Possible Discovery: Stone dating back 12,000 years could be the earliest known wheel-like tool

A 12,000-year-old set of perforated pebbles unearthed in northern Israel may be the oldest known hand-spun whorls. This weaving technique may have ultimately helped inspire the invention of the wheel.

The whorl at the bottom of the spindle, which acted as a flywheel, allowed people to efficiently spin natural fibers into yarn and yarn to make clothing and other textiles. Newly discovered stone tools represent early axle-based turning technology, thousands of years before the first carts appeared, researchers say. Talia Yashuv at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

“If you look back at the discovery of the first car wheel 6,000 years ago, it didn't just come out of nowhere,” she says. “It's important to look at the functional evolution of how transportation and wheels have evolved.”

Yashuv and her colleagues leoa grossmanAlso at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, researchers studied 113 partially or fully perforated stones at the site of Nahal Ein Geb II, an ancient village just east of the Sea of ​​Galilee. Archaeologists have been discovering these chalky, primarily limestone artifacts since 1972. It was probably made from raw pebbles found along the nearby shore.

The 3D scan revealed that the hole had been drilled part way from both sides using a flint hand drill, but unlike modern drills, it remained in the shape of a narrow, twisted cone, Yashuf said. says. A hole 3 to 4 centimeters in diameter usually passes through the center of gravity of the pebble.

Drilling holes from both sides would have balanced the stone and made it more stable to rotate, Yaszhu said. Some of the partially perforated stones had off-center holes, suggesting they may have been discarded by mistake.

Yashov said the team suspected that the stones, which weigh an average of 9 grams, would be too heavy and “ugly” to be beads, and too light and fragile to be used as fishing weights. Their size, shape, and balance around the hole led researchers to believe that these artifacts were spindle-like whorls.

To test their hypothesis, the researchers created a replica whorl using nearby pebbles and a flint drill. then they asked yonit crystalWhy not try your hand at flax spinning with a traditional craftsman?

“She was really surprised at how well they worked, because they weren't perfectly circular,” Yaszhu says. “But in reality, all you have to do is place the hole in the center of the mass, and it's balanced and works.”

If the stone is indeed a spiral, it could be the oldest known rotating spiral, she says. 1991 study of bone and antler artifacts She found what are likely 20,000-year-old whorls, but added that the researchers who examined them suggested the fragments were probably decorative accents on clothing. Still, people may have been using whorls even earlier, using wood and other biological materials that would have degraded.

The discovery suggests that people were experimenting with spinning techniques thousands of years before they invented potter's wheels and cart wheels about 5,500 years ago, and perhaps the whirlpool helped lead to those inventions. Yaszhu says it's possible.

carol cheval But a professor at the University of the Cote d'Azur in Nice, France, isn't so sure. She explains that the whorl works more like a spinning top than a wheel.

And while the artifact is very likely a whorl, the study lacks microscopic data that would reveal any traces of use, as the threads may have made their mark on the stone over time. , says Cheval.

Trace analysis is “beyond the scope” of the current study, Yashuv said.

Ideally, researchers studying ancient whorls would be skilled at spinning themselves, but the study authors said this was not the case. “It really changes the way you think about archaeological discoveries,” she says.