Lets see this being answered.
And what was it…
Im thinking the egypt mob.just a thought.
Cheers
Probably the first knot was tied well before Egypt existed.
Consider: the first tools used were probably simple levers and projectiles, sticks and rocks. They couldn’t have gone to the next level without trying them together, somehow.
A stick with something tied to it is heavier, longer, more effective. All that is required is the presence of some fiber, easily obtained from leaves or stems of assorted plants.
It’s highly unlikely that the materials would survive over the years, so we’ll never know for sure, but I’d suspect that there is no older knot than the overhand knot, and it’s relatives, half-hitches, clove-hitches, etc.
Loren
As knots can be formed in fibrous material from many natural forces, the “first knot”, strictly speaking, predates mankind.
What a great question! My father, Bill Hagenbuch, addresses it a bit in the film “Ropewalk: A Cordage Engineer’s Journey Through History”. http://www.StoryOfRope.org
He maintains that rope, which requires no tools to make, is the earliest technology - and attributes it to the Cro-Magnons, 30,000 years ago. But I love the idea that a knot could be formed by natural forces acting on a bit of fiber, and predates humanity.
Best,
Kate
Hagfish are animals from a very primitive lineage, they’re not even vertebrates although possesing a skull. Meeting with enemies that grab them by the head, they run away by exuding a sticky mucilaginous substance. Then, in order to prune their bodies, they tie themselves in an overhand knot and remove all the slime with peristaltic movements.
Some microspcopic fungi form a ring with their hyphae and “snare” the nematodes… O. K., this nematophagous relatives of the edible mushrooms don’t really tie a knot, the rings just close joining the mycellium together, aggregating subsecuent layers in the inside tissue. None the less, it’s amazing and a different solution to a problem for wich we would have used a noose.
A pair of links:
keep it coming - dunno where…i was expectin a biblical thing…
If you want to limit your search to Biblical references, you can look to Genesis 22. When Abraham bound Isaac, it seems to imply some sort of knot:
9 And they came to the place which God had shown him, where he built an altar, and laid the wood in order upon it: and when he had bound Isaac his son, he laid him on the altar upon the pile of wood
I think even in the earliest cultures, the knotting of flexible material is going to be an intuitive activity.
You can ‘bind’ people, animals or goods simply by wrapping around with a cord (vine, sinew, thong) etc and tucking in the end. I think it is probable that most of man’s early use of cord etc would have simply featured wrap and tuck and that fandangled ‘Knots’ was a much later invention.
Derek
What a curious question! As I am an engineer, I would use logic and analysis to try to answer the question, but I would also be interested in why you want to know? Your answer may help in defining something more about providing the answer.
No worries - I imagine your question was more for sport than anything else, so here is some sport for you - I thought that bacteria were the oldest things on earth (and they are not a “who” but a “what”) but then again - you didn’t say on earth did you? Your question was “Who tied the first knot” so I would think that by “who” you mean a person, sentient being, someone of lineage traceable to who we are today, so was this person gender-free? Most people today appear to be male or female, so I would look at gender first. Men need tools to hunt, being the faster and more powerful beings historically, so perhaps it was a man? Before hunting for animals was followed (our teeth are made for a changing and varied diet) it seems likely he would look for the low-hanging fruit and that hunting for animals was labor-intensive, although it produced a lot of protein. So maybe he was a gatherer (perhaps it was Waldo?) rather than a hunter first. Gathering doesn’t require tools other than perhaps a large leaf or some other tray such as a piece of bark if the person has to travel a long distance. If they were wanderers, or nomads, they could get food wherever they found it, in the form of fruit, berries or whatever, moving on to fruited plains when the rest ran out. Therefore, I would venture it was a woman, they being the ones who are involved in making things secure for the young they bear and care for. To protect the children they bear, women would need and seek shelter, perhaps in the form of bent boughs of trees, an overcropping of rock, a cave or some other place out of the weather. To be in a cave is a no-brainer, except if it was occupied by an animal. No obvious need for tying things there, other than perhaps tying bundles of twigs and sticks together for firewood. They could carry that though, so perhaps they tied it in a bundle to make it easier? Overcropping rock? Well, they would need perhaps to put up some form of fence to keep out the drafts, so they might need knots or hitches for that. If it was overhanging tree branches, then the same notion applies of having to keep the branches in place. Yes, shelter is a basic human need and it seems the first to need shelter is the female. At this point, I am thinking it was most likely a person of female gender, likely somewhere on the African continent, that apparently being the source of the world’s human DNA.
Then you are also asking who “tied”, meaning that it had to be formed in something flexible enough to be bent to what we understand today to be a knot - so what was it then, when it was tied? You can “tie” things by simply “marrying” them together in the sense of grafting or splicing living things together. A hitch is also a means of wrapping something to ensure it stays together, so maybe “the first knot” was a hitch? Did you mean tied in the sense of going over and under the same piece as with the overhand knot? Tying is too subjective and requires some better definition - Derek Smith, you like defining things, what do you think?
The “first” knot? There could really be no way to know, because you would have to define what a knot is (see above) and, since we must be discussing antiquity (before written language), when language was presumably simpler, how would the principle of “first” come about? How would it be able to be defined as the “first” if there is no way to determine where in the world Waldo is? I think that at this point it is fast becoming too hard to understand the question, because there are undefined parts. There is no way to even decide the gender (yes, we could have an opinion, but that is not the same as deciding fact) let alone the act of what constitutes tying nor even whether this is really a knot at all as we understand the term today (and I am not sure we can even do that) so the whole idea of “first” becomes moot if we do not know whether it is really a knot, we don’t know who committed the act and we don’t know what the act was.
How’s that? ???
SR
Once you tuck, you have a knot. Take out the object, and it’ll likely be an overhand knot or something similar.
I agree with you, the question --of course-- was intended with human beings in mind. Not withstanding, I must excuse myself, I’m a Spanish speaker, and in this language you just have a pronoun –quien– for both your whos and whats. We leave our own what –que– for inanimated things.
By the way, vines kill their victims with a series of round turns, and we must not forget the spider web, and bird’s nests, and cosntrictor snakes…, and knotting DNA; apes can be teached to tie knots.
Patterns are in the Universe not because of us, but in accord with the Laws of Physics. If knots didn’t exist we would be in a very different World.
Best wishes…
SR - thanks for your reply.
In your 10thousand sentence post .the sea is not mentioned.
Dont stress pls ,i was just wondering.
Now i see bacteria ,and hagfish?
;D
Hi OP
‘cuz you didn’ ask 'bout that
SR
This quote is from the site of Andrew Galway, marinenews.com:
Research records of archaeologist J Wymer shows records of knots as far back as 380,000 years ago!
An excerpta from Cyrus L. Day book, Quipus and witches’ knots; the role of the knot in primitive and ancient cultures:
http://www.ethnomath.org/resources/day1967.pdf
Heraklas on Knots: Sixteen Surgical Nooses and Knots from the First Century A.D. This one is an interesting article about orthopedic knots from the First Century (it’s free PDF). Cyrus L. Day cites Heraklas, by the way :