If there was a commonly used item today that was going to be our equivalent to the Roman dodecahedron, what item do you most speculate it would be? (lemm.ee)

submitted 3 months ago by shinigamiookamiryuu@lemm.ee to c/casualconversation@lemm.ee

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The Roman dodecahedron is an item that has turned up in a lot of sites where people do archaeology. While most items, given time, have their purpose easily or at least approximately deduced by researchers, the Roman dodecahedron's purpose is largely baffling to even the most studied of archaeologists, who have no idea on where to start with it. This in turn would probably baffle the Romans, who would have seen it as a common household item, no different from a spoon or a comb.

Suppose a few thousand years from now, archaeologists were excavating our remains and had varying degrees of success deducing what different things were for. If you had to guess what common household item of ours would stump them the most, what item would you guess it would be?

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[-] Subtracty@lemmy.world 5 points 3 months ago

The sleeves from gastric bypass surgery. Lots of other medical devices have an obvious function, thinking of steel hip replacements or screws to bend badly broken bones. But the sleeve might perplex someone thousands of years from now.

This question is tough because I feel that our society has documented everything. Even the smallest item has articles written about it. But if a lot of that info was lost, things like bluetooth headphones might cause confusion. If technology doesn't endure, will future generations think everyone had them to limit surrounding noises when in reality we introduce sound wirelessly.

[-] Bigfish@lemmynsfw.com 6 points 3 months ago

Wouldn't gastric sleeves be pretty quickly identified as being a medical device? Find a few in coffins and the theory pops right out. The beauty of the Roman 12gon is that it's ubiquitous, complicated, but not documented and not clear even what category of things they were used for. Like a rubix cube.

this post was submitted on 06 Mar 2025

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