4,000 Year Old Fidget Spinner Found!

The internet went into a frenzy this week after an image of a 4,000-year-old 'fidget spinner' on display at a museum went viral.

The toy has three arms, just like a modern fidget spinner, and features a central depression that looks like a spinning pivot.

Dr Jean Evans, the chief curator at the Oriental Institute Museum, Chicago, where the object is on display, said he agrees that it looks like a fidget spinner.

The item has been mislabelled, a mistake that persists from the time of the object's discovery, she said. 

'When the 'spinning toy' was first published in 1932, the excavators recognised that the object was unique and they speculated it might be rotated and used in 'astrological divination' suggesting the animals represented were a bull, ibex, and lion,' Dr Evans said in a statement.

She added that the museum is planning to update the label soon.

A photo of a weapon head that looks very similar to the 'spinning toy' was provided alongside the statement as proof of Dr Evans' theory.

The object was found near a temple in the Shu-Sin Temple area in Iraq in the 1930s.

It sits in the Mesopotamian gallery at the Oriental Institute, which dates it to 2,000 to 1,800 BC.

Dr Evans said the discovery of the object near a temple provides further evidence as maces were 'considered weapons of the gods in the second millennium BC.'