Page 16 - J. C. Turner - History and Science of Knots

4 History and Science of Knots

data recovery, and all factors involved in selective survival. If a satisfactory
picture of a material culture is to be gained, account must also be taken of
scholarly biases and competence of investigations, even the language and man-
ner in which the evidence is published; and a multitude of other factors. The
study of the interplay of such factors is known as taphonomy, and it is this
interplay which determines what is used for the formation of our models of
what happened in the past. The need to compensate for these complexities
has only recently become apparent and many traditional archaeological stud-
ies were made without consideration of the taphonomy of the objects of study.
So while our claims of the very early use of cordage and knots must be based
on the archaeological evidence that is available, we will expound this record
in a creative, taphonomically guided, fashion.
There is much indirect evidence for the use of cordage in the Pleistocene,
of two basic types. Firstly, there are instances where the use of strings, ropes
or thongs is actually demonstrated by such things as representations in art
or wear marks on artefacts, even though no actual remains of cordage are
available, and where it thus appears inevitable that knots of some sort were
used. Secondly, there are many instances where the use of binding or tying
material is implied but not proven. The further we go back in time, the more
the second, indirect and less reliable, kind of evidence persists; and eventually
the record peters out at some point in time. Beyond that, there is no relevant
information at all, but this absence does not necessarily indicate the advent
of cordage and knot technology: it may still be a taphonomic phenomenon.
Consequently, the simplest and most correct answer to the question, when did
the use of knots begin, is that this beginning is somewhere in the unfathomable
depths of the Lower Palaeolithic period (about 2 500 000 to 250 000 years ago);
no doubt the question will never be more accurately answered.
It is to be expected that knotting, as with other techniques of early
mankind, began in a very unsophisticated way. Only a very small number
of different knots would have been used, though no doubt haphazard conglom-
erations of several such simple basic knots would have occurred. Progressive
improvements in technique would tend to accelerate with time. Technical skills
enlarge the habitable range, providing more opportunity for greater versatility
so that the momentum of cultural change increases. The available archaeo-
logical evidence suggests that hundreds of thousands of years could pass, in
the first million or so years of our history, before there were any detectable
changes in a material culture. That period had reduced to only a few thousand
years by the end of the last Ice Age; and now, as we all know, we are living in
a world obviously different from that even of our parents. The technology of
cordage and the knots used with it is still developing, but, perhaps because of
the increasing availability of substitute fastenings, the rate of change may no
longer be accelerating.