The Out-of-Place Artifacts Iceberg - PART 6.5 - What I MISSED

But if you think I can just leave it there, you don't know me well enough yet. Because what about those weird little golden dodecahedra from Asia? Where did they come in? Well, first of all, I have no idea. But second of all, I just found out about some insane new clues that I somehow missed while writing the main body of the script. Apparently, more of these things have been found in Myanmar, Thailand, China, Mongolia, and maybe even Korea. In addition is some from the places we've already looked at, India and Vietnam, as well as maybe the Iranian world. But I have to come clean. I didn't find this out naturally. No, no, no. I'm embarrassed and I'm humiliated to admit this, but I found this out on Reddit. I happened to be browsing for some photos of the dodecahedra, and it turns out that a subreddit called r slash roman dodecahedron has a bunch of them. I was just casually scrolling through it until, to my horror and amazement, I found this post. You can't imagine how crushed I was to learn that Redditors had beaten me to the punch at finding obscure dodecahedron lore. Some of my friends can attest to the fact that I was utterly, inconsolably devastated. But it turns out that this and some of the other things people have posted on r slash roman dodecahedron are actually pretty interesting and provide some new avenues of research. So I'm going to swallow my pride and briefly go over them, because this is already the longest segment I've ever done for one of these things. It has to end at some point. Now, the most interesting of these have to be the dodecahedra found on ancient Chinese jewelry, specifically the ones dangling from this piece, which are just spookily similar to their European equivalents. Aren't they? Like, look at them. This thing was found within the well-preserved complex of Han Dynasty-era tombs at Hepu, on the far southern coast of China in Guangxi, which one article refers to as the home port of the Maritime Silk Road, at least from the 2nd century B.C. to the 3rd century A.D. So maybe, just maybe, this was one of the next stops over from Ok Aeo for adventurous Roman traders, or their contacts. And the ground covered by these tombs is staggering. They cover some 68 square kilometers and consist of literally thousands of tombs. Other imports from far-off places to the west found within these tombs include things like Parthian ceramics and beautiful semi-precious beads from India, so it's not too far of a stretch. To be more specific, it was unearthed in 1978 around a place called Kaoche village, where the local government probably used to be based, and it comes from a tomb now known as Bei Cha Jiang Yandui M1. It's the best known of the lot by far because Xi Jinping visited the Hepu County Museum, where it's one of the star attractions, in 2017. So a bunch of news articles about the museum's collections mentioning this thing were released after that. One exhibition catalog, and mind you, I'm using Google Translate, describes the beads as olive-shaped and floral-patterned gold-beaded ornaments. But they're also broadly recognized as belonging to a type of vaguely polyhedral bead that enjoyed a lot of popularity across 1st century Southeast Asia. There are some 30 to 33 beads almost exactly like this, generally ranging in size from only 0.4 or 0.5 centimeters to 1.7 centimeters in diameter, from Hepu alone. One of the main excavators of Hepu, and my main source on all this, Zhaoming Xiong, writes that two were found in the Fengmeng Ling Tomb No. 10, two in Zhou Zhiling Tomb No. 5, and five in Tomb No. 6A, eight in Beichajiang Yandui Tomb No. 1, the one with the necklace, and 14 in Tomb No. 4, from the same site. They were produced by using gold wire to create 12 small round rings, which were then soldered together into a polyhedral cluster. At every junction of the small rings, either one or four small beads were attached. This had the double purpose of stabilizing the whole bead structure and improving the aesthetic appearance. In the papers I've looked through, it seems like these are uncontroversially identified as early examples of West meeting East, and that if they weren't directly imported, they were at least inspired by metalwork brought through the Silk Road. Similar complex loop-and-loop gold chains made out of pre-soldered links fastened together in varying degrees of complexity might have also been borrowed from Hellenistic Greek trends, and this was by no means a one-way sort of transaction. Emperor Wu of Han sent ships out from Hepu to check out Vietnam, which was