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Hella unlikely they were used to knit gloves
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this post was submitted on 15 Jan 2024
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I like the idea that it was a blacksmith "benchy." Archeologists might do the same with the one 3D printing hobbyists make.
Archeologists in the future: WHY THE FUCK ARE THERE SO MANY LITTLE BOATS?!
They are for ritualistic and ceremonial purposes
Honestly, that's a pretty good take. Considering that welding/brazing would be incredibly hard (or impossible) with the tools available in antiquity, we're left with casting that beast in one shot. The thin walls and nubblins on all sides that need to permit molten bronze to fill, makes for a difficult to construct and pour mold. Heck, just constructing the master from clay or wood is non-trivial, and then there's the finish work on the rough casting.
So yeah, a practically useless paperweight that demonstrates how amazing your brozneworks is? Totally plausible.
Edit: Upon closer inspection, it might have been mostly turned on a lathe out of a chunk of cast bronze, with a ton of manual finish work. So, still very hard. The nubblins don't 100% interfere with the faces if you can get your tool in behind them, cutting from the axis of rotation, outward. Each face on the duodecahedron has an opposing face, making turning between centers easy. The nublins are also all opposed from each other, on the same axis, which would make those possible to also form on a lathe. It's the hollow inside that would require turning to remove bulk mateiral, then a pile of manual finishing work.
It could be the equivalent to a master's project for an apprentice. I build and fit custom orthosis and prosthetics, at the end of the fabrication portion of school they had us build a brace that's not really ever prescribed anymore.
However, that particular brace requires all the fabrication skills required to practice in the field. Having one of these sitting on your table is instant proof that you can finish a complicated project.
It would also serve as an easy metric when traveling to places with non standardized measurement systems. Instead of transcribing what 1/32 of a cubic is, the customer could just point to a different sized hole.
I was wondering this too. I was reminded of the torture tests that stonemasons go through, starting with "cut a perfect cube, then cut it into a perfect sphere", and culminating with something ornate like a gargoyle.
1, I don't expect most benchys to last longer than people who know what they're for; I imagine the plastic will crumble to microdust before then, but 2. benchys look like little toy tugboats. Society being so destroyed we can't recognize a toy boat while benchys are still around...I'll believe that the last human to hold a benchy in their hands will say "Oh, a weird little toy boat" but not "no one on earth knows what this is or has the start of the beginning of the foggiest clue what it was for."