Roman dodecahedron: 12-sided object has baffled archaeologists for centuries
91 comments
·July 14, 2025bee_rider
layer8
Maybe they used two-sided short swords.
smogcutter
Obviously someone was playing a barbarian
6177c40f
I mean,
> Because these dodecahedrons have been found in Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Great Britain, Hungary, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Switzerland — but not in Italy — Guggenberger views them as "Gallo-Roman products" with a possible origin in the Celtic tribes of the Roman Empire.
Sounds like you might be right!
bee_rider
Given the overlapping areas of interest, I wonder if this is a surprisingly widely gotten “joke” that coincidence has played on us.
aspenmayer
> Guggenberger views them as "Gallo-Roman products
Oh my, I’m getting flashbacks to this absurd Meeple copyright (edit: trademark) case for some reason due to the arguments that were used. It’s a really weird case if you’re into copyright (edit: trademark) law, which if you’re here on HN to read this, I’ll take the odds that you might be. Something about discussing stuff that may or may not be dice made me primed for that perhaps?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meeple#History
> Over 40 games with the word meeple in the title had been published as of 2024. Several games published by large game companies, like AEG and Asmodee, have even published games with the term in the titles, as well as adopting the token design commonly associated with the term, including such games as Mutant Meeples (2012), Terror in Meeple City (2013), the Meeple Circus series (2017-2021), and Meeples and Monsters (2022). This continued until 2019, when "MEEPLE" was registered as an EU trademark owned by Hans im Glück. The 2019 trademarking was objected to by, among others, gaming company CMON. The critics argued that the term has been used in common parlance, and the very shape of the meeple became commonplace in the industry. This resulted in the EU trademark exempting the category "toys and games"; however, Hans im Glück has since registered the term as a trademark in Germany for usage which does include toys and games, and the company also acquired the EU trademark for the shape of the ‘original’ meeple figure as used in Carcassonne. In 2024, the company Cogito Ergo Meeple received a cease and desist for unsanctioned use of the trademark, and decided to change the name of their upcoming game from Meeple Inc to Tabletop Inc, and the name of the company itself to Cotswold Games.
It goes on. I would try to shorten this but it’s just so silly that for it to make as little sense as it’s supposed to, I had to quote that much to be fair to the issue and how silly it is.
m3kw9
DnD doesn’t take into account close combat
dang
Related. Others?
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jumploops
My favorite theory so far is that the dodecahedrons were used to create metal chains.
A stay-at-home mom/pattern maker whose "eureka moment was visiting the Met in New York and seeing Roman jewelry with knitted chains" created a video confirming her theory was possible[0].
The glove theory is also good (and maybe the device was just multi-use?), as I seem to recall that the majority (all?) of these devices were found in colder/northern Roman settlements.
It seems the "wear pattern" on this example[1] from the UK matches what one might expect if you were to repeatedly wrap wire around the corner knobs.
With that said, its unclear that we'll ever know! (unless we find a grave with dodecahedrons and their products)
[0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lADTLozKm0I
[1]https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=1325774111601067&id=...
drsopp
Maybe one shop made these in a big city. Adventurous men bought them, brought them home and gave them to their wife. A great novelty noone has seen at home. So precious they bring them to their grave.
al_borland
I watched something recently that showed it was for knitting chainmail, specifically tubular shapes. Someone demoed it and it seemed to work really well.
lubujackson
Yeah, the metal knitting solution makes the most sense for all use cases - in military camps, buried with women, etc. What sold me was the story of a woman who saw one and immediately knew how to use it. It explains the different sizes of the pegs and the holes in the middle, as well as why they never showed up in historical documents. The shape is clearly a nod to mathematical/religious values, but not required for its actual purpose.
ibaikov
Someone suggested they were used to estimate distance which might be true since some modern guns like mp5 have rotating drum sights of same principle.
Another good suggestion was that it was used for knitting, there was a very cool video of this on YouTube somewhere.
And the last I like is it’s just a game.
I think it was one of the earliest multi-tools and all of these were what it was used for
octaane
My favorite theory that I've seen to explain these has been that they were a token showing the prowess/status of a metalworker or stoneworker - a kind of verifier of skill of the individual. In a mostly pre-literate society, where craftsmen could be itinerant, this theory made the most sense to me.
pegasus
I would expect a lot more variability if this would be the purpose. For example, instead of corner balls, why not be a little creative and make them cones. Also, the holes in the faces always being of different sizes is peculiar. Then there's the icosahedron with balls of different sizes. Reading the wikipedia page only deepens the sense of mystery, but some use in astrological divination or the like seems most plausible to me.
JKCalhoun
Expecting variability is a weak argument in my book. If there is some benchmark for skill, like a dovetail joint, the craftsperson is not going to "go rogue" but rather show the discipline required to exactly recreate this thing.
