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The Long, Knotty, World-Spanning Story of String


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Humans never could have taken to the oceans without rope: no string, no mariners. Photo by Stephen Barnes/Transport/Alamy Stock Photo

 

String is far more important than the wheel in the pantheon of inventions.

by Ferris Jabr      March 6th, 2018 | 2,500 words, about 13 minutes   https://www.hakaimagazine.com/features/the-long-knotty-world-spanning-story-of-string/

 

The void opened suddenly—a negative space where there had once been sand. Kathryn Bard stuck her hand straight through the gap and felt nothing but air. It just kept going. She considered her surroundings: a slope of windblown sand near a terrace of fossilized coral 700 meters inland from the modern-day Egyptian coast. The recess in front of her, Bard realized, was probably not a result of geological processes; it was too deep. This was something else, something deliberate. Perhaps a tomb. Or a gateway.

Throughout the winter of 2004, Bard, an archaeologist at Boston University, and a team of excavators kept digging through the sand, eventually revealing a cave intentionally carved from fossil coral. Over the next seven years, Bard and an international team of researchers unearthed seven more caves, part of an ancient harbor called Saww, known as Wadi Gawasis today. The ancient Egyptians probably used the caves as shelters and workshops between 2000 and 1750 BCE. Some of the caves contained limestone anchors, timber, steering oars, a bowl, and charred barley seeds. In Cave 5, the researchers discovered a set of particularly stunning artifacts. Not a fleet of intact ships, or protocompasses, or chests of gold and jewels; something much more ordinary, yet indispensable for any seafaring nation—for any civilization.

Bard remembers when she first saw them. She squeezed through a small opening and shuffled sideways through a long narrow passageway to the very back of the cave. There they were: more than 20 thick papyrus ropes, neatly coiled and, by all appearances, so exquisitely preserved it seemed a sailor might come along and scoop them up at any moment. “It was a scene frozen in time,” Bard says. “They hadn’t been disturbed for close to 4,000 years.”

 

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Well-preserved rope was discovered at an archaeological site in Egypt dating to almost 4,000 years ago.

Photo courtesy of the Joint Expedition to Mersa/Wadi Gawasis of the Università “L’Orientale,” Naples and Boston University

 

In his 1956 book The Marlinspike Sailor, marine illustrator Hervey Garrett Smith wrote that rope is “probably the most remarkable product known to mankind.” On its own, a stray thread cannot accomplish much. But when several fibers are twisted into yarn, and yarn into strands, and strands into string or rope, a once feeble thing becomes both strong and flexible—a hybrid material of limitless possibility. A string can cut, choke, and trip; it can also link, bandage, and reel. String makes it possible to sew, to shoot an arrow, to strum a chord. It’s difficult to think of an aspect of human culture that is not laced through with some form of string or rope; it has helped us develop shelter, clothing, agriculture, weaponry, art, mathematics, and oral hygiene. Without string, our ancestors could not have domesticated horses and cattle or efficiently plowed the earth to grow crops. If not for rope, the great stone monuments of the world—Stonehenge, the Pyramids at Giza, the moai of Easter Island—would still be recumbent. In a fiberless world, the age of naval exploration would never have happened; early light bulbs would have lacked suitable filaments; the pendulum would never have inspired advances in physics and timekeeping; and there would be no Golden Gate Bridge, no tennis shoes, no Beethoven’s fifth symphony.

“Everybody knows about fire and the wheel, but string is one of the most powerful tools and really the most overlooked,” says Saskia Wolsak, an ethnobotanist at the University of British Columbia who recently began a PhD on the cultural history of string. “It’s relatively invisible until you start looking for it. Then you see it everywhere.”


Precisely when people began to twine, loop, and knot is unknowable, but we can say with reasonable confidence that string and rope are some of the most ancient materials used by humankind. At first, our ancestors likely harvested nature’s ready-made threads and cordage, such as vines, reeds, grass, and roots. If traditional medicine and existing Indigenous cultures are any clue, early humans may have even used spider silk to catch fish and bandage wounds. Hundreds of thousands, perhaps even millions of years ago, people realized they could extract fibers from the hair and tissues of animals, as well as from the husks, leaves, and innards of certain sinewy, pulpy, or pliant plants, such as agave, cannabis, coconut, cotton, and jute. By twisting these natural fibers around one another again and again, they formed a material of superb resilience and versatility.

