{"id":264438,"date":"2024-11-13T21:21:11","date_gmt":"2024-11-13T21:21:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/2024\/11\/13\/12000-year-old-stones-may-be-oldest-example-of-wheel-like-tools\/"},"modified":"2025-06-25T17:10:31","modified_gmt":"2025-06-25T17:10:31","slug":"12000-year-old-stones-may-be-oldest-example-of-wheel-like-tools","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/2024\/11\/13\/12000-year-old-stones-may-be-oldest-example-of-wheel-like-tools\/","title":{"rendered":"12,000-year-old stones may be oldest example of wheel-like tools"},"content":{"rendered":"

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A perforated pebble from the Nahal Ein Gev II archaeological site, which may be an ancient spindle whorl<\/p>\n

Laurent Davin<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

A set of 12,000-year-old pierced pebbles excavated in northern Israel may be the oldest known hand-spinning whorls \u2013 a textile technology that may have ultimately helped inspire the invention of the wheel.<\/p>\n

Serving as a flywheel at the bottom of a spindle, whorls allowed people to efficiently spin natural fibres into yarns and thread to create clothing and other textiles. The newly discovered stone tools represent early axle-based rotation technology thousands of years before the first carts, says Talia Yashuv<\/a> at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you look back to find the first vehicle wheels 6000 years ago, it\u2019s not like it just came out of nowhere,\u201d she says. \u201cIt\u2019s important to look at the functional evolution of how transportation and the wheel evolved.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yashuv and her colleague Leore Grosman<\/a>, also at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, studied 113 partially or fully perforated stones at the Nahal Ein Gev II site, an ancient village just east of the Sea of Galilee. Archaeologists have been uncovering these chalky, predominantly limestone artefacts \u2013 probably made from raw pebbles along the nearby seashore \u2013 since 1972.<\/p>\n