Future archeologists: we believe these were to provide a form of transportation for their miniature gods, as the large humans honored the devices with novel patterns.
Last time one of these threads popped up, I saw someone suggest that it might have been a holder for some of those bottles with pointed bottoms the Romans had, don’t remember the name. I’m not sure if this is a hypothesis with any level of acceptance, but it feels like it could be plausible just from looking at the thing, having different sized holes would allow different sizes of bottle to fit, and you’d want feet for each possible side that it could be resting on, which would explain the prongs.
These devices are rather small and most amphora seem to be much larger. The shape of amphora helped with shipping, so they were typucally larger than a device that can fit in your hand.
My mother got really interested in these things a while ago. I think she mostly buys into the glove-knitting theory. Whatever the case, I 3D printed her a model of one and it’s sitting on the mantle over her fireplace.
Archaeologists in 2000 years will be puzzled again. “Plastic dodecahedra found near broken mantelpieces, what could it be used for? Anyway I made one out of technetium for my grandma”
Except that's probably not what they're for, I saw a video recently (I think it was this one) that went into detail about the reasons why it doesn't make much sense for these to be a knitting tool.
There’s a lesson here about the differences between history and a good historical narrative, but that’s the lesson of most history and no one ever listens to it.
There’s a lesson here about the differences between history and a good historical narrative, but that’s the lesson of most history and no one ever listens to it.
There’s a lesson here about the differences between history and a good historical narrative, but that’s the lesson of most history and no one ever listens to it.
What’s up with the narrator? He’s got like 20 big channels he reads for. Are the channels connected and run by the same group, or does he host for a bunch of independent channels?
I think he's just snowballed in popularity over the years because he's good at reading these scripts in a way that sounds both smart and fun. The different channels focus on different styles and subject areas, letting you pick and choose what kind of thing you're interested in.
I rather like his "Decoding the Unknown" channel, where he gets scripts debunking various paranormal or otherwise mysterious events and he reads them for the first time as it's being recorded, taking lots of opportunities to interject his own theories and speculation and just generally rag on the concept of the paranormal as he goes.
What a wonderful rabbit hole to go down. My takeaways are it could possibly be used for knitting, but traditional spool knitting that the Grandma uses in the video doesn’t show up in history until the 1500s. If the Romans did use it for gloves then knitting has been around much longer than we have evidence of or they were using a different method with the dodecahedron.
Kinda like the little nib on top of old saw blades. It doesn’t really do anything, but if they can make that complex little nib, then they can probably make pretty decent sawblades too.
I’ve always heard that the nib was meant to help you gauge when to stop your pull stroke and start your push stroke so that you use the whole saw and don’t wear the teeth unevenly. Is this not the case?
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