La découverte récente en Israël d’un ensemble de petites pierres cylindriques percées d’un trou central âgées de 12.000 ans peut faire penser qu’il s’agit d’un premier exemple de pierres dites spindle whorls ou verticiles de fuseau destinés à stabiliser la rotation d’un fuseau pendant la filature.
La roue néolithique était ainsi inventée. Mais on peut se demander pourquoi l’usage de telles roues ne s’est pas généralisé, en augmentant progressivement la taille des roues. La solution était sans doute difficile à mettre en œuvre faute d’outils adéquats pour percer des pierres sans les faire éclater.
Cependant ces roues aurait pu servir de modèles pour faire des roues en bois aux multiples usages
Reference
12,000 year-old spindle whorls and the innovation of wheeled rotational technologies
- Talia Yashuv ,
- Leore Grosman
- Published: November 13, 2024
- https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0312007
- 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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