The wheel, archaeologists largely agree, was invented around 6,000 years ago somewhere in Mesopotamia. Together with the axle it revolutionized human technological history and in time led to the invention of carts, potter wheels, and power mills.

But where did the inspiration for the wheel come from? It couldn’t have emerged out of a vacuum. One possibility is the spindle whorl, a donut-shaped object connected to a bar. So argue Israeli archaeologists in a paper that approaches the question by examining more than a hundred 12,000-year-old perforated pebbles that were found in a village in northern Israel called Nahal Ein Gev II.

A selection of the 3D models of pebbles used in the research. Photo: Talia Yashuv and Leore Grosman.

The thinking is that these holey limestone pebbles, which are roughly the size of a quarter and weigh up to an ounce, were spindle whorls used to spin textiles of flax or wool. Acting as a flywheel at the bottom of a spindle, a whorl adds weight and allows people to spin thread for longer and faster. If correct, the study, which was published in the journal PLOS One, has identified one of the oldest examples of wheel-like technology ever to be found.

“The stones… date back approximately 12,000 years, during the important transition to an agricultural lifestyle and the Neolithic period, long before the cart wheels of the Bronze Age,” the archaeologists wrote in a statement announcing the paper. “A very early example of humans using rotation with a wheel-shaped tool, they might have paved the way for later rotational technologies, which were vital to the development of early human civilizations.”

To test if the limestone pebbles might have been used as spindle whorls, the researchers used 3D scanning technology to create models of the pebbles and then invited Yonit Crystal, an expert in traditional handcrafts, to try and spin flax using them. With skill and patience Crystal succeed in spinning flax and wool.

The study’s experimental spindles and whorls, the 3D scans of the pebbles and their negative perforations. Photo: Talia Yashuv and Leore Grosman.

Still, the archaeologists considered other possible uses for the holey pebbles, which were probably taken from the shore of the Sea of Galilee that lies a mile or so to the west. It’s unlikely they were beads, archaeologists wrote, because they are often carved into precise shapes and tend to be lighter. Fishing weights were also discounted because there are no examples of the technology for the period and because limestone, which can disintegrate in water, is too lightweight.

“Considering all functional parameters: the central location of the perforation, the size and weight of the stones, their shape, raw material, the shape of the holes and their size, it seems that the perforated pebbles from NEG II are best suited to have functioned as spindle whorls,” the researchers wrote in the paper.

After people started using these rotating devices, the researchers argued, they explored new ways to apply them and this laid the mechanical principle of the wheel and axle.