was.

Kids' toy. (Imagine something jingling/rattling inside)

I think it’s part of surveying equipment for a construction site.

For some reason that was what my mind jumped to, but the details seem odd. Apparently some were notched between the knobs, so it seems useful for measuring… and you could imagine eyeballing lots of angles by lining up the knobs in various ways. Maybe even putting a string across some knobs and looking through the hole.

But why holes of all different sizes? And it seems weirdly difficult to make a right angle.

I need to 3D print one to mess around with.

People back then loved their cats just as much as we do, maybe it’s just a cat toy

there are small versions of this that would be too tight for cats

Think big cat, tiger toy! Perhaps there was a bell inside or marble to make a sound...

It looks like a desk toy to me.

Caltrop?

duh it's the prime radiant

There’s a real chance the Roman dodecahedron could have been the “fidget spinner” of Roman Empire…

Mysterious? I thought this is a solved problem. Especially also taking into account the boarders of the Roman Empire and the places where they were found.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=76AvV601yJ0

Knitting gloves. Neat. I like that idea. Especially since they were only found in the colder regions of the Roman Empire.

That's a hypothesis, certainly not a solved problem. There in't any other evidence for it, besides someone finding that it could kind of work, and some inference about where it was found.

Currently there's no explanation for why it needs to be this very-hard-to-cast bronze dodecahedron, instead of just a wooden board with pegs and holes, which is all that would be needed for the video above.

Evidence might involve finding contemporary descriptions of these, bills of sales, descriptions of Romans wearing knitted gloves, etc.

Based on previous discussions, I don't think so. If they're really for knitting gloves you'd expect to find a lot of standard 'adult hand' sized dodecahedrons along with a few large & small (if that), but in fact you find a whole range of sizes (from tiny to gigantic), with far fewer mediums than you'd expect. They don't cluster around commercial towns: were people really knitting most gloves in border forts? They'd have been very expensive and difficult to produce; it wouldn't make sense for a master metalworker to spend weeks working on a trinket for knitting gloves when it could just as easily be made from wood for a fraction of the cost & effort. IIRC, they don't all have the knobs & holes, or they're oddly sized, and generally they're pretty nonstandard. You find them included in wealthy burials: were these rich people really knitting their own gloves--along with soldiers on the front lines? Why would they be buried with a knitting tool specifically for gloves?

Altogether, it seems pretty unlikely they were an aid to knitting gloves.

This video is mentioned multiple times in this thread and it's got to be the most ridiculous take for what these things are.

These were expensive and difficult to cast. They are made of metal which is very expensive at the time. There's no reason knitting would require a complex metal cast object of this kind when a wooden jig would be far easier and cheaper to produce.

My favorite thing about archaeology is that if they have no idea whatever about the things they find. . .

>were used for ritualistic or religious purposes

Don't know what it is? Religion baby.

It's kind of a running joke amongst archeologists themselves.

See: "Motel of the Mysteries" by David Macaulay

> "that the toilet seat is a sacred collar one must wear before shouting, down the hole, to the gods below"

https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/162247/humorous-st...

See also paleontologists, and "it was probably for attracting a mate and/or regulating body temperature".

Don't forget fertility rituals.

Similarly the overuse evolutionary biology.

Obviously this ... seemingly useless feature must have been ... crucial to survival of this species.

I guess Thomas Kuhn calls this ordinary science. Explanation within the framework. But it's incredibly dull

But in biology, any single feature is just a random mutation + not enough evolutionary pressure to weed it out. ('Crucial to survival' is a stretch.)

How can the evolutionary explanation be overused? It literally applies in case of and explains any single feature, no?

The equivalent of "this behavior too can be explained by the laws of natural selection" in physics would be "this object too follows the laws of Newtonian mechanics".

Usually solving the paradox (something looks redundant, but must be useful in some way) requires some creativity, but ultimately it's always a rather boring confirmation of the theory.

The danger of normal science is that scientists turn "it can be explained by the theory" into "it must be explained by the theory".

I mean, in general, yes that is true in biology.

The energy required to maintain bodily structures mean that they tend to be relevant to evolutionary fitness. There are very few structures that are entirely irrelevant, even if the specific difference in form between different populations may be the result of genetic drift.

