It is particularly confusing because, of course, Romans famously used short swords in battle. They’d have needed this if they used something like a great axe, but a short sword is just 1d6 damage…
> Because these dodecahedrons have been found in Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Great Britain, Hungary, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Switzerland — but not in Italy — Guggenberger views them as "Gallo-Roman products" with a possible origin in the Celtic tribes of the Roman Empire.
> Guggenberger views them as "Gallo-Roman products
Oh my, I’m getting flashbacks to this absurd Meeple copyright (edit: trademark) case for some reason due to the arguments that were used. It’s a really weird case if you’re into copyright (edit: trademark) law, which if you’re here on HN to read this, I’ll take the odds that you might be. Something about discussing stuff that may or may not be dice made me primed for that perhaps?
> Over 40 games with the word meeple in the title had been published as of 2024. Several games published by large game companies, like AEG and Asmodee, have even published games with the term in the titles, as well as adopting the token design commonly associated with the term, including such games as Mutant Meeples (2012), Terror in Meeple City (2013), the Meeple Circus series (2017-2021), and Meeples and Monsters (2022). This continued until 2019, when "MEEPLE" was registered as an EU trademark owned by Hans im Glück. The 2019 trademarking was objected to by, among others, gaming company CMON. The critics argued that the term has been used in common parlance, and the very shape of the meeple became commonplace in the industry. This resulted in the EU trademark exempting the category "toys and games"; however, Hans im Glück has since registered the term as a trademark in Germany for usage which does include toys and games, and the company also acquired the EU trademark for the shape of the ‘original’ meeple figure as used in Carcassonne. In 2024, the company Cogito Ergo Meeple received a cease and desist for unsanctioned use of the trademark, and decided to change the name of their upcoming game from Meeple Inc to Tabletop Inc, and the name of the company itself to Cotswold Games.
It goes on. I would try to shorten this but it’s just so silly that for it to make as little sense as it’s supposed to, I had to quote that much to be fair to the issue and how silly it is.
The most annoying thing for me is that Hans im Gluck didn't even create the term "meeple," that was coined by a writer with no affiliation to HiG, and adopted by the community.
How can you trademark something public that long after the fact, when it is clearly in common use to boot? Patents only give you a leeway of 1 year or less depending on the jurisdiction.
Do you know if this sort of nonsense is commonplace or is this a weird edge case?
My favorite theory so far is that the dodecahedrons were used to create metal chains.
A stay-at-home mom/pattern maker whose "eureka moment was visiting the Met in New York and seeing Roman jewelry with knitted chains" created a video confirming her theory was possible[0].
The glove theory is also good (and maybe the device was just multi-use?), as I seem to recall that the majority (all?) of these devices were found in colder/northern Roman settlements.
It seems the "wear pattern" on this example[1] from the UK matches what one might expect if you were to repeatedly wrap wire around the corner knobs.
With that said, its unclear that we'll ever know! (unless we find a grave with dodecahedrons and their products)
In my mind, a better explanation is that they were templates for personally fitted non-metal gloves. The template could be given to a knitter to receive exactly fitting gloves each time. Metal chain would have been difficult to detach from the template, but knit natural yarn would have stretched.
Of course, the end products would not have survived to our time.
This theory explains many things about the object:
- the dodecahedrons have been found all around Europe, but particularly in the north
- they are not in one standard size
- the hole sizings are a good match for fingers
- the same template can be used for both left and right hands, leaving one set of holes for some sort of stick to stand on
Gloves would have been very important clothing items in the northern parts of the empire, and in military use, they would have fallen apart quickly, necessitating their replacement from local sources.
Fingered leather gloves would have been prohibitively expensive if they were available at all, and fur gloves would not have been nimble enough for handling a sword and a shield, or for any other task requiring finger dexterity.
Since they would have been personal items, soldiers would have carried them wherever they were stationed, and kept them after their military careers. This would explain why they were also found in temperate and warm parts of the empire.
It's obvious that opinions are varied on what these were for. I wonder if the fact that they don't seem to appear in images or get mentioned in writing is some sort of clue. But that could mean anything from "so common not worth talking about" to "super secret usage we don't dare talk about".
Paper was rolled into scrolls, and that's why you find them everywhere, because just like today people communicated with one another.
If you need to leave a message you write it on a scroll and insert in a hole. You could have different sized holes for different sized messages / documents.
You could basically leave the mailbox on your desk and have people put messages there for you to read (or the other way around)
The bits on the corners simply keep it a bit off of the surface - important incase of any moisture, spills etc.
Nice try. This is similar to the candleholder hypothesis, and the answer is probably no. There are versions that have tiny holes and they cannot hold a scroll
or a candle.
Also, some experts say they are not actually from Romans although the popular name is Roman Dodecahedron.
As opposed to hole in a block of wood? Given these were metal and hard to craft, that would be like leaving a thousand-dollar pencil holder on one's desk all day.
>Dr Birley said many examples of stone and marble toilet benches existed from across the Roman Empire, but this is believed to be the only surviving wooden seat.
So the article you link says, in colloquial English terms, that stone and marble toilets from the period are pretty common but wooden toilet seats are basically all disintegrated. Only one (1) wooden seat is known to remain.
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...
> 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.
I watched something recently that showed it was for knitting chainmail, specifically tubular shapes. Someone demoed it and it seemed to work really well.
Yeah, the metal knitting solution makes the most sense for all use cases - in military camps, buried with women, etc. What sold me was the story of a woman who saw one and immediately knew how to use it. It explains the different sizes of the pegs and the holes in the middle, as well as why they never showed up in historical documents. The shape is clearly a nod to mathematical/religious values, but not required for its actual purpose.
But chainmail was a thing, so how did they manufacture it without knitting? Maybe “knitting” is just a way of describing this, while the knitting you're thinking of is specifically knitting involving textiles.
Chainmail is made from individual rings. Romans made it from punched out metal rings alternating with rings made of wire and then ends of those rings made out of wire together. Not really too much riveting you can do with textiles. Well maybe plastics, but they did not have plastics.
How parochial. My oldest brother came back with a block with a hole cut in it, with 4 nails, wanting to buy yarn. Soon me, and my two brothers were using all of our nervous energy cranking out red, blue and rainbow colored finger tubes by the dozen. We gave them to someone who knew how to crochet, and were given plastic blocks to knit the hands, each in our size, in a months time, we each had three pairs of warm gloves for the mornings. We gave the blocks to our younger cousins in Canada, and they cranked out enough gloves for classrooms of children.
So when I saw these devices, I knew exactly what they were for:
1. Making gloves.
2. Confusing people who never had used a knitting block, and
3. causing un-due speculation.
Why no wear on the nob necks? Soft wool. Our blocks used high carbon steel finishing nails, which never wore, but even brass, would at first polish, and then would patina over, leaving no marks.
Why no hooks? for finishing? Those would have been made of wood, and like other looms, would have disappeared. what they should be looking for is collections of brass nails.
"Wool was the most important fiber in the Roman world."
Maybe one shop made these in a big city. Adventurous men bought them, brought them home and gave them to their wife. A great novelty noone has seen at home. So precious they bring them to their grave.
1) They're not found with wear-marks, so they couldn't have been done for anything laborious like wire-weaving.
2) They've got no size markings and don't match each other, so they couldn't have been used for anything standardized. The holes of opposing sides don't have matching sizes.
3) Platonic solids have religious significance, so they may have been deliberately impractical (but if it's a tool where's the practical peasant version of it? Like a series of plates?)
4) They're found primarily in and around Rome's Celtic holdings, not Rome itself.
5) They're expensive so they're probably not just measuring grapes.