 

 

rope1-string-520x347.jpg    rope2-string-520x347.jpg

 

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There is much evidence—past and present—that we are Homo cordage. Photos by Shanna Baker

 

Because they are prone to decay, pieces of intact string from more than a few thousand years ago are scarce. Even when they are found, they rarely make headlines or feature in museum exhibits, more likely to be relegated to storage. But they do exist: in 2009, scientists revealed the discovery of tiny 30,000-year-old flax fibers in clay excavated from a cave in Europe. Some of the fibers were twisted, knotted, spun, or dyed turquoise and pink, suggesting complex textiles. If one looks at the archaeological record in the right way—focusing on the implied rather than the material existence of ancient fiber—then the evidence for the importance of string and rope is even older. In South Africa, Israel, and Austria, researchers have found shell and bone beads dating as far back as 300,000 years ago. And in the Hohle Fels cave in southwestern Germany, archaeologists discovered a 40,000-year-old piece of mammoth ivory carved with four holes, each enclosing spiral incisions. They think the tool was used to weave reeds, bark, and roots into a thick cord.

Although string and rope began to take shape on land, it was the ocean that unleashed the full potential of cordage. The earliest watercraft were probably rafts lashed together from branches or bamboo, and dugout canoes carved from logs, such as the 10,000-year-old Pesse canoe discovered in 1955 during motorway construction in the Netherlands. At first, the only means of propulsion were oars, poles, and the whim of the currents. Sailing required a critical insight: that the wind, like a wild animal, could be caught, tamed, and harnessed. A mast and sail, which is really just a tightly knit sheet of string, could trap the wind; long coils of sturdy rope could hoist and pivot the sail. String transformed seagoing vessels from floating lumber to elegant marionettes, animated by the wind and maneuvered by human will.

The exploits of Christopher Columbus, Vasco da Gama, and other European explorers during the age of discovery—all predicated on a mastery of sail—are well known and exhaustively rehearsed. The true history of sail-powered oceanic exploration extends far earlier than the 16th century and far beyond Europe’s shipyards and outposts. Five thousand years ago, the Austronesians began charting and populating the many scattered islands of the Pacific, braving the ocean in double-hulled canoes laden with chickens, fruit, tubers, and firewood. By 2600 BCE, the ancient Egyptians were dispatching sailing ships to Lebanon to gather cedar. Around 1000 CE, Viking explorer Leif Ericsson reached the shores of North America. In 1405, Chinese admiral Zheng He guided a magnificent armada of 317 ships—60 of them boasting multi-tiered decks, nine masts, and 12 sails each, if historical accounts are to be believed—to Southeast Asia and India in pursuit of exotic spices. In the following centuries, after all this precedent, Europe began to churn the oceans with increasing numbers of carracks, caravels, frigates, and galleons.

 

It is no exaggeration to say that from the invention of sailing through the late 18th century, the economic prosperity, scientific progress, and military success of most nations around the globe fundamentally depended on string and rope. For much of this time, there were no major revolutions in sailing technology. Instead, there were elaborations and restructurings of an ancient template: a roughly crescent wooden vessel equipped with at least one mast and sail, and webbed with plenty of rigging. Toward the end of the age of sail, some of the more ostentatious designs verged on the absurd; certain full-rigged ships were so bedecked with line and linen that they looked more like parade floats than instruments of trade and war.

 

By the late 1700s, engineers in England, France, Scotland, and North America were experimenting with steamboats. In 1822, the Aaron Manby became the first iron steamship to go to sea, traveling across the English Channel from London to Paris. By the 1860s, the British, French, and Russian navies had heavily armed steamships. After this, “a great epoch in naval history came to an end,” write Romola and R. C. Anderson in The Sailing Ship: Six Thousand Years of History.

