The Roman dodecahedron is an item that has turned up in a lot of sites where people do archaeology. While most items, given time, have their purpose easily or at least approximately deduced by researchers, the Roman dodecahedron’s purpose is largely baffling to even the most studied of archaeologists, who have no idea on where to start with it. This in turn would probably baffle the Romans, who would have seen it as a common household item, no different from a spoon or a comb.

Suppose a few thousand years from now, archaeologists were excavating our remains and had varying degrees of success deducing what different things were for. If you had to guess what common household item of ours would stump them the most, what item would you guess it would be?

  • Lvxferre [he/him]@mander.xyzEnglish
    7·
    3 days ago

    My guess for the dodecahedra is that they’re a tool to aid with cryptography. This video explains it well, but TL;DW you’d use the dodecahedron with two concentric circles full of letters, and rotate one to know which letter to replace with which. It’s a slightly more advanced and secure version of Caesar’s cypher, and I could easily see the Romans doing something like that.

    On the other hand I wouldn’t expect them to be used for knitting or jewellery, as simpler devices would do the same job.

    …but to answer your question, I think that most decor items will give those archaeologists a hard time. Stuff like this:

    I was almost going to say “yerba mate bombillas”, but they’ll likely detect saliva DNA in them and guess that they were used as straws:

    • jamie_oliver@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      1 day ago

      Maybe it is a toy, or like a fidget spinner. Idn I stim a lot that looks like it would be awesome for stimming, first thought.

      • Lvxferre [he/him]@mander.xyzEnglish
        0·
        1 day ago

        I think it’s unlikely to be a knitting tool, as you could achieve the same with a simpler tool.

        For example, I’ve seen people saying it’s for wool gloves. But a bar with five holes and some knobs would do the trick, no need for an intricate form like a dodeca.

          • Lvxferre [he/him]@mander.xyzEnglish
            1·
            23 hours ago

            I don’t knit. I’m saying this based on multiple factors:

            1. Videos of people who knit trying to use a dodecahedron. Like this one or this one. They use the holes, they use the knobs, but the core shape of the tool itself is practically irrelevant, and if anything it gets in the way. Also note the end result, it’s way crappier than a good knitter could do by hand. (I might not knit but I do see people knitting all the time.)

            2. The existence of a similar icosahedron. It could be used just fine for cyphers, but not for knitting - note how the holes are too small. (Also, you wouldn’t need so many faces.)

            3. The Romans assigned manual labour - like knitting - to slaves. And slaves aren’t exactly the sort of person a Roman would waste precious bronze with, specially not for a tool with an excessively specific purpose, like this one.

            4. Wool production in Rome was mostly around Gallia Cisalpina:

            And yet those dodecahedra were mostly found around Germania, Belgica, Lugdunensis, some even in Britannia:

            If anything the distribution hints more something military.