(So many modelers try to recreate the Millennium Falcon from scratch for example when, given their skills at modeling, I've never understood why they all just don't go off and come up with a creation of their own design. But it's kind of a Hello World for modeling perhaps?)
dennyabraham
While I don't endorse this particular theory, considering that something like a gotshall block or a fizzbuzz is proof of a certain skillset, it is certainly possible the corner balls being cones is not a comparable proof of work
pegasus
Still doesn't make sense to me. Those programming tasks have to be a certain way because they have a very specific use outside of the testing. If that's what you imply, then we're none the wiser, still having left unexplained what that use might be.
nemo
The big question there is why these metalworkers showed up in only one part of the empire, one of the less wealthy regions, and not one with some unique needs for bronze casting. Note that these are cast bronze, using the term "metalwork" conflates smiths who work with tin, gold, bronze, and iron, but those were different professions. This isn't a blacksmith showing off his ironworking skills, it's a person of a different profession casting fine bronze. Hard to say why you'd have mendicant bronze workers casting things, I don't know of any records of but it's a very limited area for so many finds, while this same work was needed all over the empire, why nothing in Spain, Italy, North Africa, or the eastern provinces where they'd need the same? Why just that one highly restricted range within Rome that coincides with Gallia and Britain?
jjallen
I have always thought that if they were candle holders it would make perfect sense. And they would be much more needed in the northern part of the Roman Empire than southern. And this is why no accompanying materials have been found in the dirt. Because wax is malleable and would disintegrate over time.
But yeah why would they have ever gone to the south?
JKCalhoun
Then the balls on the corners were merely decorative? Maybe.
pram
I can't believe it wasn't documented anywhere at least once. We can piece together Roman GDP from records, but no one ever said what these gizmos were??
GolfPopper
History is full of stuff so commonplace that no one ever wrote it down. One example (mentioned in passing here [1]) is that from the Medieval period up until the mid-19th century, European condiment sets were made with three shakers: salt, pepper, and well, no one is really sure.
Another is the rune 'Peorð'.[2] All the Anglo-Saxon runes have names in the Rune Poem, all the rest of which are known words in the corpus.But 'Peorð' isn't recorded anywhere else. No one knows what it means.
1.https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/26482/mind-boggling-fact...
jcranmer
> European condiment sets were made with three shakers: salt, pepper, and well, no one is really sure.
Mustard seems to be the agreed answer for the third condiment, though some people hold out for sugar instead. (Sugar seems to be unlikely because it wasn't cheap enough to be commonplace until after the third shaker fell out of use).
null
BobaFloutist
I also like the Land of Punt, an entire country that nobody wrote down the location of
wrp
I saw a video by an expert on Medieval weapons, demonstrating various arrowheads and their uses. For one of them, he said that we know the Europeans had it because it was pictured in Medieval manuscripts, but there is no record of what it was used for.
baggy_trough
Only 3 library shelves worth of classical Roman writing survives.
jfengel
Are you referring to manuscripts? Or to some specific period? Because we've got rather a lot of text from Rome in general.
brazzy
Literacy was much lower, and writing much more expensive. People didn't communicate through writing unless it was really necessary, and were generally much more selective about what to write down.
So of this was a tradition among craftsman, taught and shown off in person, nobody would have seen a need to write about it.
Whereas tax records were how the state ensured it got its money and citizens proved they had already paid - everyone wanted that written down.
wl
Tax records don't get copied over and over again by generations of scribes.
realo
I guess my ignorance shows here but I can only be impressed by their perfect symmetry, the perfect round little balls etc...
I understand skill was certainly required, but how were those made, exactly 2,000 years ago?
qoez
Wouldn't you just have to make a mold and pour in molten metal? Plenty of talented sculptors around at the time.
Beijinger
"For the time being, the most likely interpretation of the dodecahedron is as a cosmic, all-encompassing symbol," Guggenberger wrote, with "a function comparable to an amulet."
Great theory. But as you can see in the picture:
1. This thing is very carefully crafted.
2. The holes have different sizes.
I don't think this is by chance. There must be a reason for this and the explanation, be it coin counting, knitting or whatever, has to take this into account.
fiedzia
Knitting - specifically knitting jewellery - explains that. Different holes allow you to create chains of different sizes, which in case of jewellery, also does not need to be standardised (lack of any standard or markings makes theories of some measurement device unlikely). That also explains regional popularity and proximity to gold (several of those items were found close to places were gold coins were produced or stored).
dvh
It looks like a tool to make those little things with the sort of raffia work base, that has an attachment
lowplow
I love how this mystery has captured the imaginations of this generation.
I've started to see this object appear in various media, like sitting on a desk behind a professor, or in a studio of a Roman intellectual when time traveling to that era.
MarcelOlsz
It's so obviously for measuring pasta. Case closed.
It is particularly confusing because, of course, Romans famously used short swords in battle. They’d have needed this if they used something like a great axe, but a short sword is just 1d6 damage…
as everyone who’s played DnD knows.