 

But it was not the end of the line for cordage. Even today’s motorized metal behemoths, slicing through the sea at unprecedented speeds, rely on rope and string. Terry Schafer, a navy shipyard rigger in Victoria, British Columbia, has been professionally tangled with cordage since the 1980s. “When I finished my apprenticeship, I worried I had chosen a dying craft,” he says. “But there is still a lot of demand for a skilled rigger today.” Schafer and his colleagues manufacture all the cordage the navy requires: tow ropes; hoist cables for cranes, winches, and dumbwaiters; woven fenders that cloak the lips of tugboats like mustaches and beards; ropes to tie the ships at harbor; ropes that fly the navy’s flags; and artfully knotted ropes to ring the bells that help sailors keep strict schedules. Schafer mostly works with synthetic materials including Kevlar, various plastics, and metal wire. But he occasionally uses plant fibers as well: cotton, flax, manila hemp (from a species of banana), sisal (from agave), and coir (from the waterproof buoyant husks of coconuts).

 

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There is still a need for professional riggers like Terry Schafer, who works in the Canadian navy shipyard in Victoria, British Columbia.

Photo by Shanna Baker

 

In the course of his work, Schafer occasionally refers to The Ashley Book of Knots, an encyclopedic illustrated guide to more than 3,500 practical and decorative knots with names like fisherman’s bend, cowboy’s pretzel, false lover’s, and wild goose. Written by American artist and sailor Clifford Ashley and first published in 1944, the book is a bible for professional rope workers and knot enthusiasts of all kinds. If any among them can claim to be Ashley’s successor, it is probably Des Pawson, a 71-year-old bespectacled and thickly bearded knot guru in Ipswich, England. Since 1989, Pawson and his wife, Liz, have earned their livelihood by making and selling boat fenders, bell ropes, hammocks, mats, belts, lanyards, theatrical props, and all manner of spliced and knotted handiwork to boatbuilders, retail outlets, gift shop suppliers, film producers, and various other clients. In Ipswich, Pawson curates the world’s only museum devoted entirely to knots and sailors’ rope-work. He is also a cofounder of the International Guild of Knot Tyers, an association of more than 1,000 knot connoisseurs that meets several times a year and has, throughout its 36-year history, attracted scholars, sailors, surgeons, farmers, miners, and magicians.

“Cordage is an everyday material, and because it’s so everyday people don’t understand its value,” Pawson says. “But if it was taken away, you’d notice. Rope and knots are the building blocks of civilization. They pervade all aspects of our world.”

 

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Naval riggers weave all sorts of necessary tools: cables for cranes, ropes that fly the navy’s flags, and fenders for tugboats, above.

Photo by Shanna Baker

 

Look around. We still wear shoes laced with string. Our clothes, sheets, curtains, carpets, and tablecloths are all woven from thread. Our phones, computers, toasters, blenders, and TVs still largely depend on bundles of wire transporting electrons. Above our heads, power lines, phone lines, and fiber-optic cables sling from one utility pole to another. More than a million kilometers of undersea cables tie the continents together—the submerged ligaments of global telecommunications. When a nuclear submarine docks at a harbor, no matter how massive and intimidating, it still needs some rope to serve as moorings. Despite all the astounding advances in medicine in the past few centuries, surgeons still require needle and thread. Cordage is so invaluable that it has even accompanied our most sophisticated scientific machinery into the depths of space: to secure cables on the Mars rover Curiosity, NASA engineers relied on variations of the clove hitch and reef knot, two traditional knots that have been used for thousands of years. That rover is currently exploring the surface of Mars.