So the first question is, beyond cultural significance, why make them a platonic solid?
It guarantees the distance between the opposing sides is consistent, while allowing you to carry 6 different hole-pairs all with that same "distance" in a single object. But it can't be a measuring tool because of fact (2).
And if there's no good reason for it to be a platonic solid, why haven't they found any non-platonic-solid versions of them?
Maybe it's the gamer in me but I think it's some kind of gambling game based on the irregularity of coinage. Roll the thingamajig, drop in a coin that goes through the top but not the bottom. I mean it was found around military camps and caches of coins, right? Casino game.
Not being standardized doesn't necessarily rule out being a measuring tool. They could've each been crafted for a specific purpose, but using the same technique for measuring.
Would be nice if there were a database of precise measurements of those discovered so far. The paper suggesting they may have been a dioptron[1] has a small sample data, but not enough to make any conclusions.
> Would be nice if there were a database of precise measurements of those discovered so far.
I was thinking same. At least if we knew the side-lengths and radii of the circles (particularly the opposing circles) we could see if there are any consistent ratios.
My favorite theory that I've seen to explain these has been that they were a token showing the prowess/status of a metalworker or stoneworker - a kind of verifier of skill of the individual. In a mostly pre-literate society, where craftsmen could be itinerant, this theory made the most sense to me.
The big question there is why these metalworkers showed up in only one part of the empire, one of the less wealthy regions, and not one with some unique needs for bronze casting. Note that these are cast bronze, using the term "metalwork" conflates smiths who work with tin, gold, bronze, and iron, but those were different professions. This isn't a blacksmith showing off his ironworking skills, it's a person of a different profession casting fine bronze. Hard to say why you'd have mendicant bronze workers casting things, I don't know of any records of but it's a very limited area for so many finds, while this same work was needed all over the empire, why nothing in Spain, Italy, North Africa, or the eastern provinces where they'd need the same? Why just that one highly restricted range within Rome that coincides with Gallia and Britain?
I have always thought that if they were candle holders it would make perfect sense. And they would be much more needed in the northern part of the Roman Empire than southern. And this is why no accompanying materials have been found in the dirt. Because wax is malleable and would disintegrate over time.
But yeah why would they have ever gone to the south?
You don't need 12 holes of varying sizes to hold a candle, and these would have been disproportionately expensive to make for that role.
The problem is that one can poke similar holes in other proposals. Personally I favour the "proof of skill" explanation but there are also arguments against that.
The Romans mostly used oil lamps rather than candles, the use of candles as a popular light source developed among early medieval Christians who started to use them in their churches after the olive oil supplies dried up in the late/post Western Roman empire. These were too early to be tied to candle use (and strangely distributed geographically). Also the Romans had no kind of industrial standardization or production, every candle was hand made and unique, all the wax/tallow was valuable, so the later Romans who would have used candles would have used a candle holder designed to capture any lost fuel to reuse.
I would expect a lot more variability if this would be the purpose. For example, instead of corner balls, why not be a little creative and make them cones. Also, the holes in the faces always being of different sizes is peculiar. Then there's the icosahedron with balls of different sizes. Reading the wikipedia page only deepens the sense of mystery, but some use in astrological divination or the like seems most plausible to me.
Expecting variability is a weak argument in my book. If there is some benchmark for skill, like a dovetail joint, the craftsperson is not going to "go rogue" but rather show the discipline required to exactly recreate this thing.
(So many modelers try to recreate the Millennium Falcon from scratch for example when, given their skills at modeling, I've never understood why they all just don't go off and come up with a creation of their own design. But it's kind of a Hello World for modeling perhaps?)
While I don't endorse this particular theory, considering that something like a gotshall block or a fizzbuzz is proof of a certain skillset, it is certainly possible the corner balls being cones is not a comparable proof of work
Still doesn't make sense to me. Those programming tasks have to be a certain way because they have a very specific use outside of the testing. If that's what you imply, then we're none the wiser, still having left unexplained what that use might be.
In the masterproof example, the purpose of the sphered joint is whether the maker can draw and round every sphere while not compromising the rest of the shape. It is not the end shape that is important, it is how the craftsperson is able to execute it
Apprentice projects are still a thing where the apprentice system is still in place. It varies depending on industry but you will be given a low level mostly pointless high tolerance task you must complete(make a perfect(we will verify it with a micrometer) cube out of steel using only a hand file), this mainly proves you have the correct mindset to work in that industry.
Having said that, these dodecahedrons are complex enough, they would probably a journeyman level project at minimum.
Personally, I like the theory they are surveying/measuring instruments, probably coupled with enough mysticism and numerology that decorative versions were made to satisfy the non-professional market. think something like masonic emblems. Noting that the guilds for these sort of things were full of trade secrets and obscure rituals.
I can't believe it wasn't documented anywhere at least once. We can piece together Roman GDP from records, but no one ever said what these gizmos were??
History is full of stuff so commonplace that no one ever wrote it down. One example (mentioned in passing here [1]) is that from the Medieval period up until the mid-19th century, European condiment sets were made with three shakers: salt, pepper, and well, no one is really sure.
Another is the rune 'Peorð'.[2] All the Anglo-Saxon runes have names in the Rune Poem, all the rest of which are known words in the corpus.But 'Peorð' isn't recorded anywhere else. No one knows what it means.
And our descendants are going to hate us for doing this on an even more massive scale.
Most of our info is encoded digitally now. We put everything on some cloud server and that company gets shut down. Whoops. We change formats somewhere along the way and nobody converts old things over. Whoops. Documentation for implementing a decoder for that data was all stored online and maintained by one nerd who maintained the open source project all on their own. That will be arcane knowledge 5 years after they die. More so 50 years and 1000 years later.
And that's not even taking into account that data simply rots away over time, and things we don't actively copy over will be lost. Plus disasters like massive solar flares that could wipe everything. We've had a few solar flares that knocked out electricity before. We think that's about as bad as it gets, but the fact is, we don't know just how bad solar flares can be. We haven't had any way to measure them before fairly modern times and people didn't have any devices that would be affected by them.
If (when) Google dies, there's zero chance everything on Youtube gets backed up. There'll be a 2 week notice and then it's all gone. Only things with active fanbases will have data copied. And once people forget about that content, it'll also fade away with time.
A lot of people here will think, "Nah, no way. Someone will definitely save that stuff and it'll be fine." That's what our ancestors thought, too. "Someone will do it. Why worry? Who cares?"
> European condiment sets were made with three shakers: salt, pepper, and well, no one is really sure.
Mustard seems to be the agreed answer for the third condiment, though some people hold out for sugar instead. (Sugar seems to be unlikely because it wasn't cheap enough to be commonplace until after the third shaker fell out of use).
Literacy was much lower, and writing much more expensive. People didn't communicate through writing unless it was really necessary, and were generally much more selective about what to write down.
So of this was a tradition among craftsman, taught and shown off in person, nobody would have seen a need to write about it.
Whereas tax records were how the state ensured it got its money and citizens proved they had already paid - everyone wanted that written down.
I saw a video by an expert on Medieval weapons, demonstrating various arrowheads and their uses. For one of them, he said that we know the Europeans had it because it was pictured in Medieval manuscripts, but there is no record of what it was used for.
"For the time being, the most likely interpretation of the dodecahedron is as a cosmic, all-encompassing symbol," Guggenberger wrote, with "a function comparable to an amulet."
Great theory. But as you can see in the picture:
1. This thing is very carefully crafted.
2. The holes have different sizes.
I don't think this is by chance. There must be a reason for this and the explanation, be it coin counting, knitting or whatever, has to take this into account.