then under Chinese occupation, various kingdoms in Myanmar, Huangji Kingdom, or Kansapuram in Southeast India, and the Yibucheng Kingdom, which is probably Sri Lanka. But getting back to the Dodecahedra, even more amazingly, numerous others have been found across China, well beyond Hepu. This one is from the tomb of one Liu Jin at Gangchuan in Jiangsu that's now in the Nanjing Museum. We know around when it was made, because unfortunately, Jin committed suicide in 67 AD, during the later Han Dynasty. Continuing the trend of these being suspiciously close to other products passed along the Silk Road, this bead was accompanied by a Roman marbled glass bowl. And also, this is a bit of a neat departure from the norm, because it doesn't just have the usual little pellets on its points, no, these little golden granules are stacked into little pyramids. A further four were found in tomb number 009 at Wulipai in Changsha, and were subsequently taken to the Hunan Provincial Museum. They were among hundreds of other gold beads, and also date to the later Han Dynasty. A plundered Han tomb, number 4013 in Guangzhou, had a single gold bead left in it, and it just so happened to be another Dodecahedron. And apparently, this other one was found there too. Which makes a lot of sense, since then, as it is now, Guangzhou was a major commercial port. These Han examples have also been found in the Shendingling Han tombs at Guigang in Guangxi, and there's one presumably Han example in the Kemp Collection of Stockholm too. But these polyhedral beads have also been found in some tombs dating to the Eastern Jin Dynasty. A single gold polyhedron was found in a Jin Dynasty tomb at Gong'an in Hubei, and another Jin example comes from tomb 3 at Huangnitang, also in Changsha, Hunan. So basically, they all date to the later, or Eastern Han and Eastern Jin Dynasties, which was right when their bigger, baser Roman counterparts were in production. Though the necklace appears to be the earliest of the bunch, since it's thought to date to before the end of the Western Han Dynasty in 9 AD. And the ones from Auk Aeo match this trend too. The cities thought to have flourished between the 1st to 3rd centuries AD, and remember that treasure trove from Sirkaf with some in it? Its excavator, Sir John Marshall, dated it to around 60 AD. Oh, and speaking of Sirkaf, there's actually yet another spectacular array of dodecahedral beads on another 1st century necklace excavated there. But this time, they're inlaid with fancy white orthoclase feldspar. Apparently, it's now in the National Museum of New Delhi. There's even reportedly a fourth Indian example, from a place called Patanam on the southwest coast of India. Zhang hypothesizes that the dodecahedra originated in the West and initially entered China during the 1st century AD, while China was in the midst of an overseas trade boom. He notes that gold ornaments made with filigree and welding techniques appeared rather suddenly in China at around this point, and that these sorts of polyhedral beads are almost exclusive to China's southern and eastern coastal hinterland. Gold, or at least gold-looking things, also seem to have been way more in demand across Southeast Asia at this time. These shiny little beads, made of something known as gold glass or gold inglass, that was primarily produced in Roman Egypt and the Levant from the 1st to 4th centuries AD, became uber-popular across Asia, even making it as far as Bali, Korea, and even Japan, along with tons of other examples of Roman glass. But there's a rather exceptional set of Chinese examples of these dodecahedra that dates to a little bit after this general window, though it really is a true hodgepodge of different influences and cultures. This incredibly ornately bejeweled necklace was among the 200 or so lavish grave goods found in 1957 within the burial of the Sui dynasty princess Li Jingxun, who was interred just west of Xi'an at Wanshan Monastery in 608. Unfortunately, she was only nine. The 18 tiny polyhedral beads on her necklace, which are less than half an inch in diameter each, are inlaid with little pearls and clasped at the back by pieces of lapis lazuli and an intaglio made of green jasper depicting a leaping staff that probably came from somewhere like Ionia during the time of the Achaemenid Empire, around the 4th century BC. So in addition to being from thousands of miles away, this thing was like a thousand years old when it was reused in this necklace. And as you might expect by this point, these weren't the only Western imports with her. The princess's Sogdian-style sarcophagus