That said, I think your example would work by replacing it with "sexual selection." Don't know why bird feathers have complex micro-structures allowing them to reflect UV light? Let's just call it "sexual selection."

Or when they find dicks, drawn, sculpted, or otherwise:

>it must be a fertility symbol

The ancients didn't do dick jokes/humour apparently.

Well the Indians still worship Shiva’s penis. Look up Shiva lingams. I like to think about what it would be like if Christians prayed to Jesus’ dick sometimes.

A very very large number of Christians have prayed if not to then at relics purported to be (parts of) Jesus' dick.

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

Lots of dick jokes are also fertility symbols / rituals today.

“ritualistic or religious”, and “ritual” has a very broad meaning. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ritual: “Even common actions like hand-shaking and saying "hello" may be termed as rituals.”

It almost boils down to “we can’t think of a way in which this got anybody (better) fed, clothed or housed”

Am totally imagining a futurama episode where everyone is trying to figure out what purpose the dodecahedron was created for and then Fry walks in and explains it was just a mass produced junk art like "live, laugh, love" made by Crate and Barrel.

Same here, but with Centrurion Rory Williams doing the explaining in Doctor Who.

It's a dog toy. Put treats in it, and the dog will spend hours nudging it around trying to get the tasty treats out :-p

Seriously though, it's obviously for measuring out spaghetti.

it's a human toy. ask what it is for and the humans will spend hours arguing about what purpose does it serve

I heard it was used to knit gloves somehow

Based on the polished rib bone / leatherwork precedent, I am going to presume these were fabric-softening dryer balls.

inb4 it was ancient fidget spinner

Durn, you beat me.

They are to portion noodles

Not to decide the outcome of fantasy combat?

Sex toy. Definitely sex toy.

It's kind of like a mix between the thunderdome and a thumb war, but also not.

Anything is a sex toy if you're brave enough.

That would explain the lack of records about them, at least.

No.

> it’s been buried for 1,700 years

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaghetti#History says:

> The first written record of pasta comes from the Talmud in the 5th century AD

> In the West, it may have first been worked into long, thin forms in Sicily around the 12th century

You must be fun at parties

Keeping the mystery alive is fun

Dungeons and Dragons dice.

Maybe a caltrop for 8-dimensional horses

prototype Lament Configuration

It's a model of the coronavirus.

> “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.”

That's funny. I think I stopped believing in God as a kid because in all the historical articles I read, it was clear that the people of the past just believed in superstition. It obviously follows that our current religions are also superstitions.

Mine came from realizing all of the religions have the same basic stories all credited to their deity as the cause, yet all saying the other deities didn't exist or were false gods.

Ah yes, that's the other good point. Really they are parts of the more general incoherency: "My religion is correct, while all the other religions, current or from the past, are mere superstition."

Then there's my favorite, Pascal's Wager: "Why not accept my particular God? What do you have to lose?" Advocates of the Wager never seem to consider what Zeus's opinion might be.

Your assumption is that the advocates of the Wager give a damn about Zeus to be begin with which seems flawed to me.

No that's not his assumption. Pascal's wager is supposed to be an argument to believe in "God", but it is too general. It doesn't determine in which god. So the argument doesn't work.

Why would Zeus care? The greek afterlife is a sort of pointless outcome to Pascal's wager so it isn't even worth factoring in.

Why would Zeus care?

Well, once you start asking questions like that, the whole thing starts to unravel. Just play along, don't rock the boat.

in this case, anything that archeologists cant explain is either religious or a cultural artifact.

Meaning: 'We don't really know what that is.'

I'm not religious either, but I don't think the logic holds up. Philosophers and scientists of the past came to all kinds of ridiculous conclusions, but it doesn't follow that utilitarianism or atomic theory are ridiculous.

I think these theories were always more sophisticated than religions. And the work of ancient philosophers is still not completely outdated, e.g. Aristotle's logic holds up, albeit in a limited domain. Moreover, the former theories have since further increased in sophistication, while religion didn't get significantly more sophisticated.

Though I admit your point is a good one and not so easily refuted. In general it is known as the "pessimistic meta-induction": Theories from the past were wrong, so we should think our current theories are wrong as well. See

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/realism-theory-change/#Di...

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/scientific-realism/#PessI...

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