What is the oldest spinning wheel used for?

spinning wheels have been used to make yarn and textiles since the Middle Ages, and they remain popular to this day. While modern-day spinning wheels are made of plastic or wood, in earlier times they were made from various kinds of metal. The oldest known spinning wheel is believed to be an iron wheel found at the Mesopotamian archaeological site of Nimrud in what is now northern Iraq.

The iron wheel, which dates back to the 8th century BCE, was about 17 inches in diameter and 3.7 inches wide. It was constructed from a single iron pillar with a bent ridge surrounding it. The wheel likely had four spindles and four slots on its ridges that would have been filled with bone yarn winders. It appears that the wheel was used to spin wool fibers into yarn for weaving textiles like blankets, carpets, and clothing – skills that have been passed down through generations for thousands of years.

Unsurprisingly, many improvements have been made to spinning wheels over the centuries since that first wheel was created at Nimrud. By the 1600s CE, spinning wheels had become larger and stronger tools as metalworking techniques improved. Spinning wheels continued to be finely crafted throughout history – wood and metal wheels even existed side-by-side during the Industrial Revolution – with handcrafted spinning wheels finding new life in modern-day fiber arts such as knitting and crocheting. Nowadays, most spinning wheels are powered by foot pedals instead of manual labor and come equipped with a variety of features such as adjustable thread tensioners or automatic bobbin filling mechanisms that weren't available when this artform first got its start thousands of years ago.