Free Republic

In 2015, archaeologists working at a cave in southwestern Germany found an enigmatic perforated baton in a cave called Hohle Fels. It was a near-perfect match for an artifact found in 1983 in a cave down the road. Carved from single pieces of mammoth ivory, the Hohle Fels baton—roughly 20 centimeters long, about the length of a large paperback book—had multiple holes with spiraling grooves around the openings. Similar objects have been found elsewhere in Germany and in nearby France, often made from ivory or antler. They date from the last ice age, more than 35,000 years ago, a time...

More than 100 dodecahedrons have now been found in northwestern Europe, but archaeologists still don't know what they were used for.Amateur archaeologists in England have unearthed a stunning Roman dodecahedron — a mysterious class of objects that has baffled experts for centuries.The dodecahedron — a 12-sided metal shell about the size of a grapefruit — was found this past summer during a dig in a farmer's field near the Lincolnshire village of Norton Disney, located about 35 miles (56 kilometers) southeast of Sheffield.A previous geophysical survey, which had detected underground areas where the Earth's magnetic field had been disturbed, had...

The Roman Gadget Archaeologists Can't Figure Out | March 29, 2022 | Sideprojects

The standard model of cosmology predicts that the universe is infinite and flat. However, cosmologists in France and the US are now suggesting that space could be finite and shaped like a dodecahedron instead. They claim that a universe with the same shape as the twelve-sided polygon can explain measurements of the cosmic microwave background – the radiation left over from the big bang – that spaces with more mundane shapes cannot.Power spectrum of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation. Data from WMAP have extended the accuracy of the spectrum far beyond what was known from earlier measurements. This plot...

  Polyhedra are beautiful 3-D geometrical figures that have fascinated philosophers, mathematicians and artists for millennia.On this site are more than eighty paper models available for free.   Platonic Solids  Dodecahedron  Cube and Tetrahedron  Octahedron  Icosahedron   Archimedean Solids  Cuboctahedron  Icosidodecahedron  Truncated Tetrahedron  Truncated Octahedron  Truncated Cube  Truncated Icosahedron (soccer ball)  Truncated dodecahedron  Rhombicuboctahedron  Truncated Cuboctahedron  Rhombicosidodecahedron  Truncated Icosidodecahedron  Snub Cube  Snub DodecahedronKepler-Poinsot Polyhedra Great Stellated Dodecahedron  Small Stellated Dodecahedron Great Icosahedron Great DodecahedronOther Uniform Polyhedra  TetrahemihexahedronOctahemioctahedronCubohemioctahedron Small RhombihexahedronSmall Cubicuboctahedron Small Dodecicosidodecahedron Small RhombidodecahedronSmall Dodecahemiododecahedron Small Ditrigonal IcosidodecahedronSmall Snub Icosicosidodecahedron Small IcosihemidodecahedronCompounds Stella Octangula Compound of Cube and Octahedron...