String changed much more than human technology; it also altered our psychology. More than a physical material of enduring versatility, string has retained immense symbolic significance in many cultures around the world. For the Indigenous peoples of the Andes, string was its own mathematical language. From at least 1400 to 1532 CE, they recorded taxes, census data, and other numerical information with quipu: sequences of colorful tassels made from cotton and camelid hair, all dangling from a central cord, and each knotted in its own way. String and rope are stitched into the English language, into longstanding idioms—learn the ropes, spin a yarn, hang by a thread—and even in the way we talk about relatively modern inventions: to describe the internet, we speak of websites, links, and threads. Cordage also features prominently in myths and folk tales. According to a popular Sudanese myth, a rope once united heaven and Earth, until a mischievous hyena severed it, ushering death into the world. In Greek mythology, the three Moirai, or Fates, spin, measure, and cut threads representing every mortal’s life. And various myths originating in Asia tell of the Red String of Fate, an invisible red fiber, a capillary of the soul, linking the ankles or fingers of kindred spirits, future couples, or those simply fated to cross paths.

 

If you visit Ise, Japan, when the tide is high, you can see one of the most romantic tributes to the symbolic power of string. Just off the coast, two rocks sit side by side, separated by the ocean, but joined by thick straw ropes. Known as meoto iwa (rock couple), they represent the union of the Izanagi and Izanami, the deities that created the Japanese archipelago. Their wedding bands, woven by local villagers, are shimenawa, plaited ropes of rice straw often used to mark sacred sites in the Shinto religion. Because the ropes are continually exposed to wind and surf, they are prone to decay. So, three times a year, at low tide, villagers dressed in white robes march into the sea with ladders, remove the old salt-soaked bonds, and replace them with fresh straw rope. A version of this ritual has been practiced for at least 200 years, possibly much longer.

The long-lived tradition attempts to defy the inevitable. The sun and sea and wind will never stop assailing the stoic couple. The elements do not condone this marriage. But therein lies the ultimate lesson of string: even in a bafflingly complex and indifferent universe tumbling inescapably toward complete dissolution, it is still possible to weave composite strength from the small and solitary, to purposefully anchor one thing to another—to tie a knot.

 


Ferris Jabr is a writer based in Portland, Oregon. He has written for the New York Times Magazine, Scientific American, and Outside, among other publications. Some of his work has been anthologized in The Best American Science and Nature Writing series.

 

Ferris Jabr, writer
 
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by Jennifer Chu, Massachusetts Institute of Technology January 3rd, 2020

 

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An example of overhand knots. Credit: Massachusetts Institute of Technology

 

In sailing, rock climbing, construction, and any activity requiring the securing of ropes, certain knots are known to be stronger than others. Any seasoned sailor knows, for instance, that one type of knot will secure a sheet to a headsail, while another is better for hitching a boat to a piling.

 

But what exactly makes one knot more stable than another has not been well-understood, until now.

MIT mathematicians and engineers have developed a mathematical model that predicts how stable a knot is, based on several key properties, including the number of crossings involved and the direction in which the rope segments twist as the knot is pulled tight.

"These subtle differences between knots critically determine whether a knot is strong or not," says Jörn Dunkel, associate professor of mathematics at MIT. "With this model, you should be able to look at two knots that are almost identical, and be able to say which is the better one."

"Empirical knowledge refined over centuries has crystallized out what the best knots are," adds Mathias Kolle, the Rockwell International Career Development Associate Professor at MIT. "And now the model shows why."

Dunkel, Kolle, and Ph.D. students Vishal Patil and Joseph Sandt have published their results today in the journal Science.

 

Pressure's color

In 2018, Kolle's group engineered stretchable fibers that change color in response to strain or pressure. The researchers showed that when they pulled on a fiber, its hue changed from one color of the rainbow to another, particularly in areas that experienced the greatest stress or pressure.

Kolle, an associate professor of mechanical engineering, was invited by MIT's math department to give a talk on the fibers. Dunkel was in the audience and began to cook up an idea: What if the pressure-sensing fibers could be used to study the stability in knots?

Mathematicians have long been intrigued by knots, so much so that physical knots have inspired an entire subfield of topology known as knot theory—the study of theoretical knots whose ends, unlike actual knots, are joined to form a continuous pattern. In knot theory, mathematicians seek to describe a knot in mathematical terms, along with all the ways that it can be twisted or deformed while still retaining its topology, or general geometry.

