41–50 of 403 posts
> A huge amount of time, energy and skill was taken to create our dodecahedron, so it was not used for mundane purposes That's the idea! Being difficult to make increases its value, it doesn't need to have a special purpose, it could be just a desk toy, a sort of mental puzzle, a showcase object of their current technology.
Why wouldn't it just be a 12 sided die for gambling?
Having given my brother a Tungsten cube once for Christmas, it's possible they just made these because they were fun and looked cool.
> A huge amount of time, energy and skill was taken to create our dodecahedron, so it was not used for mundane purposes That's the idea! Being difficult to make increases its value, it doesn't need to have a special purpose, it could be just a desk toy, a sort of mental puzzle, a showcase object of their current technology.
With future advances in material analysis science we will be able to sift through the soil surrounding artefacts as this, and understand and digitally reconstruct what soft materials were around it.
This folows a trend where as time progresses we are able to deduce more and more information from archeological finds.
As this progresses, there will be step changes in our understanding of our pre-historical past.
A theory I saw recently suggested that they may have been used to hold candles, as night lights (could still have had some religious or ritual component too). The holes all being different diameters would then relate to different sized candles being needed to last all night, for longer and shorter nights at different times of the year. The twelve faces presumably corresponding to 12 months on the Julian calendar, whi…
https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/roman-dodecahedron-235a956d1...
One theory (albeit contested) is that they were used as a jig to knit gloves: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=76AvV601yJ0
> The Historian Richard Rutt conservatively suggests that knitting originated in Egypt between 500 and 1200 A.D. Haven’t watched the video but the evidence for knitting in England under Roman rule certainly isn’t there. There were other methods to make knitting-like garments though so maybe this is explained in the video but I doubt that Romans knitted with this
inb4 it was ancient fidget spinner
A theory I saw recently suggested that they may have been used to hold candles, as night lights (could still have had some religious or ritual component too). The holes all being different diameters would then relate to different sized candles being needed to last all night, for longer and shorter nights at different times of the year. The twelve faces presumably corresponding to 12 months on the Julian calendar, whi…
is CE the same as AD?