Over the years archaeological digs of Roman sites have uncovered many of these strange dodecahedrons, usually made out of metal and with various holes in their faces. With no surviving records that describe how they were used, speculation has ranged from jewelry to a knitting aid. In a 2023 video by [Amy Gaines] it is this latter use which is explored, using a 3D printed dodecahedron and some wooden dowels to knit both gold wire and yarn into rather intricate patterns that are also referred to as ‘Viking Knitting’.
As we mentioned previously when yet another one of these dodecahedrons was uncovered, their use was unlikely to be of supreme relevance in military or scientific circles on account of a lack of evidence. What is quite possible is that these were both attractive shapes for jewelry (beads), and useful knitting aids for both jewelry makers (for e.g. gold wire braiding) and quite possibly yarn-related uses. The results which [Amy] demonstrates in the video for the gold wire in particular bear a striking resemblance to ancient braided gold chains on display at the Met and other museums, which leads credence to this theory.
If these items were effectively just common knitting tools, that would explain why the historical record is mum on them, as they would have been as notable as a hammer or a precision lathe used by the ancient Greeks.
Thanks to [john] for the tip.
Not all dodecahedrons have holes. They also predate the widespread spinning of wool by over a thousand years. My guess is that as they have twelve sides which are all a little different, it had some function as a calendar, in the there would be a separate string wrapped around two nodes for each date you needed to remember.
Theh Romans didn’t have spinning wheel, but they certainly spun wool into thread in order to weave cloth. They just did it with drop spindles. You can find videos of the technique, but it’s fairly straightforward, incredibly tedious, and likely to have taken up a fair amount of the day of the average pre-industrial peasant. Even so, most Roman clothing was made from spun thread, anr they are even reported to have bought chinese silk, unpick it, spun the thread even finer and weave that thread into even more luxurious cloth.
For a more detailed look at the ancient cloth industrym follow this link and also see the other parts in the series.
https://acoup.blog/2021/03/19/collections-clothing-how-did-they-make-it-part-iii-spin-me-right-round/
Roman calendar didn’t have 12 months.
Some Roman calendars certainly did. Eg the Julian calendar.
Not at the time he was referring to. Sept, Oct, non, deca… think shout it carefully.
The Roman calendar did have 12 months, but the year started in March, making December the 10th month, and February the 12th.
I believe that it has twelve sides, one for each month, because it was a clock. I think to measure a set period, possibly four hours, used for guard duty at night. A candle of different diameter could be created by rolling the wax to the right size and placed in the relevant side depending on the month, and maybe the latitude.
Kir Bułyczow wrote similar novel. UFO make a art instalation, people on earth talking about 100 uses for it even for mending socks ;)
Romans did not use such tubes for anything. And making wire was extremely difficult because it was done by hand. It was already easier to make circles. Even the caster was not made.
Perfect for making wire re-enforced codpeices to protect a Roman’s most important appendage.
I think this theory is way more plausible than that other recent Youtube video where the guy reckons they were cipher coding tools, operated by putting various circular cards on the upward facing knobs. That just seems all too complex when pretty much what we know about roman communication security was the Caesar cipher.
I was excited thinking that someone had actually listened, but then no; circular cards? What?
None of the dodecahedra are the same size, they’re not described anywhere, and they don’t show the kind of wear that suggests repetitive use.
What if all of that is intrinsic to their actual use? Templates intended to be unique, used to gauge the size of lathed rods that would serve as scytales for decrypting secret orders sent to units in the field. Twelve sizes to allow for rotating cyphers on a monthly basis.
Scytales were used by the Greeks, this isn’t ancient aliens madness.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scytale
What is being demonstrated is a good use for a pentagon, not a dodecahedron. The extra expense of creating a lost wax molding and getting the geometries exactly right (find the exact center of each of those faces and carve precision holes and patterns with roman tooling. go ahead, I’ll wait) suggests that Something unique fits in each of those holes. They rotate. and they interact somehow or else you’d just make a series of simple plates.
Since they were nearly all found with coins. I have to admit that I found the idea of verifying coins interesting. To check a gold/silver/copper coins did not have bits nipped away over time as they changed hands.
Yes. Ancient inflation detector.
We need a modern one that works as well. Bureau of Economic Analysis ain’t it.
