Roman dodecahedra

I really love the mysteries of the world. Here is one of them. Roman Mystery Object by David Zincavage referencing Roman dodecahedra. Wikipedia's description:

No mention of them has been found in contemporary accounts or pictures of the time. Speculated uses include candlestick holders (wax was found inside one example); dice; survey instruments; devices for determining the optimal sowing date for winter grain; gauges to calibrate water pipes or army standard bases. Use as a measuring instrument of any kind seems to be prohibited by the fact that the dodacahedrons were not standardised and come in many sizes and arrangements of their openings. It has also been suggested that they may have been religious artifacts of some kind. This latter speculation is based on the fact that most of the examples have been found in Gallo-Roman sites. Several dodecahedrons were found in coin hoards, providing evidence that their owners considered them valuable objects.

Regarding the religious explanation - That might be right but it has been my experience that archaeologists and anthropologists, when faced with a material item they can't otherwise explain, always default to "a religious object" as an explanation.

This is, though far simpler, not dissimilar to the Antikythera mechanism. We have the object, and have been able to infer what it was used for, but there is no other extant evidence explaining how it was developed, why it was used, etc. It is a piece out of time. It is so complex and so sophisticated that it couldn't have just been conjured out of the air. There had to be all sorts of predicate technologies and capabilities in order to build such a device, but we have no evidence of those necessary predicate capabilities.

No one has a good explanation for it.

I think what both of these illustrate is that there is a much larger gap in our knowledge of the past than we acknowledge. Likely less than a fraction of 1% of all written materials have come down to us. Sure much of the rest would be shopping lists, and scatalogical diatribes, and records of how Merkos stole a sheep but amongst all the detritus there would be some beautiful poems and transporting plays, and possibly, just possibly, some hints about technological capabilities of which we are completely unaware other than the existence of such items as the Antikythera mechanism and the Roman dodecahedra.