A coin measurer is still my goto explanation. Especially with most models having an inset for the coin to rest on / fit in. The hole itself is then just to quickly/easily get the coin out again with your finger.
With so many different coin sizes and types in the empire, I think this makes most sense.
Wikipedia also mentions this:
> Several dodecahedra were found in coin hoards, suggesting either that their owners considered them valuable objects, or that their use was connected with coins — as, for example, for easily checking coins fit a certain diameter and were not clipped.
If you look at ancient coins, you'll see that they didn't have identical sizes. They were minted from a standard weight of metal, but the manual minting tools of the time couldn't guarantee precise thickness and shape like we have today with machine-made coins. So a dodecahedron with precisely cut circular holes is not a good way to check your coins.
Also if they did have identical sizes and there was a need to measure those sizes, we would expect a lot of much simpler devices to measure them - say a flat piece of metal with differently sized holes. Fancy versions like the dodecahedron might exist, but they would be outnumbered by the utilitarian devices.
Knitting - specifically knitting jewellery - explains that. Different holes allow you to create chains of different sizes, which in case of jewellery, also does not need to be standardised (lack of any standard or markings makes theories of some measurement device unlikely). That also explains regional popularity and proximity to gold (several of those items were found close to places were gold coins were produced or stored).
This is a solved case, they were used for textiles. But to admit this would break history, so instead it is constantly rattled academically. Put one next to the Voynich Manuscript in the Museum or Jurassic Technology.
The cause behind this narrative hustle is the industrial historical arrogation which teaches that knitting was not invented until 1000 years after "The Romans". They had textiles, weaving, but no knitting.
This is early mere patent protection during the capitol rush of industrialism, claiming devices which were not actually invented as pretended, and therefor should have no claim to copyrights. The cotton gin was not invented in 1793.
Moreover it is a supremely ignorant and abstract notion, showing how detached academia is from reality. Anybody with time on their hands and some vines may invent weaving, knotting, knitting, and with metal slivers many ways to make pins. There has never been a people without this technology.
Coming up with a possible use is a very long way from being able to declare this "solved". There are many such claims. For the idea you discuss, a problem is that the projections were balls - not the easiest of things to dislodge loops from, which you would have to do at every step.
My understanding is that this would be equivalent to loom knitting (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spool_knitting). Is it possible that loom knitting was invented earlier but needle knitting was not?
I'm a little lost here. Your argument is that this is part of a grand conspiracy in academia to protect. . . big textile?
The thing about conspiracies is that there tends to be a purpose behind them. What would be the point of this one? That the cotton gin couldn't be patented? How would that possibly impact any single person today? What would be the incentive for continuing this conspiracy?
In general, historians are pretty quick to correct mistakes from their past interpretations of facts. So why would this be different?
That would be 2025 logic, but at the time it was not "big textile", it was universal control over industrialization. As if big textile is any different than big oil, all the same owners today as in 1800, owning everything and protecting that claim to rights.
The point however is not that of protecting copyright, but that copyright protection was invented to usurp technology which was not truly invented. This is how controlling history controls the present, for if all roads lead back to "we invented this and own it" then all roads forwards must pay that toll. If the narrative were not true, then the premise could not hold.
The fact that it has no clearly discernible purpose is evidence for it being something to be enjoyed for aesthetics, spiritual purposes, or, most likely I think, entertainment. Attach some string and it is a durable, highly portable puzzle and even two-player game: https://tinkerings.org/2020/06/17/roman-dodecahedrons-part-i...
I love how this mystery has captured the imaginations of this generation.
I've started to see this object appear in various media, like sitting on a desk behind a professor, or in a studio of a Roman intellectual when time traveling to that era.
I mean... they would be wrong though. I get what you're saying, but the accurate interpretation is that our civilization doesn't care about excess, not that we worship it.
> We have what looks to be a man, perhaps in middle age. A few things are notable. First, he wears a white toga (the standard formal Roman folded cloth garment, draped from the left shoulder) and a white tunic with a purple stripe (two, in fact, the other is concealed beneath the toga). When I show my students this picture, I joke that the man might as well have worn his, “I AM A ROMAN CITIZEN” t-shirt; the impact of the clothing here is similarly blunt. While a fellow might wear a toga in a variety of colors for fashion’s sake, this solid-white toga is the toga virilis: the distinctive formal dress of a Roman citizen. Meanwhile, that purple stripe on his tunic is the angustus clavus (or angusticlavius, literally ‘the narrow stripe’). That too was a bit of clothing reserved as a marker of status – whereas the toga virilis says “I am a Roman citizen” the angusticlavius says “I am of the equestrian order” (nothing to do directly with horses by this point, it merely indicates wealth and that the individual isn’t involved in politics in Rome). In short then, this man – or more correctly, his surviving family who commissioned the portrait – is telling us, in no uncertain terms, “I was a wealthy Roman citizen.” I want to stress that point: there was no real distinctive national appearance that indicated a Roman – no particularly Roman hair color or what have you – but there was a distinctive dress that indicated citizenship, which only citizens were entitled to wear and which was so important the Romans went so far as to call themselves the gens togata (‘the people of the toga’).
> of course that fact about clothing is really very handy for us if we want images from the provinces in color where we can know with a high degree of certainty that the subjects are Roman citizens, since anyone wearing either the toga virilis or a tunic with that clavus is declaring their citizenship (in a way that would get them in rather a lot of trouble if they were lying!)
This wasn't the space for subtlety; it was the space for strict formal legal controls. If the dodecahedrons were serving that purpose, we'd know about it.
That is what I would assume as well since these are cast items. That said, if this was a "skills test" of sort, it would be possible but exceedingly difficult to cast using hard molds and sand.
Its obviously for surveying, different sized holes allow it to be aligned a precise distance from the eye, then some reference object (probably a wide rod or board) can be sighted. Different sized hole pairs allow for different reference distances with the same reference object.
This seems completely obvious to me, but apparently its not?
If someone can find precise measurements of one of these I will bet that when you compute the distances for a reference object when sighted through different hole pairs it makes simple integer ratios.
Given that the sides of the dodecahedron aren't parallel to one another and you therefore cannot look through it from one side to the other (only two side are parallel), your "completely obvious" theory falls pretty flat. Kinda seems like you arrived at this "completely obvious" conclusion without actually examining one. If this is "completely obviously" what it's for, why would they go to the trouble of putting little balls on every corner? Why would they make them consistently of bronze instead of other materials? You should think a little harder before pronouncing things "completely obvious."
There are holes in the sides of the dodecahedron of various diameter giving you six ways to look through the shape (from smaller-to-larger diameter hole).
The balls you mention are another interesting point — why they would even be there for a "range finder".
I saw them in Singapore before they went viral, I wish I had grabbed a box and milked that fad. I wonder when the YoYo will roll back in to popularity again.
>I wonder when the YoYo will roll back in to popularity again.
About three years ago. Every kid that exists in my area had to have a butterfly yoyo. Some convinced their parents to spend hundreds on trick yoyo's. That fad died after about 10 months, though.
I didn't know that so I went and read about them. I could not find a single source that definitively states that "it's a tool for making fingers in knitted gloves."
That there are YouTube videos showing it being used to do exactly that does NOT mean that was its intended or original function.
In fact, all of the sources I consulted stated that your proposed function is one of approximately 50 possible and speculated uses but that there is still no conclusive evidence as to the device's original function.
Thus, I find your characterization of the article as "click bait" to be wide of the mark.
It's a nifty theory, but unfortunately, it isn't true.
If it were used for that, there would be wear at the bases of the little knobs as the yarn rubs along it. None of the dodecahedrons we have show any wear in those areas.