"In mathematical knot theory, you throw everything out that's related to mechanics," Dunkel says. "You don't care about whether you have a stiff versus soft fiber—it's the same knot from a mathematician's point of view. But we wanted to see if we could add something to the mathematical modeling of knots that accounts for their mechanical properties, to be able to say why one knot is stronger than another."

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An example of a reef knot. Credit: Massachusetts Institute of Technology

 

Spaghetti physics

 

Dunkel and Kolle teamed up to identify what determines a knot's stability. The team first used Kolle's fibers to tie a variety of knots, including the trefoil and figure-eight knots—configurations that were familiar to Kolle, who is an avid sailor, and to rock-climbing members of Dunkel's group. They photographed each fiber, noting where and when the fiber changed color, along with the force that was applied to the fiber as it was pulled tight.

The researchers used the data from these experiments to calibrate a model that Dunkel's group previously implemented to describe another type of fiber: spaghetti. In that model, Patil and Dunkel described the behavior of spaghetti and other flexible, rope-like structures by treating each strand as a chain of small, discrete, spring-connected beads. The way each spring bends and deforms can be calculated based on the force that is applied to each individual spring.

Kolle's student Joseph Sandt had previously drawn up a color map based on experiments with the fibers, which correlates a fiber's color with a given pressure applied to that fiber. Patil and Dunkel incorporated this color map into their spaghetti model, then used the model to simulate the same knots that the researchers had tied physically using the fibers. When they compared the knots in the experiments with those in the simulations, they found the pattern of colors in both were virtually the same—a sign that the model was accurately simulating the distribution of stress in knots.

With confidence in their model, Patil then simulated more complicated knots, taking note of which knots experienced more pressure and were therefore stronger than other knots. Once they categorized knots based on their relative strength, Patil and Dunkel looked for an explanation for why certain knots were stronger than others. To do this, they drew up simple diagrams for the well-known granny, reef, thief, and grief knots, along with more complicated ones, such as the carrick, zeppelin, and Alpine butterfly.

Each knot diagram depicts the pattern of the two strands in a knot before it is pulled tight. The researchers included the direction of each segment of a strand as it is pulled, along with where strands cross. They also noted the direction each segment of a strand rotates as a knot is tightened.

In comparing the diagrams of knots of various strengths, the researchers were able to identify general "counting rules," or characteristics that determine a knot's stability. Basically, a knot is stronger if it has more strand crossings, as well as more "twist fluctuations"—changes in the direction of rotation from one strand segment to another.

For instance, if a fiber segment is rotated to the left at one crossing and rotated to the right at a neighboring crossing as a knot is pulled tight, this creates a twist fluctuation and thus opposing friction, which adds stability to a knot. If, however, the segment is rotated in the same direction at two neighboring crossing, there is no twist fluctuation, and the strand is more likely to rotate and slip, producing a weaker knot.

They also found that a knot can be made stronger if it has more "circulations," which they define as a region in a knot where two parallel strands loop against each other in opposite directions, like a circular flow.

By taking into account these simple counting rules, the team was able to explain why a reef knot, for instance, is stronger than a granny knot. While the two are almost identical, the reef knot has a higher number of twist fluctuations, making it a more stable configuration. Likewise, the zeppelin knot, because of its slightly higher circulations and twist fluctuations, is stronger, though possibly harder to untie, than the Alpine butterfly—a knot that is commonly used in climbing.

"If you take a family of similar knots from which empirical knowledge singles one out as "the best," now we can say why it might deserve this distinction," says Kolle, who envisions the new model can be used to configure knots of various strengths to suit particular applications. "We can play knots against each other for uses in suturing, sailing, climbing, and construction. It's wonderful."

 

https://phys.org/news/2020-01-mathematical-stability.amp

 

More information: 

Vishal P. Patil et al. Topological mechanics of knots and tangles, Science (2020). DOI: 10.1126/science.aaz0135

 

Journal information: Science

Provided by Massachusetts Institute of Technology

 

 

 

 

 
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Direct evidence of Neanderthal fibre technology and its cognitive and behavioral implications  

Published: 09 April 2020  Scientific Reports volume 10, Article number: 4889 (2020)     https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-61839-w

  

 

    •    B. L. Hardy, 
    •    M.-H. Moncel, 
    •    C. Kerfant, 
    •    M. Lebon, 
    •    L. Bellot-Gurlet & 
    •    N. Mélard 

 

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SEM photo of 3-ply cord.

