The Effect Of Early Basic Basket Weaving
On Human Development
FROM BASKETS TO SHIPS:
IT MAY HAVE TAKEN 100s OF THOUSANDS OF YEARS
IT MAY HAVE TAKEN 100s OF THOUSANDS OF YEARS
[TOP] A carry basket. using a simple design, made by the Xerente (Sherenté),
an indigenous people in Brazil.
an indigenous people in Brazil.
It may have taken more than half a million years for the skills needed to make this basic basket [TOP] to evolve into the skills needed to make this seagoing ship [BOTTOM] made of reeds that could carry 50 tons of cargo and sail the Persian Gulf
[BOTTOM] "Model of the reed boat Tigris, boat of Thor Heyerdahl."
This recreation of a Mesopotamian reed ship could carry 50 tons of cargo. Thor Heyerdahl built the full-scale ship to prove the seaworthiness of reed ships. He sailed the Tigris with no problems for 5 months in the Persian Gulf.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tigris_Model_Pyramids_of_Guimar.jpg
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tigris_Model_Pyramids_of_Guimar.jpg
I have argued that the term "Woven-Fiber Technology", which I coined, would include early basketry going back as far as 2.5 million years ago. In this time period hominins were still developing. Homo habilis and other hominins were dominant and the manual and cognitive skills that basketry required could have affected their technical and biological evolution.
While this is very speculative, we have some indirect and even direct evidence that supports this idea. We know that 2.5k years ago these early hominins in Africa lived in close association with weaverbirds who made intricate sturdy nests.
And we also have direct evidence of right angle construction from 500k years ago.
https://deconstructingtime.blogspot.com/2023/10/oldest-wooden-structure-found-in-zambia.htmlSo the evidence we do have suggests an early beginning to basketry.
If this is true, it fundamentally changes the narrative and the timeline about early Paleolithic cultures and tribes. For example, while up to now the emphasis has been on stone tools, the inclusion of basket weaving technology (yes baskets are tools) leads to considering various tools made from fibers that were, perhaps, companion tools to stone tools and part of the Early Paleolithic tool kit.
The term "Woven-fiber Technology" does not just mean that baskets and reed boats and many other skills and products are now put under one heading, but also that they were part of the same long term developing technology and a related way of thinking. I believe the term "Woven-fiber Technology" defines a new field of study that includes older fields such as basket weaving, textiles, and cordage but puts them together with respect to their applications and their related skills. While Woven-Fiber Technology includes these many other well established areas of study, it looks at previous studies and theories with new eyes and often connects things that were seen before as separate.
As I have suggested a carefully constructed computer simulation of basketry vs. no basketry from 2.5 million years ago to a million years ago, which would cover the development of Homo habilis to early Homo erectus, could be useful for research and might yield some answers. Or a carefully constructed computer simulation of basketry vs. no basketry from one million years ago to 50k years ago, i.e. from Homo erectus to Homo neanderthalensis, whom we know did make fiber items, would be another range of human behavior to study.
While all this is high speculative, it is also quite possible. So for that reason alone, it is worth examining as it might give us some answers.
I asked the following question to Google AI and here is their detailed response that essentially agrees with my ideas and conclusions.
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QUESTION:
IF BASIC BASKETRY BEGAN MILLIONS OF YEARS AGO,
WHAT EFFECT WOULD THAT HAVE HAD ON HUMAN DEVELOPMENT?
AI Overview 16:20 10/30/2026
If basic basketry had emerged millions of years ago (during the early hominin or Homo lineage, rather than the Upper Paleolithic/Neolithic around 10,000 to 20,000 years ago), it would have fundamentally altered human evolution, foraging efficiency, and social structures long before pottery or metalworking existed.
Foraging and Mobility
• Carrying Capacity: Early hominins (such as Homo erectus) would have dramatically increased the amount of food—tubers, berries, small game, eggs, or nuts—they could transport in a single trip back to a home base or sharing site.
• Energy Balance: Greater food-transport efficiency would reduce the daily energy expenditure required to scavenge or forage over long distances, potentially accelerating brain expansion by securing higher-calorie yields.
• Foraging Range: Groups could temporarily or permanently expand their geographic range into environments where carrying water (if baskets were pitched with bitumen, resin, or clay lining) or storing dry food was necessary for survival.
Cognitive and Technological Evolution
• Spatial and Engineering Skills: Weaving requires a prior mental concept of a finished design, an understanding of 3D volume, and an intuitive grasp of structural tension, load-bearing, and material flexibility (choosing the right plant fibers, bark, or grasses).
• Precursor to Complex Tech: [My Capitalization] MASTERING RIGHT-ANGLE WEAVES AND INTERLOCKING PATTERNS MILLIONS OF YEARS AGO WOULD HAVE SERVED AS A COGNITIVE AND MECHANICAL STEPPING STONE FOR TEXTILES, NETS, SNARES, BUILDING CONSTRUCTION (WATTLE-AND-DAUB OR PRIMITIVE SHELTERS), AND EARLY WATERCRAFT (RAFTS OR CORE-FRAMED BOATS) MUCH EARLIER IN THE FOSSIL RECORD.
[MY COMMENT: This is especially important because we have direct evidence of right angle construction 500k years ago.
• Proto-Mathematics: Handling repeating geometric patterns, counting warp and weft strands, and scaling container sizes would have laid an early foundation for basic-level counting, symmetry, and spatial logic.
Social and Cultural Shifts
• Food Sharing and-Staple Storage: Reliable storage made delayed-return economies possible—allowing early humans to stockpile seasonal resources rather than consuming everything immediately.
• Infant Care and Mobility: Flexible or sturdy woven slings and cradles would free up adult hands during travel, changing how groups migrated and cared for infants.
• Accelerated Complex Society: Because large-scale community gathering, trade, and division of labor depend heavily on bulk containerization long before the advent of pottery or agriculture, early basketry could have triggered more complex social stratification and group coordination hundreds of thousands or millions of years ahead of the actual timeline.
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AFTERWORD:
BASKET WEAVING AND TIME KEEPING
There are other implications as well. It is possible that in Mesopotamia a reed basket with vertical spokes and horizontal strands became the model for their view of the heavens which in turn became the basis for keeping time on Earth. The sky was mapped out with a grid in the sky of degrees called hours and minutes This is important because today our system of 24 hours to a day, and hours and minutes was developed in Mesopotamia and is the system that virtually everyone uses all over the world in their daily lives today.
LEFT: Bowl RIGHT: Detail of bowl
"Map of the night sky: star positions
from the Bright Stars Catalog, 5th Edition. Rasterized." 2006.
This modern map of the stars visible in the Northern Hemisphere
is based on the Babylonian model. The white curved line is the zodiac.
Notice the faint horizontal and vertical grid lines and the 360-degree indicators.
from the Bright Stars Catalog, 5th Edition. Rasterized." 2006.
This modern map of the stars visible in the Northern Hemisphere
is based on the Babylonian model. The white curved line is the zodiac.
Notice the faint horizontal and vertical grid lines and the 360-degree indicators.
