This thumbnail is a bit misleading – I saw two workers just a little taller than an Roman dodecahedron?!! That must be the biggest ever discovered!!! Severe disappointion followed suite…
Except those objects were found in coin hordes and the graves of rich aristocrats, and must have been too valuable to be a simple knitting tool.
And for some reason, this style of knitting would have then disappeared until it was reinvented the 16th century.
If it’s truly such a mystery, is it at all possible these only exist because they looked interesting? Just a knick-knack for your shelf?
It’s one of the most convincing theories, but also a bit unsatisfying. The question then becomes, why they were made in relatiely large numbers (so that hundreds could be found) with that very specific shape in different parts of the empire.
I’m just waiting for some guy to come forward and explain that he’s been locating dig sites ahead of archeologists for years and planting these around just to fuck with them.
No need, it’s been solved basically. You knit gloves with them. Or rather the fingers. They are only found in colder climates / up north. There are videos of people using replicas of them to knit gloves.
I feel like the point isn’t that it MUST have been used for knitting (even if it could have been), but that we should be open to more possibilities before defaulting to a religious explanation.
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