 

First closeup shows Z-twist of strands (image rotated 90° counter-clockwise for clarity);

 

2nd closeup shows S-twist of fibres within a single strand.

 

 

 

 

 

Abstract

 

Neanderthals are often considered as less technologically advanced than modern humans.

 

However, we typically only find faunal remains or stone tools at Paleolithic sites.

 

Perishable materials, comprising the vast majority of material culture items, are typically missing.

 

Individual twisted fibres on stone tools from the Abri du Maras led to the hypothesis of Neanderthal string production in the past, but conclusive evidence was lacking.

 

Here we show direct evidence of fibre technology in the form of a 3-ply cord fragment made from inner bark fibres on a stone tool recovered in situ from the same site.

 

Twisted fibres provide the basis for clothing, rope, bags, nets, mats, boats, etc. which, once discovered, would have become an indispensable part of daily life.

 

Understanding and use of twisted fibres implies the use of complex multi-component technology as well as a mathematical understanding of pairs, sets, and numbers.

 

Added to recent evidence of birch bark tar, art, and shell beads, the idea that Neanderthals were cognitively inferior to modern humans is becoming increasingly untenable.

 

 

Introduction

With a few exceptions such as the Schöningen spears and the recent finds of wooden tools at Pogetti Vecchi, almost all of our knowledge about the Middle Paleolithic comes from durable materials (bones and stone tools).

 

We know from observations of our own surroundings, ethnographic and ethnohistoric accounts that most of the material culture of humans (and Neanderthals) is comprised of perishable materials.

 

Hurcombe has called this problem “the missing majority”.

 

Obviously, differential preservation of materials contributes to this bias.

 

Previously, researchers have demonstrated that the microenvironment immediately surrounding a stone tool can preserve microscopic fragments of what is otherwise invisible archaeologically.

 

This is also true for the preservation of a 3-ply cordage fragment adhering to a stone tool (flake) from Abri du Maras.

 

 

The Abri du Maras is located in a valley near the Ardèche River, a tributary of the Rhône River.

 

New excavations have taken place since 2006 and focus on the Middle Paleolithic (MP) occupations.

 

This site had previously yielded MP deposits with Levallois laminar debitage at the top of the sequence.

 

The oldest occupations took place under a large cave roof, which collapsed over time, and the youngest occupations were under a rockshelter.

 

Two main layers with distinct levels of occupation were discovered (Units 5 and 4) during the new excavations located among beds of limestone blocks.

 

The site has been dated by ESR and U-Th methods. Unit 5 is dated to the end of the MIS 5/beginning of MIS 4 at 90 thousand years (ka).

 

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Context of the Flake

The flake (G8 128) is a Levallois flake 60 mm long.

 

The artefact, with the adhering cord fragment, was found in situ in level 4.2, 3 meters below the modern surface by the director of the excavations (M.-H. Moncel).

 

Furthermore, the cord fragment was found on the inferior surface of the flake, meaning that the cord fragment entered the deposit contemporaneous with or before the flake.

 

There is no evidence of a burrow or den or other disturbance to the sediment in the well-preserved stratigraphic sequence.

 

Upon excavation, the artefact was immediately placed, unwashed, in a zip-style plastic bag where it remained until microscopic examination.

 

This careful treatment of the artefact precludes further modern contamination.

 

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Levallois flake (G8 128 Level 4.2) with adhering cord fragment. (Photo by M.-H. Moncel).

 

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a) SEM photo of cord fragment,

(b) 3D Hirox photo of cord fragment,

(c) schematic drawing illustrating s and Z twist;

(d) enlarged Hirox photo with cord structure highlighted, arrows indicate location of photos e and f;

(e) SEM photo of bordered pits (circled in red);

(f) SEM photo of bordered pits.

