Nahal Hemar Cave

Nahal Hemar Cave is an archeological cave site in Israel, on a cliff in the Judean Desert near the Dead Sea and just northwest of Mount Sodom. The artifacts discovered here are among the most important Pre-Pottery Neolithic assemblages in the Levant. They include wooden artifacts, fragments of baskets and plaster assemblages. Objects found in the cave include rope baskets, fabrics, nets, wooden arrowheads, bone and flint utensils including a sickle and weaving spatulae, and decorated human skulls. There were also ceremonial masks similar to other neolithic masks found inside a 50 km (30 mi) radius of the Judean Desert and Judean Hills and unusual so-called "Nahal Hemar knives." Many of the fabric pieces found were dated from the Pre-Pottery Neolithic period, placing them in the 7th millennium BC. The flax fiber items were processed and spun into yarn, and archaeologists divided these items into four groups: yarns, nalbinding (looping), knotted netting, and twining. The fabrics contained nalbinding assemblages, which are an early form of looping or single-thread-looping crochet rather than the modern crochet. With these dates, Nahal Hemar Cave is noted as the earliest known place of crochet. The trove was found covered in what was thought to be asphalt from nearby construction projects. Closer analyses revealed it was in fact an ancient glue that dated to

Cave data from Wikidata (CC0). Summary from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA).