Page 32 - J. C. Turner - History and Science of Knots

CHAPTER 2

WHY KNOT? -
SOME SPECULATIONS ON THE EARLIEST KNOTS

Charles Warner

Chapter 1 shows that the earliest knots we have any real evidence for date back
some half a million years, and presumably comprised binding knots, round
lashings, bends and probably hitches. There was no early evidence for the
existence of loop knots of any kind or of stopper knots, though it seems likely
that both must have been in some use. Indeed, it may well be that even the
very earliest members of the genus Homo practised knotting of some kind some
two and a half million years ago. In this chapter I speculate on just what knots
were among the first tied, and how they might have been thought of in the
first place.
My hypothesis is that largely random tucks of ends here and there played
a major part in the development of different knots.

The Knotting Medium

We need a neutral term to describe the entire range of materials used to tie
knots in ancient times. These include unmodified natural materials (such as
creepers, grass, hemp, rattan, withies, or hair, sinews, intestines); modified
natural materials (such as slit bark or large leaves, or thongs from skins); and
manufactured materials (twisted, laid or braided fibres), which may have come
into use much later than the others. I refer to all these things as knotting media
or media [2] for short.
When the natural filaments were too weak for the purpose in mind, the
obvious thing to do was to use several in parallel. This would often have been
adequate for binding knots, but would not have allowed some other applica-
tions, nor extensions in length by mixing in new filaments. However, twisting

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