Hella unlikely they were used to knit gloves
Unlikely why?
Here’s a video of it being used for that: https://youtu.be/76AvV601yJ0?si=kvdh4ZLiBCmyldPN
I have seen people argue that "they are pretty intricate and expensive things to use only for the purposes of knitting gloves. ". To them, I would like to submit my wife’s $1100 sewing machine that definitely gets used, and isn’t just some weird status symbol among creative types.
Just because you could use it for knitting it doesn’t mean it was its purpose.
There’s not a lot of detail, but you can check on the Wiki why it’s ultimately an unlikely explanation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_dodecahedron#Purpose
Thanks! I really like the idea that it was a test of skill of a blacksmith.
Knitting isn’t attested until almost a millennium after this artifact was created. Nålbinding was practiced during this era in a variety of areas and can look very similar, but is mechanically very diffferent.
Less ambiguously worded: knitting did not exist in Roman late antiquity. Romans produced their fabric by weaving. It’s very easy to tell the difference when looking at a fabric if someone points it out to you. Knitting was an early medieval probably Middle Eastern/North African invention. It took a while to spread.
It’s very awesome that someone was able to use a model of one of these to knit a glove, but one time I got wasted and knit with pencils. I really love imagining little Roman schoolchildren in woolen mittens and beanies, but it’s just not realistic.
Scale replicas can be used to knit gloves. Life size ones are way too big to make gloves for humans.
Ofk. They just made them to troll future archaeologist
Just like my code. It’s obvious what it does and doesn’t need documentation… until I try to understand it 2 years later.
My mother has a fascination with Roman Dodecahedra, so I 3D printed her one for Christmas. She hasn’t knitted any gloves with them yet. (And may never, but she still likes it and has it sitting on the mantle over the fireplace.)
Printing a Roman dodecahedron seems like an interesting torture test for a 3D printer, plenty of overhangs.
Yeah, the particular model I printed was specifically designed to be easy-ish to print. It’s printed in like 32 parts (one for each face and one connector for each vertex) and requires assembly after printing. All to avoid overhangs and such.
But yeah. Raw-dogging it with the supports would be pretty nightmarish. Lol.
Archeologists when we’re ancient:
“Wtf is these?”
“I dunno but I bet my mum could knit a glove with it”
It’ll take them a single step on them to understand these were used in wars. That they are no longer used because they were probably banned for human rights violations.
You jest, but people actually did (and do!) use them in wars:
Btw my favorite theory is that they are some kind of dice for a game. The little nubbins on the corners would help them bounce around better.
I always assumed they were for a game. Why have a different face on most of the sides if they werent some sort of dice like game piece?
Honestly though I’m glad archeologists went with “mittens” rather than their old standby “human sacrificing sex cult worship”.
Edit: fuck spelling is hard
Hey now, archeologists know their sex cult stuff hence “fertility object”. The we dont know is usually labelled as ritual object and left at that.
