Rope, twine and thread: Invisible technologies of the Stone Age

(knowablemagazine.org)

49 points | by knowablemag 2 days ago

4 comments

  • INTPenis 2 minutes ago
    With just wood and rope they could probably accomplish amazing things. I'm convinced on a personal level that stone age people had cranes to lift boulders with.
  • Terr_ 15 minutes ago
    There are certain bodies of human knowledge and practice which aren't usually referred to as "technologies", and I think that leads us to underestimate their complexity and importance.

    In particular, I'm thinking of textiles and agriculture. It's no coincidence that both were prime targets of industrial mechanization, occupying a huge proportion of all human labor.

    • plufz 3 minutes ago
      You don’t have to be a scholar in gender studies to wonder why textile has been a bit overlooked when looking back at human development.
  • kqr 3 hours ago
    Not mentioned in TFA: cordage is a critical component in slings, an early, powerful ranged weapon.

    With some sort of pulley, rope allows a single human to excert large amounts of force trough leverage, often in ways more convenient than other forms of mechanical leverage. (Such as actual levers.)

    Rope can also be used for 1:1 power transfer.

    • Honali 1 hour ago
      This really reinforces the idea that cordage was less a single invention than a general-purpose mechanical primitive
  • Honali 1 hour ago
    We tend to picture prehistoric technology as a progression of increasingly clever stone tools because stone is what survives, but rope may have been closer to infrastructure
    • cubefox 23 minutes ago
      Stone age peoples still existed until fairly recently in Africa and Australia, so stone age technology isn't prehistoric at all. What's prehistoric is stone age technology from other parts of the world.