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Comment by utf_8x | Hacker News Reader

Has anyone considered that it might've just been a novelty? A fancy paperweight? I wonder if, in a couple thousands of years, archeologists will wonder why some people owned a 10x10cm cube of tungsten...

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> Has anyone considered that it might've just been a novelty? A fancy paperweight?

This just got me thinking, it would likely take us hours to explain an ancient Roman what a "paperweight" is. The fact that paper a) exists, b) is our main writing support, and c) can be made so lightweight that a slight breeze can blow a stack of it away would be mind-blowing

Paperweights would be even greater use for Romans. As often they were wound up on scrolls which means that some item stopping them from wounding up again when unwound would be rather useful.

Long scrolls were normally read by unwrapping them from a stick, while wrapping them again on another stick, i.e. like magnetic tapes are read now.

So the two sticks kept the scroll unwound around the reading position.

They had papyrus so I don't think paper would have been that mind-blowing

They also used vellum/parchment.

Archaeologists do have a bias towards "if we don't know what it was, it was a religious artifact".

"Ancient Americans used to worship a monkey god they called Labubu. It is the only explanation for the prevalence of these terrifying idols."

I met a Labubu priestess in a bar a couple of weeks ago divulging the mysteries of the Labubu cult.

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