The most Impossible Object Ever Created Till now

[00:00:02][music] >> In 1739, a local historian in Hertfordshire, England, [music] was digging in a field that had once been a Roman settlement. He pulled out a small bronze object about the size of a tennis ball with 12 flat [music] pentagonal faces, a circular hole cut into each face, and a small spherical knob at every corner. He had no idea what it was, >> [music] >> neither did anyone he showed it to.

[00:00:28]Nearly three centuries later, after more than 130 of these objects have been recovered from sites across Europe, after dozens of academics have published formal studies on them, after historians, archaeologists, engineers, [music] and amateur researchers have proposed more than 50 different explanations for what they might be, the answer is the same.

[00:00:49]>> [music] >> No one knows what they are.

[00:00:52]Not a single Roman text, [music] not a single ancient inscription, not a single image or illustration from [music] the entire Roman Empire mentions them. The Romans documented almost everything.

[00:01:03]>> [music] >> Their tax records survive. Their military manuals survive. Their recipes survive. Their jokes survive.

[00:01:12]They left no record whatsoever of an object they made at least 130 times.

[00:01:17]Every Roman dodecahedron shares the same basic features. 12 pentagonal faces, each with a circular hole cut through the center, 20 corners, each topped with a small sphere, a hollow interior. The holes on each face are different sizes, not uniform, not random, but varying in a pattern that differs from object to object. No two dodecahedra are identical. No numbers, no letters, [music] no inscriptions of any kind appear on any of them. They range in size from about 1.6 inches to nearly 4 inches, roughly golf ball to grapefruit.

[00:01:51]They weigh between 1 oz and just over a pound. They They made of copper alloy, and their walls are exceptionally thin.

[00:01:58]A few rare examples exist in stone. One found in the Geneva area was made of silver, the only known example of its kind. They date to the late 2nd through late 4th centuries [music] AD.

[00:02:11]Every single one comes from the northwestern provinces of the Roman Empire, modern-day France, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Switzerland, Austria, [music] Hungary, and the United Kingdom.

[00:02:25]Not a single one has been found in Italy, Spain, or North Africa, areas you would expect [music] to be prime territory if these were widely used Roman objects. The civilization that produced them at its center, in Rome itself, left no trace of them there.

[00:02:40]This geographical boundary is one of the most important and most ignored facts about the dodecahedra. Whatever they were for, they were for something specific to the northern frontier.

[00:02:51]Not for Romans in general, for Romans or the people living under Roman rule in a specific part of the world.

[00:02:58]Archaeologists have recovered dodecahedra from the graves of men and women, in coin hoards, in military camps, in public baths, in temples, in theaters, in a well, and in riverbeds.

[00:03:10]They have been found [music] next to valuables, suggesting high worth. They have been found in refuse heaps, suggesting disposability.

[00:03:17]>> [music] >> They have been found in contexts so varied that no single explanation covers all of them. This is the central problem. Every theory proposed for the dodecahedra explains some of the finds [music] and fails to explain others.

[00:03:30]The candlestick theory.

[00:03:34]Wax was found [music] inside at least one example. And the varying hole sizes could hold candles of different diameters.

[00:03:41]But most examples show no trace of wax and no evidence of heat damage.

[00:03:46]The measuring device theory.

[00:03:49]The varying hole sizes could serve as gauges for calibrating something. Wire thickness, pipe diameter, standard military equipment. But no markings or reference measurements appear on any dodecahedron, and the hole sizes vary between objects, which would make them useless as a standard. The knitting tool theory.

[00:04:08]The knobs at the corners [music] could be used to produce a specific style of fingerless gloves using a technique sometimes called Viking knitting.

[00:04:16]Researchers have demonstrated this works in practice. You can knit with a dodecahedron, but all known examples show no wear on the knobs, which would be expected if they had been used repeatedly for knitting.

[00:04:28]The surveying instrument theory.

[00:04:30]>> [music] >> The holes, held up to the eye at specific distances, could calculate range or angle for military or agricultural purposes. But again, no markings, no standardization, no [music] instructional text.

[00:04:46]The astronomical device theory.

[00:04:48]>> [music] >> The 12 faces correspond to 12 months or 12 signs of the zodiac, and the object could have been used to track the position of the sun through the holes at specific times of year to determine optimal planting dates. This explains the geography. Northern Europe has more variable seasonal light than the Mediterranean, making such a tool more useful there. But no ancient source describes this use, and the hole sizes do not correspond consistently to any known astronomical measurement.

