Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hi. My name is Robert Lamb, and this is the Artifact,
Speaker 2: a short form series from Stuff to Blow Your Mind,
Speaker 2: focusing on particular objects, ideas, and moments in time. Now.
Speaker 2: We haven't considered an artifact on the show in a while,
Speaker 2: so I'd like to turn to one that my wife recommended.
Speaker 2: The Roman do decahedra, also classified as Gallo Roman do decahedra,
Speaker 2: These are undeniably strange looking artifacts from the second through
Speaker 2: fourth century CE, and they're made all the strangers since
Speaker 2: their exact purpose remains an unsolved mystery. Refreshingly, I actually
Speaker 2: did run across any alien, time travel, lizard man conspiracy
Speaker 2: theories regarding these items. But so abstract are the artifacts,
Speaker 2: and indeed so undocumented in contemporary writings of the time
Speaker 2: that they've inspire numerous largely plausible hypotheses about their purpose.
Speaker 2: When you can safely do so, look up a photo
Speaker 2: of the artifacts in question. They're typically small, hollow objects
Speaker 2: with twelve flat pentagonal faces cast from a copper alloy.
Speaker 2: Each face features a whole of differing size, and each
Speaker 2: corner features a little knob. The overall vibe that I
Speaker 2: get from this is that of a twelve sided dice
Speaker 2: smashed up with an ancient Roman lament configuration with a
Speaker 2: dash of ornate incense burner, and I don't know a
Speaker 2: Bronze age coronavirus model. It's strange, and there's not just
Speaker 2: one Roman dough decahedron. According to a January twenty twenty
Speaker 2: four Smithsonian Magazine article by Sonia Anderson, another mysterious Roman
Speaker 2: do decahedron has been unearthed in England. The current total
Speaker 2: stands at more than one hundred, one hundred and thirty
Speaker 2: from throughout the Roman Empire's northwest provinces and thirty three
Speaker 2: from Roman Britain. As we've discussed done stuff to blow
Speaker 2: your mind before, we sometimes encounter artifacts that seem to
Speaker 2: have been objects of pure novelty, one off inventions and
Speaker 2: so forth. But with more than one hundred of these
Speaker 2: items the Do decahedra, it would seem to have served
Speaker 2: some purpose for various people in the Roman Empire. So
Speaker 2: what was it? Again? We don't know for sure, but
Speaker 2: we have plenty of interesting theories to consider. I'm not
Speaker 2: going to run through all of them here, but let's
Speaker 2: talk about some of the most interesting. First of all,
Speaker 2: it's reasonable to assume anything that the Romans were into
Speaker 2: might have been tied to the art of war, and
Speaker 2: it has been proposed that these could have been weapons
Speaker 2: of some sort, or you know, the ends of maces,
Speaker 2: or even a projectile. But others have countered that these
Speaker 2: artifacts were largely too light, too fragile, and lack evidence
Speaker 2: of wear and tear from such usage. Likewise, this interpretation
Speaker 2: would tend to disqualify various other tool relation theories. Certainly,
Speaker 2: one could argue that something like this could be a
Speaker 2: mere ceremonial model of an otherwise robust tool or weapon.
Speaker 2: But if that were the case, surely we'd have some
Speaker 2: evidence of the actual tool or weapon. Of course, we know,
Speaker 2: as the Romans certainly did that warfare isn't just about
Speaker 2: blunt instruments. Indeed, one major theory holds that the dodecahedral
Speaker 2: were used for measuring distance or even time. However, the
Speaker 2: dodecahedra don't feature standardized dimensions, which makes these explanations more complicated.
Speaker 2: But what if the artifacts do not concern the mundane
Speaker 2: world of space and time at all, but rather the
Speaker 2: unseen world of religion that, as Andersen points out, is
Speaker 2: another favorite theory that the artifacts were ritualistic items that
Speaker 2: needed no more uniformity of dimension or durability than any
Speaker 2: other holy symbol. All of this would also match up
Speaker 2: with the lack of wear and tear, as well as
Speaker 2: their proximity to temple sites. In some finds, it's even
Speaker 2: possible that they served as divinitive dice, indeed a kind
Speaker 2: of spiritually charged D twelve religion check if you will.
Speaker 2: One of the more amusing theories concerns neither war nor spirituality, however,
Speaker 2: but rather some form of fiber art, fiber crafting, maybe
Speaker 2: something like knitting. With the advent of both three D
Speaker 2: printing and online video, you'll find some folks online demonstrating
Speaker 2: how these artifacts could have been used to knit, say, gloves,
Speaker 2: particularly the fingers of gloves. While undeniably a fun idea,
Speaker 2: this one doesn't seem to be widely accepted, and indeed,
Speaker 2: knitting wouldn't be invented for about a thousand years. Still,
Speaker 2: you can't help but love the ambiguity of an artifact
Speaker 2: that leads to such varied interpretations as things for making
Speaker 2: gloves to a model of the known universe, even if
Speaker 2: the more likely explanations may land somewhere between religious symbol
Speaker 2: and pure novelty. Tune in to additional episodes of the Artifact,
Speaker 2: the Monster Fact Mammalias to Pendium each week. As always,
Speaker 2: you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
Speaker 2: your Mind dot com.
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