Knots are one of the oldest human technologies, predating pottery, metalwork, and agriculture by thousands of years. The earliest indirect evidence suggests knot-tying may stretch back hundreds of thousands of years to the Lower Paleolithic, when early humans lashed together shelters and hafted stone tools to wooden handles. The oldest physical evidence of twisted cordage, the foundation of any knot, dates to around 19,300 years ago at a site near the Sea of Galilee.
The Oldest Physical Evidence
Cordage and knots are made from organic materials that decompose quickly, so the archaeological record is frustratingly sparse. The earliest surviving example comes from Ohalo II, a waterlogged site in modern-day Israel, where researchers found twisted plant fibers dating to roughly 19,300 years ago. These fibers were likely used to make bags or nets for storing fish, pointing to an already-sophisticated economy that depended on fiber technology.
In North America, Cougar Mountain Cave and the Paisley Caves in Oregon have yielded knotted bark and plant-fiber cord sewn into elk hide, dated between 11,880 and 12,600 years ago. These are among the oldest known examples of sewing, and they required not just twisting fiber into cord but tying functional knots to join pieces of hide together.
Even older indirect evidence exists. Neanderthals at a site called Abri du Maras in France left twisted fibers of conifer inner bark on stone tools. The fibers come from the same family of trees (juniper, spruce, cedar, pine) that humans used for cordage and textiles throughout prehistory. This suggests that fiber technology, and likely knotting, was not exclusive to our species.
Why Knots Were Invented
Knots weren’t invented for a single purpose. They emerged because nearly every survival task required joining one thing to another. The earliest and most critical uses were probably hafting (attaching a sharpened stone to a wooden handle to make an axe or spear) and lashing poles together for simple shelters. Both tasks require hitches, a category of knot that grips an object like a pole or shaft. The cow hitch and clove hitch, still widely used today, are the kinds of knots that would have made these early technologies possible.
Fishing and trapping drove another major branch of knot development. Net-making depends on mesh knots, and the sheet bend, one of the most common knots in human history, is especially well suited for tying secure, mendable mesh. Archaeological sites across cultures show a heavy reliance on netting knots, reflecting how central fishing and trapping were to early food systems.
As societies became more specialized, their knot repertoires did too. Cultures developed unique knots tailored to their specific needs. The Saami people of northern Scandinavia, for example, developed a set of reindeer-hitching knots found nowhere else in the world, shaped entirely by the practical demands of herding. Knots co-evolved with the activities they supported: textiles, garments, composite weapons, transport technologies, and personal ornaments all depended on mastery of fiber and knot work.
Knots Before Humans
There’s a reasonable case that the cognitive roots of knotting go back even further than our own species. Wild chimpanzees in Bulindi, Uganda, have been observed performing a behavior researchers call “nest tying,” where they loop leafy stems or palm fronds around a tree trunk and interweave them into a sleeping platform to anchor it for stability. Whether this counts as true knot-making is debated, but it requires advanced dexterity and a sophisticated understanding of how plant materials behave under tension. Since chimpanzees learn nest-building techniques socially, passing methods from one generation to the next, the behavior hints at the kind of social learning that could eventually lead to deliberate knotting in early human ancestors.
Knots as a Recording System
Perhaps the most striking evolution of knot technology came from the Inca Empire, which used knotted cords called khipus to run a civilization of millions without a conventional writing system. A khipu consists of colored cords hanging like pendants from a thick primary strand, with knots tied at specific positions along each cord. The knot types, their placement, and the cord colors encoded information.
Some surviving khipus recorded agricultural data: crop yields, population counts, tax obligations. Others were buried with the dead as part of funeral rites, suggesting they carried personal or spiritual significance as well. Researchers recently analyzed a strand of human hair woven into a khipu and found, through chemical analysis of carbon and nitrogen, that it came from someone whose diet consisted of legumes, grains, and tubers. Khipus remain only partially decoded, but they represent one of the most creative uses of knots in human history, a physical medium for storing and transmitting complex information.
Knots in Early Medicine
By the first century A.D., knots had become precise medical instruments. A Greek physician named Heraklas wrote what is now the oldest surviving essay on surgical knots, describing sixteen different nooses and knots used in medical procedures. His work shows that Hellenistic, Roman, and Byzantine physicians had a rich and standardized knowledge of how knots behaved under tension in living tissue. Surgeons used specific knots for ligatures (tying off blood vessels) and for securing wound closures, choosing knot types based on how tightly they gripped and how easily they could be released. Surgical knot-tying remains a core clinical skill today, and many of the principles Heraklas described are still relevant.
What Knots Were Made From
The materials available in a given environment shaped which knots people tied and how durable they were. The earliest cordage was made from plant fibers: inner bark from conifers like juniper and pine, or the twisted tissues of wetland plants like cattail, rush, and sedge. Animal materials played a role too. Sinew (dried tendon) was prized for its strength and flexibility, and animal hair was sometimes twisted into cord. The elk-hide artifacts from Oregon’s caves were sewn with cord made from both plant fiber and animal hair, suggesting early craftspeople blended materials to get the properties they needed.
Plant fibers were more abundant and easier to process, which is why they dominate the archaeological record. But they also decompose far more readily than stone or bone, which is why evidence of early knotting is so rare. For every fragment of ancient cordage that survives, countless thousands rotted away, leaving only the stone tools they were once lashed to as silent evidence that knots were there.