Chutzpa version 2.0
-Old definition: State governments offer incentives to companies for jobs at a rate of $120,000 per job (https://economics.princeton.edu/working-papers/evaluating-state-and-local-business-tax-incentives/)
-New definition: Biden federal gov “Hold my beer”
$500 million to GM Lansing plant for 700 jobs (https://www.lansingstatejournal.com/story/news/local/2024/07/11/gm-lansing-grand-river-assembly-jobs-evs-electric-plant-camaro-cadillac/74366607007/)
Use the Big Mac index to detect inflation, if you don’t trust the boffins.
The dodecahedron could have perhaps detected some shaving. But really, you checked your coins via weighing and assaying. They weren’t uniform enough in shape, since they were created by manually hitting a blank disk with a hammer.
In any case, the anicents debased their currency by fiddling with the metal composition. Nothing based on shape and size would detect that.
could also be an indication that it was used in some kind of business.
Indeed, indeed.
+1
Haven’t heard that one but it is the most plausible. Since coins have been around since forever made of precious metals a simple method of detecting edge shaving must have been ubiquitous for anyone doing commerce. Drops through the hole? Coin no good, mate. Many holes of approved sizes thus ability to check the many varieties of coinage a merchant is likely to happen across.
As to shaving the faces- they were minted so the image would be relatively easy to “verify”
I like this.
As we have plenty of Roman coins it would be a simple matter to check the diameters of the holes against coins to verify this hypothesis.
The dodecahedra are not standardized, they are all different sizes. No known Roman documents describe the dodecahedra or their use. It’s a clever idea, but the facts that we have do not support it.
And the shape of the coins wasn’t standardised enough for this to work either. Remember: the coins were created by a big bloke hitting a blank metal disk with a big old hammer. And the blank metal disks were manufactured by hand, too. Lots of variations that way.
The weight was standardised, and that’s what you would have checked first. (But if you wanted to be really sure, you’d also need to check the proportion of metal contents.)
Eureka!
B^)
That’s a terrible hypothesis. Why make such a complicated and difficult shape just to measure coin diameters?
A simple metal plate with the various sizes cut out would be way easier to make and to use. You could just hold it in your hand. A decahedron with pegs sticking out is a big waste of material and space and harder to use. You have to turn it around until you find the right hole… Maybe, just maybe, this might have been a bankers “executive toy” ala the movie Brazil for measuring coins, but I highly doubt it.
My idea is best. They were a demonstration of proficiency for journeyman metal casters, and thereafter a skill signifier one carried as they traveled. They side stepped literacy and language.
They were complicated geometry, and tricky to cast, and both unique to the journeyman, yet broadly equivalent and based on a recognisable and comparable idea.
They weren’t quite treasure, but they were quite valued. They have no wear marks because they weren’t used for anything but presentation. If broken, they could simply be remade.
The hollows, holes, inscribed circles, and knobs complicate casting, both from shrinkage and incomplete fills, in the case of the knobs, each of which would need a sprue.
Lost wax casting one of those suckers would be hard. There are no crappy ones because they were simply melted down and remade.
Or finger protection for Roman butchers
always assumed it was a method for making rope. im glad im not far off. other ideas were as a crip tool for spear heads (choose the correct hole size for your bronze arrowhead, insert shaft, tap with rock or other hammering device).
wasn’t there a FarSide cartoon where a caveman carves a wierd object and tells the other caveman “10,000 years from now this will for sure mess them up trying to figure out what my nonsensical object actually is.”
does not hold water: It´s a very slow and cumbersome way to make a rope, and those dodecahedrons found where not hammered.
It’s a turbo encabularorium.
This has my vote.
I like the yarn demo at the end, but that is called naalbinding (also nålebinding, nålbinding, nålbindning, or naalebinding), not knitting. Different technique that is nearly as old as sewing, while knitting is only a little over a thousand years old.
I honestly wouldn’t mind using a jig to help with my shoddy naalbinding, so I might have to give this a try with a really big dodecahedron so I can make a bag or hat.
“Viking knit” is also a really nice way to make those semi-flexible pieces of jewelry, like torques, but I’ve never taken the time to give that a try.
I wonder how many other uses there are for these things…
What do you do with a little tube of yarn? Fidget?
Occam’s razor. “The simplest explanation is usually the correct one.”
But how do you know you are looking at the simplest explanation? Maybe there is an even simpler explanation? ;)
A wizard did it!
I also think this is the right answer