[00:05:21]Archaeologist Michael Guggenberger, who has published several studies on the objects, wrote [music] that most proposed explanations can now be ruled out or considered highly improbable.

[00:05:30]He is one of the leading authorities on the subject. [music] His conclusion, after years of study, is that the primary explanation is most likely symbolic, connected to philosophy rather than practical use.

[00:05:44]This is where the object's shape becomes significant in a way that most discussions of the dodecahedra overlook.

[00:05:50]The dodecahedron is one of five Platonic [music] solids, the only perfectly regular three-dimensional shapes that exist in mathematics.

[00:05:58]>> [music] >> Four of them were assigned by Plato to the four classical elements, the tetrahedron to fire, the cube to earth, the octahedron [music] to air, the icosahedron to water. The fifth solid, the dodecahedron, was assigned [music] to something different. Plato wrote that the god used it for arranging constellations on the whole heaven.

[00:06:18]The dodecahedron, in Platonic and Pythagorean philosophy, was not an element. It was the cosmos itself, the shape of the universe, the form that contained everything else.

[00:06:30]Classical archaeologist Michael Guggenberger noted that in the 2nd century AD, thinkers like Plutarch resurrected the earlier Platonic idea of the dodecahedron as a symbolic connection to the heavens and the universe, and that this philosophical revival may have influenced Celtic peoples living in the Roman Empire's [music] northern provinces. This timing matters.

[00:06:52]The dodecahedra date to the 2nd through 4th centuries AD, exactly the period when Platonic philosophy was experiencing a major revival across the Roman world. The geographic distribution matters, too. The Celtic peoples of Gaul and Britain had their own religious traditions that intersected in specific ways with Greek philosophical [music] ideas as Roman culture spread north.

[00:07:15]If the dodecahedra were ritual or philosophical objects, representations of the cosmos used in religious practice, [music] held during ceremony, buried with the dead as symbols of the universe, that would [music] explain why they appear in graves, in temples, in coin hordes alongside valuables.

[00:07:34]It would explain [music] why they were never described in Roman technical literature, because they were not technical instruments.

[00:07:40]It would explain the lack of wear, because they were not used as tools. It would explain the absence from Italy and the Mediterranean, because the philosophical religious tradition that gave them meaning was specific [music] to the Celtic north. It explains everything except one thing, why each one is different. If they were symbolic objects representing a single concept, the cosmos, why do the whole sizes vary?

[00:08:04]Why is no two the same? In 2023, a volunteer with [music] the Norton Disney History and Archaeology Group was digging in a field in Lincolnshire, England in an area where Roman coins and brooches had previously been found. He unearthed a dodecahedron in excellent condition, complete, undamaged, made of copper alloy, larger than most known examples, and finished to a high standard of craftsmanship. The group's secretary, Richard Parker, called it the find of a lifetime. "Dodecahedrons are one of archaeology's great enigmas," >> [music] >> he said. The Norton Disney dodecahedron was put on display at the Lincoln Museum in Lincolnshire. [music] Thousands of people came to see it, not because they knew what it was, because they didn't. That reaction, the crowds at Lincoln, the 50 competing theories, the three centuries [music] of unanswered questions, tells you something about what the dodecahedra actually are, regardless of what they were used for.

[00:09:01]They are objects designed, whether intentionally or not, to resist explanation. Every feature that should narrow down their purpose opens another possibility instead. The holes suggest a function, but the varying sizes undermine any single function.

[00:09:16]Plato said the dodecahedron was what God used to arrange the constellations on the whole heaven. The Romans, [music] or the people living on their northern frontier, made at least 130 of them, and then they said [music] nothing about them, not one word, as if the shape itself was explanation enough. Here is the question I want to leave you with.

[00:09:37]Every other theory for the dodecahedra assumes there is a practical answer, a tool, an instrument, a gauge that we simply haven't found yet. Gugenberger's symbolic explanation assumes the opposite, [music] that the object's meaning was so embedded in a living tradition of belief that it required no written record because everyone who used it already knew, which means the silence in the Roman record is either a gap, something lost, or it is deliberate. A thing so understood that writing it down would have been like writing down why people light candles in a church.

[00:10:10]I want to know which [music] explanation you find most convincing. A practical tool we haven't figured out yet, or a ritual object whose meaning died with the people who held it.

[00:10:20]Drop it in the comments.

[00:10:24]>> [music]