The Roman Ball of Mystery That’s Still Befuddling Researchers

We all have that one mysterious object in our kitchen drawer that we’ve kept because it looks “important.” You don’t really know what it attaches to or what it does exactly, and, of course, nobody in the house remembers buying it. But throwing it away feels like a decision you’ll somehow regret, so it just continues to sit in the drawer, eminating mystery. This is basically the same feeling archeologists and historians have when looking at the Roman dodecahedron. It’s a little metal object from Ancient Rome, and it’s so simple with so many deliberate features that you expect an...