ArticlePloS one2024
12,000-year-old spindle whorls and the innovation of wheeled rotational technologies.
Article in PloS one, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 2 papers.
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2 citing papers in PubMed.
- Modeling identities among the first-sedentary communities: Emergence of clay personal ornaments in Epipaleolithic Southwest Asia.Science advances · 2026Article
- A 12,000-year-old clay figurine of a woman and a goose marks symbolic innovations in Southwest Asia.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
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2 authors.
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Abstract
'The wheel and axle' revolutionized human technological history by transforming linear to rotary motion and causing parts of devices to move. While its ancient origins are commonly associated with the appearance of carts during the Bronze Age, we focus on much earlier wheel-shaped find-an exceptional assemblage of over a hundred perforated pebbles from the 12,000-year-old Natufian village of Nahal Ein-Gev II, Israel. We analyze the assemblage using 3D methodologies, incorporating novel study applications to both the pebbles and their perforations and explore the functional implications. We conclude that these items could have served as spindle whorls to spin fibres. In a cumulative evolutionary trend, they manifest early phases of the development of rotational technologies by laying the mechanical principle of the wheel and axle. All in all, it reflects on the technological innovations that played an important part in the Neolithization processes of the Southern Levant.
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