That's a hypothesis amongst others, but it's just that, with essentially no hard evidence backing it up.
And there's counter-evidence (if mostly circumstantial) in that the first known knitted artefacts are from centuries later, to say nothing of knitting spools which they would predate by some 1300 years.
This hypothesis also lacks a lot of explanatory power e.g. why did some of them find (and take) room in coin hoards? Why have they been found all over Gallia, Germania, and Britannia, but not Italia, Hispania, or the Oriens?
> why did some of them find (and take) room in coin hoards?
People who had access to gold used some of it to create jewellery.
> Why have they been found all over Gallia, Germania, and Britannia, but not Italia, Hispania, or the Oriens?
Certain types of jewellery can be found in certain regions. This can be attributed to specific trading network or local preferences. I don't know if that could be proven, but makes sense to me.
Every time someone posts this article someone smugly says "it's a tool for knitting" and then everyone speculates and points to folks saying it's not a tool for knitting.
In my estimation this is amost certainly correct. It accounts for most if not all of the observed properties of these objects. The other suggestions only ever account for one or two. But lazy journalists, aided by AI, will no doubt continue to treat all the suggestions as equally likely.
Knitting hadn't been invented when these were around - we know the Romans made gloves, socks, and other garments with a great deal of supporting evidence, there's not a single example of a mitten, nor of any kind of knitting like this. The Romans wove cloth on a loom and stitched it together. There's no signs of wear on any examples of the dodecahedra, so it's not a hand tool that comes into contact with wool or metals which would leave at least micro-abrasions. Whatever these were they were not a hand tool. It snows in north Italy, why wouldn't they need gloves in some places where it snows outside of Gallia? The knitting tool is among the weakest hypotheses in terms of evidence.
If journalists were to refer to these as a knitting tool it would be because they were lazy and didn't do any research into that hypothesis. In general journalists writing on this tend to acknowledge scholarly opinion that their use is unknown and hypotheses about it are speculative. The lazy journalists are the ones who write about how some Youtuber decided it's a knitting tool or whatever and uncritically repeat this without researching scholarly consensus or what historians and archaeologists have to say about the tool.
>It accounts for most if not all of the observed properties of these objects
1. How does it account for the different-sized holes on the dodecahedron's faces? Before you answer "to knit for different sized fingers" let me remind you that knitting doesn't work like that, that is, the diameter of the final product is determined by the distance of the pegs, which is the same across all the faces.
2. How does it account for the similar-looking Roman icosahedrons?
3. How does it account for the fact that knitting was invented hundreds of years after the fall of the Roman Empire?
This is some Joe Rogan-tier crank theory, that no self-respecting archaeologist takes seriously. It's literally based on a single YouTube video, yet for some reason it gets endlessly repeated, probably because it makes people feel good that a random grandma figured out something that the fat cats of the archaeologist establishment failed to crack.
This isn't knitting, it is technically nalbinding, and yes the holes are used to create different sized fingers and it works perfectly well for that purpose.
Why not? Egyptian pharaohs were buried with (among other things) food and everyday necessities, because it was believed they'd take them along to the afterlife for use there.
I feel like "why not" is not a sufficient answer, especially when trying to explain a single object. The pharaohs were buried with everything, including people, so that's not a great analogy.
> Archaeologists have recovered dodecahedrons from the graves of men and women, in coin hoards and even in refuse heaps, so a blanket explanation for their use has not been found.
There's no indication these were the only things in graves that I can see.
Any time I see something like this, I'm reminded of a tongue-in-cheek* post I saw of someone showing off the fancy "egg separator" they found at a thrift store (it was a chastity cage).
It is particularly confusing because, of course, Romans famously used short swords in battle. They’d have needed this if they used something like a great axe, but a short sword is just 1d6 damage…
as everyone who’s played DnD knows.
Maybe they used two-sided short swords.
This comment, alone, deserves some statue made in your honor for the very most snarky comment on Hacker news EVER.
Roll for initiative.
I think it flew safely over my head.
Not sure where the parent is seeing “snarky”. I was just adding to the silliness by observing that two sides times a D6 equals a D12.
Although, 2d6 has much less variance!
2D6 isn’t the cross product of D2 and D6.
Obviously someone was playing a barbarian
I mean,
> Because these dodecahedrons have been found in Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Great Britain, Hungary, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Switzerland — but not in Italy — Guggenberger views them as "Gallo-Roman products" with a possible origin in the Celtic tribes of the Roman Empire.
Sounds like you might be right!
Given the overlapping areas of interest, I wonder if this is a surprisingly widely gotten “joke” that coincidence has played on us.
> Guggenberger views them as "Gallo-Roman products
Oh my, I’m getting flashbacks to this absurd Meeple copyright (edit: trademark) case for some reason due to the arguments that were used. It’s a really weird case if you’re into copyright (edit: trademark) law, which if you’re here on HN to read this, I’ll take the odds that you might be. Something about discussing stuff that may or may not be dice made me primed for that perhaps?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meeple#History
> Over 40 games with the word meeple in the title had been published as of 2024. Several games published by large game companies, like AEG and Asmodee, have even published games with the term in the titles, as well as adopting the token design commonly associated with the term, including such games as Mutant Meeples (2012), Terror in Meeple City (2013), the Meeple Circus series (2017-2021), and Meeples and Monsters (2022). This continued until 2019, when "MEEPLE" was registered as an EU trademark owned by Hans im Glück. The 2019 trademarking was objected to by, among others, gaming company CMON. The critics argued that the term has been used in common parlance, and the very shape of the meeple became commonplace in the industry. This resulted in the EU trademark exempting the category "toys and games"; however, Hans im Glück has since registered the term as a trademark in Germany for usage which does include toys and games, and the company also acquired the EU trademark for the shape of the ‘original’ meeple figure as used in Carcassonne. In 2024, the company Cogito Ergo Meeple received a cease and desist for unsanctioned use of the trademark, and decided to change the name of their upcoming game from Meeple Inc to Tabletop Inc, and the name of the company itself to Cotswold Games.
It goes on. I would try to shorten this but it’s just so silly that for it to make as little sense as it’s supposed to, I had to quote that much to be fair to the issue and how silly it is.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=izDgyd2tDmY
The most annoying thing for me is that Hans im Gluck didn't even create the term "meeple," that was coined by a writer with no affiliation to HiG, and adopted by the community.
Yeah, that was the real issue to me.
Great move EU. Surely, ignoring such a big market would lead to 0 consequences, right?
How can you trademark something public that long after the fact, when it is clearly in common use to boot? Patents only give you a leeway of 1 year or less depending on the jurisdiction.
Do you know if this sort of nonsense is commonplace or is this a weird edge case?
But normal people only have a handful of HPs and don't last long when wounded in a foot battle with enemies all around and nowhere to shelter.
Historical evidence demonstrates that those short swords served Romans well.
DnD doesn’t take into account close combat
My favorite theory so far is that the dodecahedrons were used to create metal chains.
A stay-at-home mom/pattern maker whose "eureka moment was visiting the Met in New York and seeing Roman jewelry with knitted chains" created a video confirming her theory was possible[0].
The glove theory is also good (and maybe the device was just multi-use?), as I seem to recall that the majority (all?) of these devices were found in colder/northern Roman settlements.
It seems the "wear pattern" on this example[1] from the UK matches what one might expect if you were to repeatedly wrap wire around the corner knobs.
With that said, its unclear that we'll ever know! (unless we find a grave with dodecahedrons and their products)
[0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lADTLozKm0I
[1]https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=1325774111601067&id=...
