this post was submitted on 23 Jan 2024
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History Channel: Did they use that to communicate with Ancient Aliens? We might never know the full truth!
The holes are all slightly different sizes. It's for measuring spaghetti servings
Knowing the Romans, it might be for measuring cock girth of their house boys.
Sorry I prefer a size 3 not a size 6. What am I? Some barbarian like the Phoenicians?
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I'm just waiting for some guy to come forward and explain that he's been locating dig sites ahead of archeologists for years and planting these around just to fuck with them.
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I heard those are great for protection against Mindflayer larvae.
Be careful, though, they sometimes have mindflayers inside them who want to have sex with you.
Just a very old bumbleball
This is a resonator. You put one or more fossils inside it to alch gear with a guaranteed set of affixes.
An ancient self sealing stem bolt analogue.
I love it when I buy a piece of gear from trade and it's got a resonator about to pop.
That's an incubator!
I saw someone using one of these to weave or knit or something, and it seemed to me a pretty good explanation.
Edit: If it's truly such a mystery, is it at all possible these only exist because they looked interesting? Just a knick-knack for your shelf?
"Did you see those things Caius Cosades is making down at the den? Not much you can with them, but they're neat."
It's not as though we don't make pointless and artistic things today.
Except those objects were found in coin hordes and the graves of rich aristocrats, and must have been too valuable to be a simple knitting tool.
And for some reason, this style of knitting would have then disappeared until it was reinvented the 16th century.
the Roman's did a bunch of things that were lost and then relearned, so I wouldn't rule that out.
They also almost never show any signs of wear and tear beyond having been buried for centuries.
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Maybe it was the original NFT
If it’s truly such a mystery, is it at all possible these only exist because they looked interesting? Just a knick-knack for your shelf?
It's one of the most convincing theories, but also a bit unsatisfying. The question then becomes, why they were made in relatiely large numbers (so that hundreds could be found) with that very specific shape in different parts of the empire.
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I see DND is older than most people think!
It's a D12, looks like people played RPG long before it was cool
Romans wielding a great axe
Goths = Orcs Celts = Pixies Romans = Humans Egyptians = Dwarves Slavs = Fairies Greeks = Elves
Once they are all unearthed, the Old Ones shall return to reclaim the Earth.
What about: a smith's graduation test?
I'm telling you, it's a decorative lamp.
Blacksmith. Benchy.
Its a knitting helper.
A knitting helper the size of a grapefruit that would have cost more than what a shepherd earned in a lifetime.
My argument against this is they're all 12 sided. That's like finding out knitting needles were all the same length and shape.
Something used for a task like that will have variations in design.
These things are oddly specific. The lack of evolution leads away from it being an actually designed and optimal tool.
It's definitely designed to look good first. If it does anything while looking good that's a mystery so far.
Given that we are talking about roman times, metal was expensive, and working metal in such a way even more so.
It could also be that similiar tools in cheaper were made out of wood and simply rottet away since then.
In fairness, acheulean stone tool design didn’t really innovate between the earliest recorded find (~2 million years ago) and the latest (~160,000 years ago), which is a lot longer than the Romans existed. And they were much more basic tools, ripe for innovation.
Those stone tools are surprisingly effective and efficient.
The innovation block to improve was access to bronze.
That's different than a complex shape requiring rare resources and skills to produce appearing out of nowhere and disappearing again.
If people start using that shape for knitting I'll start to believe it. But all I've seen is that it can be used for knitting, not that it's even close to the best shape for it.
I'll bet a knitter could learn to use one of those and improve on the design almost immediately, creating a better tool.
Sure, maybe the only thing preventing any innovation was access to a new material, tho I strongly doubt that for the same reasons many paleontologists doubt it - namely that they frequently weren’t even used, the stone flakes chipped off them were used instead, and that near the end of the period they can be found, there were actually some impactful changes to the design, before revolutionary new materials were found. But likewise in Roman times they were limited (both the skill to make it and decent enough quality material to actually work with)
Only a few people in an area would be metal workers skilled enough to do something like this (and who knows, maybe the dumb thing is an apprentice training item, not actually serving any purpose), and they likely wouldn’t be the ones using it if it is for knitting. So perhaps until the design evolved into something so different we don’t recognize them as iterations, the same one was just used because the people doing the metal work weren’t the people using the tool, and didn’t want to have to design a workflow for something new for marginal increases in usefulness. Perhaps it appearing out of nowhere was also an innovation, lasted until the replacement of an entirely different design caught on or something, and abruptly died out because it wasn’t very good.
Frankly I don’t have a dog in this one, and I don’t think it’s actually a knitting implement, I’m just saying a long time period without design change doesn’t necessarily mean anything.
My point is this isn't a long period without design change though. Not compared to the axes.
Innovation has periods of change and equilibriums.
It's an object around for a short period of time, then forgotten about.
If it was a new innovation it would be when changes were constant, until the design settled into equilibrium.
Essentially if it were a tool, there would also be prototypes and variations. Then the winning design. Not a winning design with no changes.
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Just think, one could create a non ornamental version with cheaper materials...
And? Are rich woman from the past not allowed to do some knitting in their free time if they want to?
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“A huge amount of time, energy and skill was taken to create our dodecahedron, so it was not used for mundane purposes,” writes the group, adding: “They are not of a standard size, so will not be measuring devices. They don’t show signs of wear, so they are not a tool.”
Instead, the group agrees with experts who think dodecahedrons were used for ritualistic or religious purposes. As Smithsonian magazine wrote last year, researchers at Belgium’s Gallo-Roman Museum have hypothesized that Romans used the objects in magical rituals, which could explain dodecahedrons’ absence from historical records: With the Roman Empire’s eventual embrace of Christianity came laws forbidding magic. Practitioners would have had to keep their rituals—and related objects—a secret.
“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.”
I've seen cutlery made from pure silver with gold and diamond ornaments.
So... Why wouldn't it be used for mundane stuff? The entire case is based on assumptions.
Smithing test.
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It's clearly an ancient fidget toy. Those romans had a headstart on ADHD, how much knowledge has been lost /s
From the thumbnail I thought it was a man size artifact... no way it was used for knitting... then I entered the article and saw its actual size.
Probably a fancy napkin ring
Put one in the kitchen and the power of platonic solids will keep your knives sharp for longer.
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