Page 15 - J. C. Turner - History and Science of Knots

CHAPTER I

PLEISTOCENE KNOTTING

Charles Warner and Robert G. Bednarik

Introduction
Cordage of some sort, and the knots needed for its use, can be safely assumed to
have played a crucial role in the earliest technological development of humans.
The lack of actual remains of the materials to which knot technology was
applied is not really relevant to its history, as we shall see. We have not
a single solid piece of evidence from the Pleistocene, the period of the Ice
Ages between about two million and ten thousand years ago, that knots were
made, and yet many things would have needed binding, joining or attaching.
Cordage of some kind (sinews, thongs, hair, vegetable fibres and so on, as
single filaments or twisted or plaited into rope) and knots, in the broadest
sense, may be safely assumed to have been necessary as fastenings for many of
these functions. Some could have been attained by the interlocking of forked
sticks and the like, or by the use of such adhesives as might have been available,
such as gums and resins. Even these, however, would have been made more
effective and reliable if supplemented with cordage and knots.
To understand the reason for the lack of finds in the early record, it is
not sufficient simply to remind ourselves that such materials were inevitably
organic, and thus subject to decay. Many types of perishable materials, includ-
ing wooden objects and bark, have survived for hundreds of thousands of years
[15, e.g. pp. 47, 60]. What we know of the composition, mode of occurrence,
spatial distribution and statistics of archaeological materials is not necessarily
representative of the material culture of a given society. It relates much more
to such factors as the manner of use and deposition of materials, chemical
and physical conditions at the site of deposition, archaeological techniques of

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