And even if we do know, sometimes “ritual purposes” are totally practical? Like.
This is a yad. You use it when you’re reading from a Sefer Torah so you never actually touch the parchment. The text can be very small in some Torot, so the yad keeps your place. Reading Torah is a ritual, so this object is “for ritual purposes”….
….by which I mean “parchment and vegetable-based ink will break down very quickly when constantly exposed to the oil in your fingers, so it’s better and safer to use a piece of inert metal.” There is nothing sacred or special about the yad itself, although they do tend to be very pretty (and some communities will say it’s a mark of respect for the sacredness of the scroll to not touch it). If you needed to, you could technically use a capped pen as a yad. Or a plastic ruler. Or even an unused disposable chopstick, if for whatever reason you were reading a Sefer Torah and it was the only vaguely yad-shaped object available to you. As long as it won’t damage the parchment, it can be used. The exact appropriateness of these objects can be debated (I would personally not use a chopstick even if it was new), but all of them would do the job.
Now imagine: in a world where the Israelites had died out rather than entering the diaspora (G-d forbid), how many archaeologists would assume the little pointy finger thing “represented the hand of G-d” or some weird thing like that, rather than “it’s literally just in the shape your hand would be making if you were doing this with your fingers”? What are the odds that some, or even many, of the “ritual purposes” objects we find could have been used in prayer AND ALSO be completely practical? Or that if they didn’t seem entirely practical (why NOT have a yad that’s just like a chopstick?), maybe ancient people ALSO JUST LIKED THINGS THAT LOOKED NICE?