In my mind, a better explanation is that they were templates for personally fitted non-metal gloves. The template could be given to a knitter to receive exactly fitting gloves each time. Metal chain would have been difficult to detach from the template, but knit natural yarn would have stretched.
Of course, the end products would not have survived to our time.
This theory explains many things about the object:
- the dodecahedrons have been found all around Europe, but particularly in the north
- they are not in one standard size
- the hole sizings are a good match for fingers
- the same template can be used for both left and right hands, leaving one set of holes for some sort of stick to stand on
Gloves would have been very important clothing items in the northern parts of the empire, and in military use, they would have fallen apart quickly, necessitating their replacement from local sources.
Fingered leather gloves would have been prohibitively expensive if they were available at all, and fur gloves would not have been nimble enough for handling a sword and a shield, or for any other task requiring finger dexterity.
Since they would have been personal items, soldiers would have carried them wherever they were stationed, and kept them after their military careers. This would explain why they were also found in temperate and warm parts of the empire.
Have you got a mirror for the FB link? It requires a login.
Press the X to close the login modal, then you can still read the post and its comments.
Related. Others?
Solved? The Roman Dodecahedron [video] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40960287 - July 2024 (2 comments)
The Mysterious Roman Dodecahedron Was Possibly Just for Knitting - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40959715 - July 2024 (0 comments)
The Enigma of the Roman Dodecahedron Is Revealed - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40853737 - July 2024 (2 comments)
Roman Dodecahedron - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40829091 - June 2024 (1 comment)
'Great enigma': Amateur archaeologists unearth mysterious Roman object - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40205014 - April 2024 (1 comment)
Another Roman dodecahedron has been unearthed in England - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39102069 - Jan 2024 (381 comments)
The mysterious dodecahedrons of the Roman Empire - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35937540 - May 2023 (99 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)
It's obvious that opinions are varied on what these were for. I wonder if the fact that they don't seem to appear in images or get mentioned in writing is some sort of clue. But that could mean anything from "so common not worth talking about" to "super secret usage we don't dare talk about".
It's a Roman mailbox.
Paper was rolled into scrolls, and that's why you find them everywhere, because just like today people communicated with one another.
If you need to leave a message you write it on a scroll and insert in a hole. You could have different sized holes for different sized messages / documents.
You could basically leave the mailbox on your desk and have people put messages there for you to read (or the other way around)
The bits on the corners simply keep it a bit off of the surface - important incase of any moisture, spills etc.
Nice try. This is similar to the candleholder hypothesis, and the answer is probably no. There are versions that have tiny holes and they cannot hold a scroll or a candle. Also, some experts say they are not actually from Romans although the popular name is Roman Dodecahedron.
As opposed to hole in a block of wood? Given these were metal and hard to craft, that would be like leaving a thousand-dollar pencil holder on one's desk all day.
Wood stuff from the era is basically all disintegrated. Metal lasts a long time.
And there are people on this planet with solid gold pens in their pocket. People today love flaunting their wealth, and so did people 2000 years ago.
>Wood stuff from the era is basically all disintegrated.
False.
>Archaeologists have unearthed a 2,000-year-old, perfectly preserved wooden toilet seat at a Roman fort on Hadrian's Wall in Northumberland.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-tyne-28956328
>Dr Birley said many examples of stone and marble toilet benches existed from across the Roman Empire, but this is believed to be the only surviving wooden seat.
So the article you link says, in colloquial English terms, that stone and marble toilets from the period are pretty common but wooden toilet seats are basically all disintegrated. Only one (1) wooden seat is known to remain.
That some individual artifacts in lucky conditions have survived does not invalidate the statement that most don't
having been there does. there is no shortage of old wood and pottery
believe fewer unevidenced claims
Unevidenced...?
A bit like Roman Post-It Notes? "Aulus - the lads are going for a jug of Falernian after work. Meet us at the Forum."
They are not found everywhere, they're concentrated in whereabouts of today's France and Britain.
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...
> 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.
I watched something recently that showed it was for knitting chainmail, specifically tubular shapes. Someone demoed it and it seemed to work really well.
Yeah, the metal knitting solution makes the most sense for all use cases - in military camps, buried with women, etc. What sold me was the story of a woman who saw one and immediately knew how to use it. It explains the different sizes of the pegs and the holes in the middle, as well as why they never showed up in historical documents. The shape is clearly a nod to mathematical/religious values, but not required for its actual purpose.
The only problem is that knitting wasn't invented until hundreds of years later.
But chainmail was a thing, so how did they manufacture it without knitting? Maybe “knitting” is just a way of describing this, while the knitting you're thinking of is specifically knitting involving textiles.
Chainmail is made from individual rings. Romans made it from punched out metal rings alternating with rings made of wire and then ends of those rings made out of wire together. Not really too much riveting you can do with textiles. Well maybe plastics, but they did not have plastics.
Possibly used for knitting?
How parochial. My oldest brother came back with a block with a hole cut in it, with 4 nails, wanting to buy yarn. Soon me, and my two brothers were using all of our nervous energy cranking out red, blue and rainbow colored finger tubes by the dozen. We gave them to someone who knew how to crochet, and were given plastic blocks to knit the hands, each in our size, in a months time, we each had three pairs of warm gloves for the mornings. We gave the blocks to our younger cousins in Canada, and they cranked out enough gloves for classrooms of children.
So when I saw these devices, I knew exactly what they were for: 1. Making gloves. 2. Confusing people who never had used a knitting block, and 3. causing un-due speculation.
Why no wear on the nob necks? Soft wool. Our blocks used high carbon steel finishing nails, which never wore, but even brass, would at first polish, and then would patina over, leaving no marks.
Why no hooks? for finishing? Those would have been made of wood, and like other looms, would have disappeared. what they should be looking for is collections of brass nails.
"Wool was the most important fiber in the Roman world."
https://sites.google.com/view/dulciasromancloset/roman-texti...
This ^ I had seen an article discussing this many years ago, and it seemed as the most plausible of the explanations.
Maybe one shop made these in a big city. Adventurous men bought them, brought them home and gave them to their wife. A great novelty noone has seen at home. So precious they bring them to their grave.
The things that make it tricky:
1) They're not found with wear-marks, so they couldn't have been done for anything laborious like wire-weaving.
2) They've got no size markings and don't match each other, so they couldn't have been used for anything standardized. The holes of opposing sides don't have matching sizes.
3) Platonic solids have religious significance, so they may have been deliberately impractical (but if it's a tool where's the practical peasant version of it? Like a series of plates?)
4) They're found primarily in and around Rome's Celtic holdings, not Rome itself.
5) They're expensive so they're probably not just measuring grapes.
So the first question is, beyond cultural significance, why make them a platonic solid?
It guarantees the distance between the opposing sides is consistent, while allowing you to carry 6 different hole-pairs all with that same "distance" in a single object. But it can't be a measuring tool because of fact (2).
And if there's no good reason for it to be a platonic solid, why haven't they found any non-platonic-solid versions of them?
Maybe it's the gamer in me but I think it's some kind of gambling game based on the irregularity of coinage. Roll the thingamajig, drop in a coin that goes through the top but not the bottom. I mean it was found around military camps and caches of coins, right? Casino game.
Not being standardized doesn't necessarily rule out being a measuring tool. They could've each been crafted for a specific purpose, but using the same technique for measuring.
Would be nice if there were a database of precise measurements of those discovered so far. The paper suggesting they may have been a dioptron[1] has a small sample data, but not enough to make any conclusions.
[1]:https://arxiv.org/pdf/1206.0946
> Would be nice if there were a database of precise measurements of those discovered so far.
