where did the potter's wheel first develop
in the Near East the Near East
title: Potter's wheel text: arrangement allowed the potter to rotate the vessel during construction, rather than walk around it to add coils of clay. The earliest forms of the potter's wheel (called "tourneys" or "slow wheels") were probably developed as an extension to this procedure. Tournettes, in use around 4500 BC in the Near East, were turned slowly by hand or by foot while coiling a pot. Only a small range of vessels were fashioned on the tournette, suggesting that it was used by a limited number of potters. The introduction of the slow wheel increased the efficiency of hand-powered pottery production. In the title: Wheel text: "slow wheels", were known in the Middle East by the 5th millennium BCE (one of the earliest examples was discovered at Tepe Pardis, Iran, and dated to 5200–4700 BCE). These were made of stone or clay and secured to the ground with a peg in the center, but required significant effort to turn. True (freely-spinning) potter's wheels were apparently in use in Mesopotamia by 3500 BCE and possibly as early as 4000 BCE, and the oldest surviving example, which was found in Ur (modern day Iraq), dates to approximately 3100 BCE. The first evidence of wheeled vehicles appears in the title: Potter's wheel text: southeastern Europe and China have also been claimed as possible places of origin. Furthermore, the wheel was also in popular use by potters starting around 3500 BC in major cities of the Indus Valley civilization in South Asia, namely Harappa and Mohenjo-daro (Kenoyer, 2005). Others consider Egypt as "being the place of origin of the potter's wheel. It was here that the turntable shaft was lengthened about 3000 BC and a flywheel added. The flywheel was kicked and later was moved by pulling the edge with the left hand while forming the clay with the right. This led to the title: Potter's wheel text: inside of the pot and can be used to create thinner-walled pieces and a wider variety of shapes, including stemmed vessels, so wheel-thrown pottery can be distinguished from handmade. Potters could now produce many more pots per hour, a first step towards industrialization. Many modern scholars suggest that the first potter's wheel was first developed by the ancient Sumerians in Mesopotamia. A stone potter's wheel found at the Sumerian city of Ur in modern-day Iraq has been dated to about 3129 BC, but fragments of wheel-thrown pottery of an even earlier date have been recovered in the same area. However, title: Potter's wheel text: said to have formed the first humans on a potter's wheel. Potter's wheel In pottery, a potter's wheel is a machine used in the shaping (known as throwing) of round ceramic ware. The wheel may also be used during the process of trimming the excess body from dried ware, and for applying incised decoration or rings of colour. Use of the potter's wheel became widespread throughout the Old World but was unknown in the Pre-Columbian New World, where pottery was handmade by methods that included coiling and beating. A potter's wheel may occasionally be referred to as a "potter's lathe".