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.
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?
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.
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.
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".
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.
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 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.
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.
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…
> 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.
"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.
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.
I watched something recently that showed it was for knitting chainmail, specifically tubular shapes. Someone demoed it and it seemed to work really well.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
60 comments
[ 416 ms ] story [ 639 ms ] threadThat 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.
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?
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.
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)
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.
as everyone who’s played DnD knows.
"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
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.
So that’s my guess.
I understand skill was certainly required, but how were those made, exactly 2,000 years ago?
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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=...
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.
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 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?
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.
*I hope
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.