Another Mysterious Roman Dodecahedron Has Been Unearthed in England

AnActOfCreation@programming.dev to News@lemmy.world – 207 points – Another Mysterious Roman Dodecahedron Has Been Unearthed in England
smithsonianmag.com
  • A Roman dodecahedron, a mysterious 12-sided metal object, was discovered in the village of Norton Disney in England.
  • The artifact is in excellent condition and is larger than many other dodecahedrons that have been found.
  • The purpose of these objects remains unclear, but theories suggest they may have been used for ritualistic or religious purposes.
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may have been used for ritualistic or religious purposes

Aka they have no fuckin clue what it's for as that's what they always say when they have no fuckin clue what something's for.

Kinda annoying that that's the first go to when not having a fuckin clue what something's for.

Last time people 3d printed a whole bunch and handed them out to random people to see what they used them for.

Some old British granny used them to knit fingers for gloves and apparently it's awesome at that.

It wouldn't be something everyone owned, no one family needs that many gloves.

But one that gets shared amongst a community/village makes it a worthwhile investment. Especially in cold ass England.

There were likely wooden ones as well that didn't survive, but it makes sense we find heavy duty ones in England of all places.

I wouldn't say it's awesome at glove fingers. It can be used to knit glove fingers but other configurations would be much better. It's like guessing that a Super Nintendo was used as a hammer: yeah, you could use it for that if you tried really hard, but if you were setting out to make a hammer you wouldn't make it Super Nintendo-shaped. https://www.cracked.com/article_32125_no-these-mysterious-roman-artifacts-probably-arent-knitting-aides.html

Man, cracked used to be a good source of information, not so much in the last 20 years tho...

20 years? They were fine until that broadcasting company bought them in 2016 and highly pushed Facebook video content. That failed and they paid damn near everyone off. I remember their video content being some random old dude for a couple years after and no new articles. They've got a writing staff now but their comedic chops are pretty lacking.

When all you got is a Super Nintendo, everything looks like a middle aged plumber.

Except there's no records of that kind of knitting existing for best part of a thousand years and none of them show the wear you'd expect if that was the use.

I wonder if the threads would cause wear patterns that could be analyzed. Or if they were found with fibers around them.

You need to read Motel of the Mysteries. Here's the premise:

It is the year 4022; all of the ancient country of Usa has been buried under many feet of detritus from a catastrophe that occurred back in 1985. Imagine, then, the excitement that Howard Carson, an amateur archeologist at best, experienced when in crossing the perimeter of an abandoned excavation site he felt the ground give way beneath him and found himself at the bottom of a shaft, which, judging from the DO NOT DISTURB sign hanging from an archaic doorknob, was clearly the entrance to a still-sealed burial chamber. Carson's incredible discoveries, including the remains of two bodies, one of then on a ceremonial bed facing an altar that appeared to be a means of communicating with the Gods and the other lying in a porcelain sarcophagus in the Inner Chamber, permitted him to piece together the whole fabric of that extraordinary civilization.