I was thinking same. At least if we knew the side-lengths and radii of the circles (particularly the opposing circles) we could see if there are any consistent ratios.
Interesting observation from the Jublains one:
The ratio of these two holes: 1.619, or 0.617. Strikingly close to the golden ratio. It's ~0.05mm out.My favorite theory that I've seen to explain these has been that they were a token showing the prowess/status of a metalworker or stoneworker - a kind of verifier of skill of the individual. In a mostly pre-literate society, where craftsmen could be itinerant, this theory made the most sense to me.
The big question there is why these metalworkers showed up in only one part of the empire, one of the less wealthy regions, and not one with some unique needs for bronze casting. Note that these are cast bronze, using the term "metalwork" conflates smiths who work with tin, gold, bronze, and iron, but those were different professions. This isn't a blacksmith showing off his ironworking skills, it's a person of a different profession casting fine bronze. Hard to say why you'd have mendicant bronze workers casting things, I don't know of any records of but it's a very limited area for so many finds, while this same work was needed all over the empire, why nothing in Spain, Italy, North Africa, or the eastern provinces where they'd need the same? Why just that one highly restricted range within Rome that coincides with Gallia and Britain?
I have always thought that if they were candle holders it would make perfect sense. And they would be much more needed in the northern part of the Roman Empire than southern. And this is why no accompanying materials have been found in the dirt. Because wax is malleable and would disintegrate over time.
But yeah why would they have ever gone to the south?
You don't need 12 holes of varying sizes to hold a candle, and these would have been disproportionately expensive to make for that role.
The problem is that one can poke similar holes in other proposals. Personally I favour the "proof of skill" explanation but there are also arguments against that.
The Romans mostly used oil lamps rather than candles, the use of candles as a popular light source developed among early medieval Christians who started to use them in their churches after the olive oil supplies dried up in the late/post Western Roman empire. These were too early to be tied to candle use (and strangely distributed geographically). Also the Romans had no kind of industrial standardization or production, every candle was hand made and unique, all the wax/tallow was valuable, so the later Romans who would have used candles would have used a candle holder designed to capture any lost fuel to reuse.
Then the balls on the corners were merely decorative? Maybe.
I would expect a lot more variability if this would be the purpose. For example, instead of corner balls, why not be a little creative and make them cones. Also, the holes in the faces always being of different sizes is peculiar. Then there's the icosahedron with balls of different sizes. Reading the wikipedia page only deepens the sense of mystery, but some use in astrological divination or the like seems most plausible to me.
Expecting variability is a weak argument in my book. If there is some benchmark for skill, like a dovetail joint, the craftsperson is not going to "go rogue" but rather show the discipline required to exactly recreate this thing.
(So many modelers try to recreate the Millennium Falcon from scratch for example when, given their skills at modeling, I've never understood why they all just don't go off and come up with a creation of their own design. But it's kind of a Hello World for modeling perhaps?)
While I don't endorse this particular theory, considering that something like a gotshall block or a fizzbuzz is proof of a certain skillset, it is certainly possible the corner balls being cones is not a comparable proof of work
Still doesn't make sense to me. Those programming tasks have to be a certain way because they have a very specific use outside of the testing. If that's what you imply, then we're none the wiser, still having left unexplained what that use might be.
In the masterproof example, the purpose of the sphered joint is whether the maker can draw and round every sphere while not compromising the rest of the shape. It is not the end shape that is important, it is how the craftsperson is able to execute it
Apprentice projects are still a thing where the apprentice system is still in place. It varies depending on industry but you will be given a low level mostly pointless high tolerance task you must complete(make a perfect(we will verify it with a micrometer) cube out of steel using only a hand file), this mainly proves you have the correct mindset to work in that industry.
Having said that, these dodecahedrons are complex enough, they would probably a journeyman level project at minimum.
Personally, I like the theory they are surveying/measuring instruments, probably coupled with enough mysticism and numerology that decorative versions were made to satisfy the non-professional market. think something like masonic emblems. Noting that the guilds for these sort of things were full of trade secrets and obscure rituals.
I can't believe it wasn't documented anywhere at least once. We can piece together Roman GDP from records, but no one ever said what these gizmos were??
History is full of stuff so commonplace that no one ever wrote it down. One example (mentioned in passing here [1]) is that from the Medieval period up until the mid-19th century, European condiment sets were made with three shakers: salt, pepper, and well, no one is really sure.
Another is the rune 'Peorð'.[2] All the Anglo-Saxon runes have names in the Rune Poem, all the rest of which are known words in the corpus.But 'Peorð' isn't recorded anywhere else. No one knows what it means.
1.https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/26482/mind-boggling-fact...
2. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peor%C3%B0
And our descendants are going to hate us for doing this on an even more massive scale.
Most of our info is encoded digitally now. We put everything on some cloud server and that company gets shut down. Whoops. We change formats somewhere along the way and nobody converts old things over. Whoops. Documentation for implementing a decoder for that data was all stored online and maintained by one nerd who maintained the open source project all on their own. That will be arcane knowledge 5 years after they die. More so 50 years and 1000 years later.
And that's not even taking into account that data simply rots away over time, and things we don't actively copy over will be lost. Plus disasters like massive solar flares that could wipe everything. We've had a few solar flares that knocked out electricity before. We think that's about as bad as it gets, but the fact is, we don't know just how bad solar flares can be. We haven't had any way to measure them before fairly modern times and people didn't have any devices that would be affected by them.
If (when) Google dies, there's zero chance everything on Youtube gets backed up. There'll be a 2 week notice and then it's all gone. Only things with active fanbases will have data copied. And once people forget about that content, it'll also fade away with time.
A lot of people here will think, "Nah, no way. Someone will definitely save that stuff and it'll be fine." That's what our ancestors thought, too. "Someone will do it. Why worry? Who cares?"
> European condiment sets were made with three shakers: salt, pepper, and well, no one is really sure.
Mustard seems to be the agreed answer for the third condiment, though some people hold out for sugar instead. (Sugar seems to be unlikely because it wasn't cheap enough to be commonplace until after the third shaker fell out of use).
I also like the Land of Punt, an entire country that nobody wrote down the location of
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_of_Punt
Literacy was much lower, and writing much more expensive. People didn't communicate through writing unless it was really necessary, and were generally much more selective about what to write down.
So of this was a tradition among craftsman, taught and shown off in person, nobody would have seen a need to write about it.
Whereas tax records were how the state ensured it got its money and citizens proved they had already paid - everyone wanted that written down.
Tax records don't get copied over and over again by generations of scribes.
True, but the sheer amount that was produced means that some, through fortunate circumstances, have been preserved to the present day:
https://www.richardcarrier.info/papyrus/
https://www.jstor.org/stable/44968442
I saw a video by an expert on Medieval weapons, demonstrating various arrowheads and their uses. For one of them, he said that we know the Europeans had it because it was pictured in Medieval manuscripts, but there is no record of what it was used for.
Only 3 library shelves worth of classical Roman writing survives.
Are you referring to manuscripts? Or to some specific period? Because we've got rather a lot of text from Rome in general.
Talking about classical Latin literary texts up to a couple hundred AD.
Doesn’t explain why mostly women were buried with these.
And most have been found around present day France.
"For the time being, the most likely interpretation of the dodecahedron is as a cosmic, all-encompassing symbol," Guggenberger wrote, with "a function comparable to an amulet."
Great theory. But as you can see in the picture:
1. This thing is very carefully crafted.
2. The holes have different sizes.
I don't think this is by chance. There must be a reason for this and the explanation, be it coin counting, knitting or whatever, has to take this into account.
