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Thank you for the explanation. It's very interesting and helpful.

The word we were discussing - and in English that word is "circle" - was the word "galgal" in Arabic - and it's plain as day that "circle" and "galgal" are cognate.

I don't speak any Arabic whatsoever, but I do use words borrowed from Arabic, like alchemy, alcohol, alembic, which tells me that Arab speakers could easily borrow words from Indo-European speakers - the contacts have been extremely extensive over time.

However, according to the article, the root word is "k'el", to rotate - and it seems to me that you are describing a process which requires rotation. The fibers are twisted into thread and the thread is wrapped around something.

Whoever invented that process may have used the word "k'el" to describe the process of turning the spindle around to wind the thread or turning the thread around the spindle -- seems to me that turning the spindle around is the easiest way to do it but again this is just a guess.