ROPE: How a Bundle of Twisted Fibers Became the Backbone of Civilization, by Tim Queeney
If Tim Queeney’s “Rope” were a movie, it would be a spinoff — an attempt to elevate a sidekick to a starring role. An author and self-described rope enthusiast, Queeney argues that modern society fails to appreciate how vital cordage was to the rise of civilization, and “Rope” pleads with us to pay more attention to his favorite character.
Humankind has fashioned rope from pretty much everything at some point in history: hemp, honeysuckle, coconut husks, milkweed, walrus hide, pig bristles. (Nowadays, there’s also metal “rope.”)
And while some uses are obvious, rope also acts as a multiplier that enhances the power of other tools. “It was rope that made the spear a thing,” Queeney notes, by allowing us to bind stone points to wooden shafts. “Without rope, humanity would be stuck with throwing rocks at its prey.” The oldest known scrap of rope, dating back 50,000 years, was braided by Neanderthals.
Since then, rope has been a bit of a Zelig, popping up for dozens of important historical developments. Rope fishing nets have harvested the seas for millenniums. They powered the sails of ships during the Age of Exploration. No pyramids or cathedrals would reach toward the heavens without ropes to hoist blocks. The Incas used knotted ropes to record written language, as did other cultures. Even the Boston Massacre, a spark for the American Revolution, began as a skirmish in a rope-making shop near Boston Harbor.
It’s an impressive résumé, but Queeney gets a bit huffy that history books don’t make rope the headliner: “It was everywhere in every society, but taken as such a basic element that when pyramids are the topic, stones are the focus.” When the topic is “the history of ships sailing the world, spices and empires capture the debate.”
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