even contained a hundred-year-old Sasanian Persian silver coin, and the bejeweled necklace, as well as the two bracelets with it, were immediately identified as Western imports, possibly in Persian style. And it even turns out that these polyhedral beads, or at least a variant of it, even made their way as far north as Mongolia. This little beaut, for instance, was recovered from Tomb 2 at a site known as Durleg Nurs, one of several created there by the Xiongnu, i.e. the Huns. It's made of 23-carat gold and was only published pretty recently, in 2012. But unbelievably, this still isn't the end of it. I know, I know. All this talk of Dodecahedra must be maddening, but just put yourself in my shoes. I've been doing this for months. I can't escape them. Anyways, a ton more of these have been found elsewhere along the Maritime Silk Road, further to the south. Apparently in Vietnam, they haven't even just been found at Akeo. And two possible further examples have been identified at the late Lak Trong site in northern Vietnam. Oh, and to boot, parts of both Thailand and Myanmar seem to have been big Dodecahedron hotspots, too. Three sites in pretty close proximity to one another in the Thai chunk of the Malayan Peninsula named Phu Cau Tong, Ta Chana, and Khao Sam Keo have produced a bunch of them, some of which are dead ringers for the Roman examples. Which makes sense, since other Roman goods like mosaic glass and granulated gold beads have been found at places like Phu Cau Tong. And interestingly, some of the other gold objects at Khao Sam Keo share symbols in common with objects from Takshila. These sites were occupied by the Mon people and date to around the last couple of centuries BC in the first centuries AD. Oh, and better yet, they're near Thailand's Andaman Sea coast, so they're just a little sea away from North Sentinel Island. So there technically isn't a 0% chance that the good old Sentinelese have managed to get their hands on these things. Which is what my headcanon is, by the way. Anyways, they've also been recovered at the sites of Shrekestra and Benaca in Myanmar, though the general situation there is understandably a bit more spotty. Some, like this one, are just known from being in private collections, and I even found some possible examples for sale on Etsy, of all places. Etsy! But regardless, they're generally associated with the Pugh culture that dominated the region from around 167 to 1044, though these specific examples are ascribed to anywhere between the 5th and 9th centuries. And while perusing the book they're shown in, I also happened upon these things. But they aren't ancient. They're filigree buttons of a type that ornamented the sleeves of the gowns of elites like the old Vietnamese puppet emperor, Khai Dinh, in the early 20th century. So I'm not saying anything, they're just something to think about. And it seems like a type of pseudo-polyhedral bead even spread around the greater Iranian cultural sphere, too, represented, for example, on this 4th to 5th century ornament from Shamsi in Kyrgyzstan. I was even able to find this 11th century Seljuk example that bears a bit of a resemblance, though faint, in the Met's collection. And don't forget that I also mentioned Korea. I haven't seen any explicit references to the polyhedral openwork beads on this thing, again made of fused golden rings being connected to the others, but when I reverse image searched the Chinese necklace that started me on this mad goose chase, this was one of the first things that showed up. So I'm marking it at least as a possibility. After all, just like in Japan, Roman glass has been found in Korea, too, including in the royal tombs of Gyeongju, once the capital of the Kingdom of Silla during the famous Three Kingdoms period, and the place where this necklace was also discovered. To be more specific, it's from a tomb known as Nosyo-ri 215, a part of the prestigious Daerongwon tomb cluster dating to the 4th to 6th centuries, and excavated in 1933 during Japanese occupation. And it's now one of the prized treasures of the National Museum of Korea. Thanks for watching. With this video complete, I'm finally released from my obsession with the mystery of the Roman dodecahedra. I haven't found any answers, but I've learned a little bit, so that's something. And join the Discord, link below, we just started a new Minecraft server in my name, thanks to my friend Casper, and it's going pretty well. Maybe you can help me build a pyramid or two. Anyways, before we end off, I'd like to thank my amazing patrons... 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