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Another Roman dodecahedron has been unearthed in England

smithsonianmag.com

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Re: Another Roman dodecahedron has been unearthed in England

#241

Post by q1w2 »

hosh wrote: post #236

I remember seeing someone’s demo of using them for knitting. Absent any better explanation, this seems pretty reasonable to me. Example video: https://youtu.be/76AvV601yJ0?si=7qk7VWBHJnxubs1j

I like the idea that there is some sort of thread manipulation going on here, but the videos using this for knitting don't require it to be a dodecahetdron as they only use one hole and five of the bulbs on the verteces.

Unless there's a much more complex knit happening, this isn't the explanation. Maybe with multiple colors or something. Also, if it were used in this common way, it's more likely that there would have been many more made of wood and the device would have passed down from mother to daughter rather than having been lost.

Re: Another Roman dodecahedron has been unearthed in England

#242

Post by darth_avocado »

Am totally imagining a futurama episode where everyone is trying to figure out what purpose the dodecahedron was created for and then Fry walks in and explains it was just a mass produced junk art like "live, laugh, love" made by Crate and Barrel.

Re: Another Roman dodecahedron has been unearthed in England

#243

Post by nextaccountic »

1970-01-01 wrote: post #216
tarikjn wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The equivalent today would be 3Dbenchy boats -- "we found an identical boat toy design in multiple sites made of different plastic materials, colors and sizes. It is spread universally around the World cities, found in sites of crafts, leading us to believe it is an idol of a new 21st century religion predominant among workers of the arts and crafts"

3D printed plastics only last a few centuries. Future archeologists are not going to find these in thousands of years.

In a few decades, 3d printed metals and other long lasting materias might be accessible to hobbysts

Re: Another Roman dodecahedron has been unearthed in England

#244

Post by CobrastanJorji »

cityofdelusion wrote: post #133
SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. "Common Era" instead of "Anno Domini". More religiously neutral.

It’s start date is still a religious event, so I’m not sure it’s more neutral as much as it’s more obfuscating.

Sure, but it's an incredible amount of work to change the year numbering, and it's easy to change the word we use for the calendar.

The French revolutionaries tried it, and they discovered that no matter how much people agree with the idea and want to switch in theory, it's really, really hard to do.

Mind you, the French Republican calendar was a LOT of changes, all at once. First, they started counting over at year 1.

That'd be a big enough change, but they also decided to use a calendar with 12 months with nice secular, names, each with 3 weeks, where a week had ten days with nice, secular names (plus some extra days on the end of the year as needed).

That'd be a huge change, but they also decided to switch to the decimal system, so a day would have exactly 10 hours of 100 minutes each. And that turned out to just be way too much, and the whole thing fell over.

Anyway, that's kind of tangential to your point, but I just like thinking about the French Republican calendar. I hope you have a happy 4th of Pluviôse, Ere Républicain 232.

Re: Another Roman dodecahedron has been unearthed in England

#245

Post by mkehrt »

hosh wrote: post #236

I remember seeing someone’s demo of using them for knitting. Absent any better explanation, this seems pretty reasonable to me. Example video: https://youtu.be/76AvV601yJ0?si=7qk7VWBHJnxubs1j

This is a theory that keeps coming up on the internet. However, roman dodecahedra predate knitting by almost a thousand years. The earliest known knitting was from the 11th century (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knitting#History_and_culture), while the earliest dodecahedra are from the 2nd century (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_dodecahedron#History)

Re: Another Roman dodecahedron has been unearthed in England

#246

Post by lproven »

marcosdumay wrote: post #185
bee_rider wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the objection is not about unnecessary durability, but unnecessary complexity; you don’t need so many faces to make a glove.

If the thing was for making gloves, the faces would be for different finger sizes.

The holes in them are of different sizes.

Re: Another Roman dodecahedron has been unearthed in England

#247

Post by mkehrt »

mildchalupa wrote: post #16

I thought it was determined to be a glove finger knitting apparatus.

Roman dodecahedra predate knitting by almost a thousand years. The earliest known knitting was from the 11th century (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knitting#History_and_culture), while the earliest dodecahedra are from the 2nd century (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_dodecahedron#History)

Re: Another Roman dodecahedron has been unearthed in England

#248

Post by p1mrx »

bertil wrote: post #206
tarikjn wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The equivalent today would be 3Dbenchy boats -- "we found an identical boat toy design in multiple sites made of different plastic materials, colors and sizes. It is spread universally around the World cities, found in sites of crafts, leading us to believe it is an idol of a new 21st century religion predominant among workers of the arts and crafts"

“Also —and this didn’t make sense to us either— it doesn’t float, and there’s no engine. Our best guess is that it’s meant as a comment on the fulity of life.”

You can make Benchy float by slicing it with solid infill in the bottom/rear, and minimal infill everywhere else:

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:6076719

Re: Another Roman dodecahedron has been unearthed in England

#249

Post by imglorp »

flir wrote: post #207
imglorp wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The knitting aid is persuasive. It fits with the geography, explains the different hole sizes, and it explains the knobs. Here's one of those vids; there are many more: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=76AvV601yJ0

Annoyingly, there's no wear. It's not a tool. Also: the size of the tube in French knitting isn't controlled by the size of the hole, it's controlled by the spacing of the pegs. You have to pass the wool over the pegs, so logically the pegs should be cylindrical not round. Earliest evidence for French knitting is 1535. There's no evidence for knitting of any kind until centuries after these things. I'm going with pre…

Why would there be wear in metal? Maybe from hands over years?

The peg spacing is a very good point and maybe the disqualifier.

I'm very dubious about the knitting claim. Woven textiles seem to go back 27,000 years. Knitting is just weaving, with fewer steps, using sticks.

Re: Another Roman dodecahedron has been unearthed in England

#250

Post by NFVLCP »

1. glove knitting

The dodecahedron Wikipedia article already mentions spool knitting [1]. This awesome video shows knitting for different-sized fingers on a 3d-printed replica [2]. An initial question could be whether 6 equally-sized holes align with each other, or if there are 12 different hole sizes for finer sizing options (hard to tell from internet images). And as for no wear on the tool, hardness of wool 2. Hair braiding

layer8 mentioned these dodecahedrons being found in wealthy women's graves; I'd offer they could have been for braiding hair -- seemed important to wealthy Roman women back then [3].

Speculative scenario:

Could sit in a chair with back to a table (or just lie down on the floor), with hair strands laid outward from the person's head. Selected strands are pulled through the dodecahedron tool, and braided. The dodecahedron tool moves incrementally away from the person's head as the braid forms. The knobs on the top-side help organize each strand, and the knobs on the reverse (bottom) side creates standoff for the braided hair to emerge. Hands-free tool for making perfect mini-braids.

I wonder if some statues might be realistic enough to depict braids [4] (and from similar time periods as dodecahedrons' manufacture date) to match with a 5- or 10-strand sinnet pattern (e.g., ABOK#3037) [5].

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_dodecahedron#Purpose

[2] https://youtu.be/76AvV601yJ0&t=517 | from: https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/514246/are-roman-dodecah...

[3] https://unpodipepe.ca/2017/01/31/hairstyling-ancient-roma/

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_hairstyles#/media/File:K...

[5] https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Ashley_Book_of_Knot...

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