Loom weaving and spindle whorl
Tejido con telar (telar horizontal de estacas y huso con fusayola)
- Date
- c. 6500 BCE · confidence medium
- Place
- Çatalhöyük, Konya, Turkey
- Credited to
- Neolithic communities of central Anatolia
- Field
- Tools
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What it is
Fragments of plain-weave linen cloth from Çatalhöyük and Nahal Hemar requiring a frame with a tensioned warp, and spindle whorls for spinning continuous thread. It turns fibre into cloth on a household scale.
Looms do not survive; they are inferred from cloth and loom weights (the Balkans, c. 6000 BCE).
What it led to
- Woven clothing as universal dress and a social marker
- Massive domestic textile work, mostly by women, and later palace workshops
- Demand for flax and wool that reorganised farming and herding
Built on
Made possible
- Cotton thread (cotton domestication)c. 6000 BCE
- Woolly sheep and wool textilesc. 4000 BCE
- Indigo dye and American cotton textilec. 4000 BCE
- Sail and sailing boatc. 3500 BCE
- Warp-weighted vertical loomc. 3000 BCE
- Yanghai trousers (oldest known woven trousers)c. 1300-1000 BCE
- Andean cotton weaving and backstrap loomc. 1000 BCE
- Laoguanshan multi-shaft pattern loomc. 150 BCE
- Spinning wheel of the Islamic world (al-Wasiti's Maqamat)1237
- Saxony spinning wheel with flyer and treadlec. 1480-1533
- Cloth sail