A coin measurer is still my goto explanation. Especially with most models having an inset for the coin to rest on / fit in. The hole itself is then just to quickly/easily get the coin out again with your finger.
With so many different coin sizes and types in the empire, I think this makes most sense.
Wikipedia also mentions this:
> Several dodecahedra were found in coin hoards, suggesting either that their owners considered them valuable objects, or that their use was connected with coins — as, for example, for easily checking coins fit a certain diameter and were not clipped.
If you look at ancient coins, you'll see that they didn't have identical sizes. They were minted from a standard weight of metal, but the manual minting tools of the time couldn't guarantee precise thickness and shape like we have today with machine-made coins. So a dodecahedron with precisely cut circular holes is not a good way to check your coins.
Also if they did have identical sizes and there was a need to measure those sizes, we would expect a lot of much simpler devices to measure them - say a flat piece of metal with differently sized holes. Fancy versions like the dodecahedron might exist, but they would be outnumbered by the utilitarian devices.
Knitting - specifically knitting jewellery - explains that. Different holes allow you to create chains of different sizes, which in case of jewellery, also does not need to be standardised (lack of any standard or markings makes theories of some measurement device unlikely). That also explains regional popularity and proximity to gold (several of those items were found close to places were gold coins were produced or stored).
No, knitting of gloves: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=76AvV601yJ0
And none were found in Italy or in the South. Guess what, you don't need gloves there in the winter.
This is a solved case, they were used for textiles. But to admit this would break history, so instead it is constantly rattled academically. Put one next to the Voynich Manuscript in the Museum or Jurassic Technology.
The cause behind this narrative hustle is the industrial historical arrogation which teaches that knitting was not invented until 1000 years after "The Romans". They had textiles, weaving, but no knitting.
This is early mere patent protection during the capitol rush of industrialism, claiming devices which were not actually invented as pretended, and therefor should have no claim to copyrights. The cotton gin was not invented in 1793.
Moreover it is a supremely ignorant and abstract notion, showing how detached academia is from reality. Anybody with time on their hands and some vines may invent weaving, knotting, knitting, and with metal slivers many ways to make pins. There has never been a people without this technology.
The cotton gin was not invented in 1793, but the claim wasn't a narrative hustle.
The short staple cotton gin was invented in 1793.
Coming up with a possible use is a very long way from being able to declare this "solved". There are many such claims. For the idea you discuss, a problem is that the projections were balls - not the easiest of things to dislodge loops from, which you would have to do at every step.
My understanding is that this would be equivalent to loom knitting (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spool_knitting). Is it possible that loom knitting was invented earlier but needle knitting was not?
What is the matter with the Voynich Manuscript?
I'm a little lost here. Your argument is that this is part of a grand conspiracy in academia to protect. . . big textile?
The thing about conspiracies is that there tends to be a purpose behind them. What would be the point of this one? That the cotton gin couldn't be patented? How would that possibly impact any single person today? What would be the incentive for continuing this conspiracy?
In general, historians are pretty quick to correct mistakes from their past interpretations of facts. So why would this be different?
That would be 2025 logic, but at the time it was not "big textile", it was universal control over industrialization. As if big textile is any different than big oil, all the same owners today as in 1800, owning everything and protecting that claim to rights.
The point however is not that of protecting copyright, but that copyright protection was invented to usurp technology which was not truly invented. This is how controlling history controls the present, for if all roads lead back to "we invented this and own it" then all roads forwards must pay that toll. If the narrative were not true, then the premise could not hold.
You have to admit, this is a pretty unhinged conspiracy theory.
The article didn’t mention the silver one found in Geneva in 1982, which has the signs of the Zodiac inscribed on it.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_dodecahedron
Someone suggested they were used to estimate distance which might be true since some modern guns like mp5 have rotating drum sights of same principle.
Another good suggestion was that it was used for knitting, there was a very cool video of this on YouTube somewhere.
And the last I like is it’s just a game.
I think it was one of the earliest multi-tools and all of these were what it was used for
The fact that it has no clearly discernible purpose is evidence for it being something to be enjoyed for aesthetics, spiritual purposes, or, most likely I think, entertainment. Attach some string and it is a durable, highly portable puzzle and even two-player game: https://tinkerings.org/2020/06/17/roman-dodecahedrons-part-i...
I love how this mystery has captured the imaginations of this generation.
I've started to see this object appear in various media, like sitting on a desk behind a professor, or in a studio of a Roman intellectual when time traveling to that era.
I often wonder if future archaeologists will decide our civilization worshiped wasteful excess and landfills were our temples.
They wouldn't be wrong
I mean... they would be wrong though. I get what you're saying, but the accurate interpretation is that our civilization doesn't care about excess, not that we worship it.
We seem to worship consumption though (which leads to...).
It's quite obviously a krangled resonator (https://i.redd.it/e9wy316rqws41.png), the romans were massive path of exile players. Silly archeologists.
What if it was a primitive form of identification?
"Oh you're a Roman citizen you say? Can you prove it?"
"You know I can't prove it, you'll have to take my word for it" nonchalantly fidgets with their dodecahedron
"You know, I'll just take your word for it, be on you way" wink
They had sumptuary laws.
https://acoup.blog/2021/07/23/collections-the-queens-latin-o...
> We have what looks to be a man, perhaps in middle age. A few things are notable. First, he wears a white toga (the standard formal Roman folded cloth garment, draped from the left shoulder) and a white tunic with a purple stripe (two, in fact, the other is concealed beneath the toga). When I show my students this picture, I joke that the man might as well have worn his, “I AM A ROMAN CITIZEN” t-shirt; the impact of the clothing here is similarly blunt. While a fellow might wear a toga in a variety of colors for fashion’s sake, this solid-white toga is the toga virilis: the distinctive formal dress of a Roman citizen. Meanwhile, that purple stripe on his tunic is the angustus clavus (or angusticlavius, literally ‘the narrow stripe’). That too was a bit of clothing reserved as a marker of status – whereas the toga virilis says “I am a Roman citizen” the angusticlavius says “I am of the equestrian order” (nothing to do directly with horses by this point, it merely indicates wealth and that the individual isn’t involved in politics in Rome). In short then, this man – or more correctly, his surviving family who commissioned the portrait – is telling us, in no uncertain terms, “I was a wealthy Roman citizen.” I want to stress that point: there was no real distinctive national appearance that indicated a Roman – no particularly Roman hair color or what have you – but there was a distinctive dress that indicated citizenship, which only citizens were entitled to wear and which was so important the Romans went so far as to call themselves the gens togata (‘the people of the toga’).
> of course that fact about clothing is really very handy for us if we want images from the provinces in color where we can know with a high degree of certainty that the subjects are Roman citizens, since anyone wearing either the toga virilis or a tunic with that clavus is declaring their citizenship (in a way that would get them in rather a lot of trouble if they were lying!)
This wasn't the space for subtlety; it was the space for strict formal legal controls. If the dodecahedrons were serving that purpose, we'd know about it.
These are used in the Middle East for holding flowers bouquets on graves. They make a nice bloom.
So that’s my guess.
I guess my ignorance shows here but I can only be impressed by their perfect symmetry, the perfect round little balls etc...
I understand skill was certainly required, but how were those made, exactly 2,000 years ago?
Wouldn't you just have to make a mold and pour in molten metal? Plenty of talented sculptors around at the time.
Lost-wax casting?
That is what I would assume as well since these are cast items. That said, if this was a "skills test" of sort, it would be possible but exceedingly difficult to cast using hard molds and sand.
The inside looks like the hard part.
Is there an English translation of the paper where he "rules out" most of the existing theories?