(Drawing by C. Kerfant; Hirox: C2RMF, N. Mélard).

 

Results and Discussion

Samples of stone tools from the site are routinely screened with optical light microscopy.

 

Previously, individual twisted plant fibres, some of which were multicellular, were reported on stone tools from Abri du Maras.

 

The authors suggested that these might be remnants of cordage, but the remains were too fragmentary to be conclusive.

 

During further screening with reflected light microscopy, we discovered a fragment of string on a Levallois flake (sample G8 128) from Level 4.2.

 

The flake was recovered in situ with the cord adhering to its inferior surface and was covered by sediment and breccia, demonstrating that the cord is at least contemporary with the deposition and burial of the flake and is therefore Middle Paleolithic in origin.

 

The specimen was also imaged using an environmental SEM imaging platform of the National Museum of Natural History (MNHN, Paris) and a Hirox 2D/3D digital microscope at the Centre for Research and Restoration of the Museums of France (C2RMF, Paris).

 

Examination of photomicrographs revealed 3 bundles of fibres with S-twist which were then plied together with a Z-twist to form a 3-ply cord.

 

The cord is approximately 6.2 mm in length and approximately 0.5 mm in width.

 

The morphology of the cord fragment closely resembles replica cords produced in modern materials.

 

Based on the presence of bordered pits with torus-margo membranes which are arranged in parallel lines, the fibres resemble gymnosperm (conifer) and come from the inner bark.

 

The torus is surrounded by a margo that controls the pressure in the conifer water transport system,; this mechanism is a strategy that distinguishes gymnosperm from angiosperm (flowering plants).

 

Juniper, spruce, cedar, and pine bast have been used archaeologically and historically in the manufacture of cordage and textiles (see Supplemental Information).

 

The presence of pine at the Abri du Maras is confirmed through palynological and charcoal analysis.

 

We also collected modern fibre samples from 18 materials that were present during the excavations and examined them microscopically.

 

None of these matched the fibres from sample G8 128.

 

In addition to the cord fragment described here and examples of twisted fibres illustrated in previously published photos, a number of artefacts have plant/wood fibres adhering to their surfaces but do not exhibit sufficient twisting or plying to confidently identify them as remains of cordage.

 

In some cases these show some twists while in other cases they do not.

 

It is possible that these fibres are related to cordage or cordage manufacture, but, thus far, the sample on flake G8 128 is the only one to exhibit clear structure of a multiple ply cord.

 

The cord is not necessarily related to the use of the tool.

 

Its presence on the inferior surface of the flake during excavation demonstrates that it was deposited before or contemporaneous with the flake.

 

If it was contemporaneous with the deposition of the flake, it could have been wrapped around it as part of a haft or could even have been part of a net or bag.

 

Previous analysis of impact fractures on artefacts from the site suggests the use of hafting and provide potential support for this possibility.

 

If it was deposited before the flake, it could represent a number of different items but nonetheless illustrates the use of fibre technology at the site.

 

 

While it is clear that the cord from Abri du Maras demonstrates Neanderthals’ ability to manufacture cordage, it hints at a much larger fibre technology.

 

Once the production of a twisted, plied cord has been accomplished it is possible to manufacture bags, mats, nets, fabric, baskets, structures, snares, and even watercraft.

 

The cord from Abri du Maras consists of fibres derived from the inner bark of gymnosperms, likely conifers.

 

The fibrous layer of the inner bark is referred to as bast and eventually hardens to form bark.

 

In order to make cordage, Neanderthals had extensive knowledge of the growth and seasonality of these trees.

 

Bast fibres are easier to separate from the bark and the underlying wood in early spring as the sap begins to rise.

 

The fibres increase in size and thickness as growth continues.

 

The best times for harvesting bast fibres would be from early spring to early summer.

 

Once bark is removed from the tree, beating can help separate the bast fibres from the bark.

 

Additionally, retting* the fibres by soaking in water aids in their separation and can soften and improve the quality of the bast.   ( *Retting is a process employing the action of micro-organisms and moisture on plants to dissolve or rot away much of the cellular tissues and pectins surrounding bast-fibre bundles, and so facilitating separation of the fibre from the stem. )

 

The bast must then be separated into strands and can be twisted into cordage.

