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Who invented the wheel: scientists present a new version of the story, where the Carpathians are no longer mentioned
The first wheels were pebbles. Source: Laurent Davin
Last month, scientists cited a study that suggested the first wheel was invented in the Carpathians 6000 years ago. However, now scientists have voiced a new version.
According to preliminary assumptions, the first samples of wheels date back to about 4000 BC in Mesopotamia, modern Iraq, when the wheel shape was used to make ceramics. However, a collection of perforated pebbles from an archaeological site in Israel that were made about 12,000 years ago may represent a new key milestone in the development of rotating tools, including wheels, writes DailyMail.
The invention of the wheel has long been considered a major breakthrough in human history, scientists emphasize. During the Bronze Age, the first evidence of wheeled vehicles was documented.
However, the researchers emphasize that the collection of perforated stones found in Israel overturns the existing ideas about when the first wheel was invented.
At the Nahal Ein Gev II excavation site, more than a hundred pebbles, mostly limestone, of round shape with a perforated central hole were found, which were carved approximately 12,000 years ago.
The researchers believe that these stones were probably used as round, weighted objects that were attached to a spindle, allowing it to efficiently collect fibers such as wool and spin yarn from them.
Experts from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem have confirmed this theory by making copies of the stones and successfully spinning flax with them.
According to the scientists, this collection of spindle stones is a very early example of humans using a wheel-shaped tool to spin.
"These stones are in fact the first wheels in form and function – a round object with a hole in the center connected to a rotating axle that was used long before the wheel for transportation purposes," said one of the authors of the study, Professor Leore Grossman.
According to scientists, it was these stones that paved the way for future rotating wheel-based inventions, such as the potter's wheel and the cart wheel.
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