Study on the Hand Spinning Wheel in a Copy of the Mural Painting Collected by Mr. Liu Xianzhou

Many scholars have too much ignored the studies on the hand spinning wheel in ancient China, they drew some wrong conclusions based primarily on the hand spinning wheel in a copy of the mural painting collected by Mr. Liu Xianzhou. We aim to explain the history of hand spinning wheel in ancient China objectively. We made a complete investigation on the image information on the hand spinning wheel from the art works of the Han Dynasty, at the same time we analyzed referenced materials about the hand spinning wheel in ancient China. It is concluded that the mural painting itself is a counterfeit, and the process of shape changes of the hand spinning wheels in ancient China experienced three stages: the finger spinning wheel rotated by the spokes, the crank spinning wheel rotated by the spokes, the hand spinning cord wheel.