A mysterious object has been dug out of the ground and set on a platform for all of us to look at and wonder what kind of deranged choices our predecessors made. This object is a Roman dodecahedron.
Twelve flat pentagons make the sides. On each side there is a hole. The holes are different sizes. Each corner has a little ball on it. Inside, the doodad is hollow. It is small. They range in size, but the largest is only 11 cm.
Thirty-three of them have been discovered in Britain, and most recently, one was found in Norton Disney, which is apparently a place, during an amateur archeology dig, which means some guy was digging up the ground and found it. This one, according to real archeologists who stepped in, is 1,700 years old.
Richard Parker, the secretary of the Norton Disney History and Archaeology Group, told the BBC, "The imagination races when thinking about what the Romans may have used it for. Magic, rituals or religion—we perhaps may never know."
The past is very mysterious, I agree, but luckily I know what this is! I will tell you soon.
You might guess, because it is roundish and the circles are different-sized, that it is meant to be dice! It is for gambling! You are so silly. This gizmo is not for gambling. The dodecahedrons found so far have no letters or numbers on the sides. You would be wrong.
Plus, there are these little knobs on the corners. If you were to roll them, I imagine they would bounce a little like that game where you would roll the pigs out of the cup. Plus, they do not show any wear. If they were dice, or used for any kinds of games, the doohickeys would probably show wear.
Some of my coworkers had theories about the contraption. They thought maybe the dodecahedron was cursed (possible), or a gauge for sausages (wrong), or a thing you put all the gauges of sausages into that opened the portal to hell (I swear to god someone said this).
Interestingly, more than 100 similar dodecahedrons have been found across the Roman world but not one of them has been found in Rome, or even Italy. Many of them have been found with valuables, so we know they are not some weird McDonald's toy from Ancient Rome. These were worth something. But what?
“A huge amount of time, energy and skill was taken to create our dodecahedron, so it was not used for mundane purposes," the Norton Disney group told The Guardian.
I'm sorry, Norton Disney, but this is wrong. Rich people absolutely love to pay someone to spend a huge amount of time, energy, and skill to make a kajigger with absolutely no purpose just to prove that they are important. Social status can, in fact, be bought. Especially when you aren't in the hustle and bustle of the social scene (Rome), you might need proof that you are important, a kind of signal that you are better than everyone else in your provincial backwater (England).
The thingamabob is thus clearly and beyond a doubt the calling card of a private social club. These are entry tokens. You bring these to the meeting of the cabal of important people, and you are allowed in. You flash it around, and people know you mean business. The dodecahedrons are nothing but a signal of importance, and like all signals of importance they are made to be shiny and important and stupidly hard to get, which is why I should get to have one. I think it would be nice to hold, and I would use it, personally, as a fidget toy.
