Palaeolithic Rope-making Experiment 

Neolithic P-Touch!

Check also Eugenio Monesma RU-vid channel. He has amazing videos about making ropes like "Cuerdas y sogas artesanales", "El cordelero" and "Cuerdas naturales con hojas de pita o agave" among others.

There's certainly more experiments to do with this

Yes, and that is a wonderful thing!

Yes, this makes the most sense to me.

I'm a slow reader, so I often have trouble.

I think the microscopic analysis shows fairly clearly that they are carved, especially as one on the back goes the 'wrong' way, which may indicate an accidental error by the original maker

@@SallyPointer Thank you for taking the time to reply and clarify. I am of course utterly ignorant just sitting here in my PJs watching a video as I wake up ;)

Yep, I've made rope solo too. This was about trying out a suggested interpretation from a specific paper on a specific thing

Meh, ropemaking is still a very valid and used craft. And we don't really need to know 20000 year old technologies when we have others that fulfill the same purpose.

We learn a lot about how our earlier selves approached things by trying their methods. Just because we might choose to use a more modern version now doesn't mean there's no point in exploring earlier versions.

@@SallyPointer Absolutely - and you never know, we might have to go back to some of these sustainable technologies, that are the foundation of our modern world.

I would think three - two twisting two strands each, and one to twine the strands and hold/move the tool. Once you've got it firmly started, there's no need to keep holding the finished rope. Just let it hang, and continue pulling and twisting from there.

Could definitely work with less,but I had many willing hands available so we used them

You get a more secure lay with twisting unless you've seriously over twisted the elements first

I agree it's an object that could be used in a number of ways. This experiment is really just replication of the ideas the current researchers have. It's going to be fun to try it with different materials and techniques too. I do like the idea of wet rawhide, that would be very interesting to explore

Or retted flax or nettle fibers.

The problem with this idea is that the rope end would need a swivel that can spin freely. All the twists of the cordage one way put tension on the fibers, making them want to untwist the other way. A stationary hook or eye-loop would not be moving, and that would force the bone tool to want to spin, tangling up the cordage at the other end. You can literally see the rope-end of things in an eye hook that spins freely in this video, explaining the Edwardian Rope Walk: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-By8K5mKSwDA.htmlsi=jjCVT4SP1UrdtJJD&t=121 (timestamped to the moment of action; it's quick so you may need to go back with the arrow key to catch it again). The rest of the video's good to watch, as it explains rope-making with the use of simple gear-based machinery, something that could have been invented in Ancient Greece.

Yep, certainly a twist worth trying. We had lots of people available, so used lots of hands, but this could work with far fewer

Yep, here I was accidentally mirror imaging what I should have been doing, a piece of string reads the same from both ends, so it needed a counter clockwise twist.

@@SallyPointer: This is a bit of a bugbear of mine! While there are some situations where "clockwise" and "anticlockwise" have quite obvious meanings, there are other situations where it's not clear at all and people need, in my opinion, to explain where they're looking at the "clockwise" or "anticlockwise" motion from. Like, if you had a see-through clock you'd see the hands going clockwise if you look at it from the front but they'd be going anticlockwise if you looked at them from the back.

Clockwise screw symmetry remains clockwise from the other end as well.

Very soon I hope, I need to get the big reenactment market out of the way first

❤

It does the trick! There's potentially several ways to use it, and I'll be investigating further

The original paper (link in video description) found evidence for cattail or possibly lime bast trapped in the grooves

I think she said raffia.

She said “rafita” I think, but I’m not sure what that is.

For this quick test we had two shades of raffia to hand, lime bast is the next one to use though, or cattail in season

Raffia is a palm fibre

Definitely, life got really busy then winter got in the way, but I'm hoping to do it very soon

No, it was about that time that Gareth became ill and that got in the way. It's still on the list, and the Bronze Age belt video fits in with that project.

the bronze age boat in Dover museum in kent its SEWN together with Honeysuckle rope...its 3,500 years old and still holding together