Maybe it was somebody uncomfortable with it or didn’t think the Romans would do such silly things.
“Silly”? There’s a typo in that word. A swapped letter.
(And I’d dearly like to know how someone thought it was a darning tool. How was it used in that context?)
The idea is you put the wooden tool into the item you’re darning to make it keep its intended shape:
I can’t believe they haven’t interviewed Mel Brooks on this.
Hey now, Mel Brooks isn’t that old. 
Pareidolia is a hell of a thing
Wait until they find the diagrams for Hero’s Steely Dan.
The further one goes back in historical research the idea that folk have an ‘everyday’ popular sense of humor gets lost. Fun becomes ‘humor’ with ‘cultural significance’.
I like the idea that this is a pestle. The rounding of the but end (snigger) makes this plausible.
Today and back ‘then’ the idea of holding the cock end to pound seed into the mortar kinda strikes me as funny. A wanking joke.
Perhaps this talks to ideas of groundbreaking cultural attitudes around masculinity or alternatively this is the equivalent to a novelty shop item that evokes a snigger… you pound something with it. Perhaps it lost its novelty after a month of use and ended up in the bottom draw with other useless kitchen single use novelties.
It’s somehow both horrifying and oddly comforting to imagine an iron age Spencer’s Gifts.
Serious research could benefit a contemporary understanding of our modern ‘civilized society’ by understanding how many people in ancient cultures were actually kinda goofy.
I assume the first whoopie cushion was a goat’s bladder and the first joy buzzer was a handful of bees.
Maybe that was the one they gave to the new apprentice, or someone decided to ‘decorate’ their friend’s tool. (No, not that kind of tool you dirty sods!)
So that is where you would get a whoopie cousin out of a sheep’s bladder.
Dual use, surely.
That must be how the Red Hot Chili Peppers darn their socks.
Girl on a whale ship notes this object.http://www.girlonawhaleship.org/jernapp/artifact.do?shortName=fid_wooden
Wooden Fid, that’s what a girl on a whale ship wants you to believe!