 

In this case, three groups of fibres were separated and twisted clockwise (s-twist).

 

Once twisted the strands were twined counterclockwise (Z-twist) to form a cord.

 

Ropes and baskets are central to a large number of human activities.

 

They facilitate the transport and storage of foodstuffs, aid in the design of complex tools (hafts, fishing, navigation) or objects (art, decoration).

 

The technological and artistic applications of twisted fibre technologies are vast.

 

Once adopted, fibre technology would have been indispensable and would have been a part of everyday life.

 

In reconstructing land use patterns, paleoanthropologists typically give priority to activities such as hunting and acquiring lithic raw material.

 

Fibre acquisition, processing, and production may have also played an important role in scheduling daily and seasonal activities.

 

String and rope manufacture are time intensive activities and large amounts of string are required for the production of carrying objects such as bags. In an ethnomathematical study of the Maya, it was found that a 1.3 foot Maguey bag required over 400 meters of cordage.

 

Thinking of the environment as including both natural and anthropogenic objects makes it possible to ask several questions about the choices made by cultural groups.

 

Topography, climate, and distribution of plant and animal species are all key factors to consider.

 

Plants play an important role not only in the material conception of objects but also in the formation of the thought of a culture, its representation of the world and its cosmogony.

 

Overall, cordage manufacture has a complex chaîne operatoire.

 

Although wooden artefacts are rare, other finds attest to Neanderthals detailed knowledge of trees.

 

They chose boxwood for its density and used fire in the production of “digging sticks” at Poggetti Vecchi.

 

In the construction of the Schöningen spears, they decentered the point to increase strength.

 

Furthermore, Neanderthals were manufacturing birch bark tar in the Middle Pleistocene of Italy and at the sites of Konigsaue and Inden-Altdorf in Germany.

 

Based on this evidence, the utilization of bast fibres from trees is an obvious outcome of their intimate arboreal knowledge.

 

While some have suggested that cordage manufacture may have been a gendered activity, we feel our current evidence is inadequate to address that question.

 

Understanding archaeological finds in terms of taskscapes, locating socially-situated tasks in the landscape, allows us to more fully appreciate the complexity of Neanderthal technology and social life.

 

The production of cordage is complex and requires detailed knowledge of plants, seasonality, planning, retting, etc.

 

Indeed, the production of cordage requires an understanding of mathematical concepts and general numeracy in the creation of sets of elements and pairs of numbers to create a structure.

 

Indeed, numerosity has been suggested as “one possible feral cognitive basis for abstraction and modern symbolic thinking”.

 

Malafouris has suggested that a material instantiation of number concepts was necessary for the emergence of cognitive numerical ability.

 

The production of cordage, with its use of pairs and sets, may represent one such instantiation.

 

The production of the cord from Abri du Maras requires keeping track of multiple, sequential operations simultaneously.

 

These are not just an iterative sequence of steps because each has to have access to the previous stages.

 

The bast fibres are first s-twisted to form yarn, then the yarns z-twisted (in the opposite direction to prevent unravelling) to form a strand or cord.

 

Cordage production entails context sensitive operational memory to keep track of each operation.

 

As the structure becomes more complex (multiple cords twisted to form a rope, ropes interlaced to form knots), it demonstrates an “infinite use of finite means” and requires a cognitive complexity similar to that required by human language.

 

The cord fragment from Abri du Maras is the oldest direct evidence of fibre technology to date.

 

Its production demonstrates a detailed ecological understanding of trees and how to transform them into entirely different functional substances.

 

Fibre technology would have been an important part of everyday life and would have influenced seasonal scheduling and mobility.

 

Furthermore, the production of cordage implies a cognitive understanding of numeracy and context sensitive operational memory.

 

Given the ongoing revelations of Neanderthal art and technology, it is difficult to see how we can regard Neanderthals as anything other than the cognitive equals of modern humans.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-61839-w

 

 

 

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