Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

Hi. My name is Robert Lamb, and this is the Artifact, a short form series from Stuff to Blow Your Mind, focusing on particular objects, ideas, and moments in time. Now. We haven't considered an artifact on the show in a while, so I'd like to turn to one that my wife recommended. The Roman do decahedra, also classified as Gallo Roman do decahedra, These are undeniably strange looking artifacts from the second through fourth century CE, and they're made all the strangers since their exact purpose remains an unsolved mystery. Refreshingly, I actually did run across any alien, time travel, lizard man conspiracy theories regarding these items. But so abstract are the artifacts, and indeed so undocumented in contemporary writings of the time that they've inspire numerous largely plausible hypotheses about their purpose. When you can safely do so, look up a photo of the artifacts in question. They're typically small, hollow objects with twelve flat pentagonal faces cast from a copper alloy. Each face features a whole of differing size, and each corner features a little knob. The overall vibe that I get from this is that of a twelve sided dice smashed up with an ancient Roman lament configuration with a dash of ornate incense burner, and I don't know a Bronze age coronavirus model. It's strange, and there's not just one Roman dough decahedron. According to a January twenty twenty four Smithsonian Magazine article by Sonia Anderson, another mysterious Roman do decahedron has been unearthed in England. The current total stands at more than one hundred, one hundred and thirty from throughout the Roman Empire's northwest provinces and thirty three from Roman Britain. As we've discussed done stuff to blow your mind before, we sometimes encounter artifacts that seem to have been objects of pure novelty, one off inventions and so forth. But with more than one hundred of these items the Do decahedra, it would seem to have served some purpose for various people in the Roman Empire. So what was it? Again? We don't know for sure, but we have plenty of interesting theories to consider. I'm not going to run through all of them here, but let's talk about some of the most interesting. First of all, it's reasonable to assume anything that the Romans were into might have been tied to the art of war, and it has been proposed that these could have been weapons of some sort, or you know, the ends of maces, or even a projectile. But others have countered that these artifacts were largely too light, too fragile, and lack evidence of wear and tear from such usage. Likewise, this interpretation would tend to disqualify various other tool relation theories. Certainly, one could argue that something like this could be a mere ceremonial model of an otherwise robust tool or weapon. But if that were the case, surely we'd have some evidence of the actual tool or weapon. Of course, we know, as the Romans certainly did that warfare isn't just about blunt instruments. Indeed, one major theory holds that the dodecahedral were used for measuring distance or even time. However, the dodecahedra don't feature standardized dimensions, which makes these explanations more complicated. But what if the artifacts do not concern the mundane world of space and time at all, but rather the unseen world of religion that, as Andersen points out, is another favorite theory that the artifacts were ritualistic items that needed no more uniformity of dimension or durability than any other holy symbol. All of this would also match up with the lack of wear and tear, as well as their proximity to temple sites. In some finds, it's even possible that they served as divinitive dice, indeed a kind of spiritually charged D twelve religion check if you will. One of the more amusing theories concerns neither war nor spirituality, however, but rather some form of fiber art, fiber crafting, maybe something like knitting. With the advent of both three D printing and online video, you'll find some folks online demonstrating how these artifacts could have been used to knit, say, gloves, particularly the fingers of gloves. While undeniably a fun idea, this one doesn't seem to be widely accepted, and indeed, knitting wouldn't be invented for about a thousand years. Still, you can't help but love the ambiguity of an artifact that leads to such varied interpretations as things for making gloves to a model of the known universe, even if the more likely explanations may land somewhere between religious symbol and pure novelty. Tune in to additional episodes of the Artifact, the Monster Fact Mammalias to Pendium each week. As always, you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.

Hi. My name is Robert Lamb, and this is the Artifact, a short form series from Stuff to Blow Your Mind, focusing on particular objects, ideas, and moments in time. Now. We haven't considered an artifact on the show in a while, so I'd like to turn to one that my wife recommended. The Roman do decahedra, also classified as Gallo Roman do decahedra, These are undeniably strange looking artifacts from the second through fourth century CE, and they're made all the strangers since their exact purpose remains an unsolved mystery. Refreshingly, I actually did run across any alien, time travel, lizard man conspiracy theories regarding these items. But so abstract are the artifacts, and indeed so undocumented in contemporary writings of the time that they've inspire numerous largely plausible hypotheses about their purpose. When you can safely do so, look up a photo of the artifacts in question. They're typically small, hollow objects with twelve flat pentagonal faces cast from a copper alloy. Each face features a whole of differing size, and each corner features a little knob. The overall vibe that I get from this is that of a twelve sided dice smashed up with an ancient Roman lament configuration with a dash of ornate incense burner, and I don't know a Bronze age coronavirus model. It's strange, and there's not just one Roman dough decahedron. According to a January twenty twenty four Smithsonian Magazine article by Sonia Anderson, another mysterious Roman do decahedron has been unearthed in England. The current total stands at more than one hundred, one hundred and thirty from throughout the Roman Empire's northwest provinces and thirty three from Roman Britain. As we've discussed done stuff to blow your mind before, we sometimes encounter artifacts that seem to have been objects of pure novelty, one off inventions and so forth. But with more than one hundred of these items the Do decahedra, it would seem to have served some purpose for various people in the Roman Empire. So what was it? Again? We don't know for sure, but we have plenty of interesting theories to consider. I'm not going to run through all of them here, but let's talk about some of the most interesting. First of all, it's reasonable to assume anything that the Romans were into might have been tied to the art of war, and it has been proposed that these could have been weapons of some sort, or you know, the ends of maces, or even a projectile. But others have countered that these artifacts were largely too light, too fragile, and lack evidence of wear and tear from such usage. Likewise, this interpretation would tend to disqualify various other tool relation theories. Certainly, one could argue that something like this could be a mere ceremonial model of an otherwise robust tool or weapon. But if that were the case, surely we'd have some evidence of the actual tool or weapon. Of course, we know, as the Romans certainly did that warfare isn't just about blunt instruments. Indeed, one major theory holds that the dodecahedral were used for measuring distance or even time. However, the dodecahedra don't feature standardized dimensions, which makes these explanations more complicated. But what if the artifacts do not concern the mundane world of space and time at all, but rather the unseen world of religion that, as Andersen points out, is another favorite theory that the artifacts were ritualistic items that needed no more uniformity of dimension or durability than any other holy symbol. All of this would also match up with the lack of wear and tear, as well as their proximity to temple sites. In some finds, it's even possible that they served as divinitive dice, indeed a kind of spiritually charged D twelve religion check if you will. One of the more amusing theories concerns neither war nor spirituality, however, but rather some form of fiber art, fiber crafting, maybe something like knitting. With the advent of both three D printing and online video, you'll find some folks online demonstrating how these artifacts could have been used to knit, say, gloves, particularly the fingers of gloves. While undeniably a fun idea, this one doesn't seem to be widely accepted, and indeed, knitting wouldn't be invented for about a thousand years. Still, you can't help but love the ambiguity of an artifact that leads to such varied interpretations as things for making gloves to a model of the known universe, even if the more likely explanations may land somewhere between religious symbol and pure novelty. Tune in to additional episodes of the Artifact, the Monster Fact Mammalias to Pendium each week. As always, you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.

Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.