I thought this was solved? Didn't some woman figure out that this was used to knit a left and right glove and something else?
It's so obviously for measuring pasta. Case closed.
Its obviously for surveying, different sized holes allow it to be aligned a precise distance from the eye, then some reference object (probably a wide rod or board) can be sighted. Different sized hole pairs allow for different reference distances with the same reference object.
This seems completely obvious to me, but apparently its not?
If someone can find precise measurements of one of these I will bet that when you compute the distances for a reference object when sighted through different hole pairs it makes simple integer ratios.
If it were for surveying, I would expect markings on the faces — the way for example an astrolabe has markings.
Yes, that is what the wikipedia article says regarding this.
Given that the sides of the dodecahedron aren't parallel to one another and you therefore cannot look through it from one side to the other (only two side are parallel), your "completely obvious" theory falls pretty flat. Kinda seems like you arrived at this "completely obvious" conclusion without actually examining one. If this is "completely obviously" what it's for, why would they go to the trouble of putting little balls on every corner? Why would they make them consistently of bronze instead of other materials? You should think a little harder before pronouncing things "completely obvious."
There are holes in the sides of the dodecahedron of various diameter giving you six ways to look through the shape (from smaller-to-larger diameter hole).
The balls you mention are another interesting point — why they would even be there for a "range finder".
You're correct about the parallel faces, my examination of the model was wrong. So that part I take back. The balls remain.
Have you ever seen a dodecahedron?
It looks like a tool to make those little things with the sort of raffia work base, that has an attachment
Loved it in the background of and or.
I still think it’s a coin-toss drinking game.
They have no wear
Maybe it was used in some sort of ritual
^ Found the professor of archaeology
I've been calling dildos "fertility idols" ever since my university archaeology courses.
""fertility rites""
isn't it obvious.. it was used to fortify the tent structure.
i would assume it has to do with thread, sewing and knitting. :D
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Hundreds of years into the future: "Researchers uncover many examples of US fidget spinner: 3-sided object has baffled archaeologists"
I saw them in Singapore before they went viral, I wish I had grabbed a box and milked that fad. I wonder when the YoYo will roll back in to popularity again.
>I wonder when the YoYo will roll back in to popularity again.
About three years ago. Every kid that exists in my area had to have a butterfly yoyo. Some convinced their parents to spend hundreds on trick yoyo's. That fad died after about 10 months, though.
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It’s a tool for making fingers in knitted gloves. It’s rather annoying that this click bait “archeologists baffled” story keeps propagating.
I didn't know that so I went and read about them. I could not find a single source that definitively states that "it's a tool for making fingers in knitted gloves."
That there are YouTube videos showing it being used to do exactly that does NOT mean that was its intended or original function.
In fact, all of the sources I consulted stated that your proposed function is one of approximately 50 possible and speculated uses but that there is still no conclusive evidence as to the device's original function.
Thus, I find your characterization of the article as "click bait" to be wide of the mark.
It's a nifty theory, but unfortunately, it isn't true.
If it were used for that, there would be wear at the bases of the little knobs as the yarn rubs along it. None of the dodecahedrons we have show any wear in those areas.
That's a hypothesis amongst others, but it's just that, with essentially no hard evidence backing it up.
And there's counter-evidence (if mostly circumstantial) in that the first known knitted artefacts are from centuries later, to say nothing of knitting spools which they would predate by some 1300 years.
This hypothesis also lacks a lot of explanatory power e.g. why did some of them find (and take) room in coin hoards? Why have they been found all over Gallia, Germania, and Britannia, but not Italia, Hispania, or the Oriens?
> why did some of them find (and take) room in coin hoards?
People who had access to gold used some of it to create jewellery.
> Why have they been found all over Gallia, Germania, and Britannia, but not Italia, Hispania, or the Oriens?
Certain types of jewellery can be found in certain regions. This can be attributed to specific trading network or local preferences. I don't know if that could be proven, but makes sense to me.
Knitting spools are not jewellery.
Every time someone posts this article someone smugly says "it's a tool for knitting" and then everyone speculates and points to folks saying it's not a tool for knitting.
In my estimation this is amost certainly correct. It accounts for most if not all of the observed properties of these objects. The other suggestions only ever account for one or two. But lazy journalists, aided by AI, will no doubt continue to treat all the suggestions as equally likely.
Knitting hadn't been invented when these were around - we know the Romans made gloves, socks, and other garments with a great deal of supporting evidence, there's not a single example of a mitten, nor of any kind of knitting like this. The Romans wove cloth on a loom and stitched it together. There's no signs of wear on any examples of the dodecahedra, so it's not a hand tool that comes into contact with wool or metals which would leave at least micro-abrasions. Whatever these were they were not a hand tool. It snows in north Italy, why wouldn't they need gloves in some places where it snows outside of Gallia? The knitting tool is among the weakest hypotheses in terms of evidence.
If journalists were to refer to these as a knitting tool it would be because they were lazy and didn't do any research into that hypothesis. In general journalists writing on this tend to acknowledge scholarly opinion that their use is unknown and hypotheses about it are speculative. The lazy journalists are the ones who write about how some Youtuber decided it's a knitting tool or whatever and uncritically repeat this without researching scholarly consensus or what historians and archaeologists have to say about the tool.
>It accounts for most if not all of the observed properties of these objects
1. How does it account for the different-sized holes on the dodecahedron's faces? Before you answer "to knit for different sized fingers" let me remind you that knitting doesn't work like that, that is, the diameter of the final product is determined by the distance of the pegs, which is the same across all the faces.
2. How does it account for the similar-looking Roman icosahedrons?
3. How does it account for the fact that knitting was invented hundreds of years after the fall of the Roman Empire?
This is some Joe Rogan-tier crank theory, that no self-respecting archaeologist takes seriously. It's literally based on a single YouTube video, yet for some reason it gets endlessly repeated, probably because it makes people feel good that a random grandma figured out something that the fat cats of the archaeologist establishment failed to crack.
This isn't knitting, it is technically nalbinding, and yes the holes are used to create different sized fingers and it works perfectly well for that purpose.
False. The diameter of the knit tube depends on the distance of the pegs, not the central hole.
And on the number of the pegs. And five pegs would be far too few for practical purposes.
The objects were found in graves and coin hoards. Why would people ask to be buried with a knitting accessory?
Why not? Egyptian pharaohs were buried with (among other things) food and everyday necessities, because it was believed they'd take them along to the afterlife for use there.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grave_goods
Modern society is not much different: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/photo/ohio-mans-wish-fulfilled-...
I feel like "why not" is not a sufficient answer, especially when trying to explain a single object. The pharaohs were buried with everything, including people, so that's not a great analogy.
From the article:
> Archaeologists have recovered dodecahedrons from the graves of men and women, in coin hoards and even in refuse heaps, so a blanket explanation for their use has not been found.
There's no indication these were the only things in graves that I can see.
You could easily find information about Roman burial practices. It would help you decide whether knitting accessories fit the pattern.
Can you point to an example or a youtube? Sounds great but the object in the photo looks a bit abstracted.
I don't really do YouTube, but putting "dodecahedron knitting" into the search box got this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=76AvV601yJ0
Here is a fairly comprehensive analysis by an archeologist that mentions the knitting argument, but dismisses it
https://youtu.be/UbGtkbqbjtY?si=kJNAUqtRQMyf5Nja
Stop perpetuating made-up pseudoarchaelogical stories.
Any time I see something like this, I'm reminded of a tongue-in-cheek* post I saw of someone showing off the fancy "egg separator" they found at a thrift store (it was a chastity cage).
*I hope