From mammoths to modern times: pharaohs knitted too. Probably.

The history of knitting could have been serious. But then what would have been the point?

No one knows exactly when humanity first looked at a long piece of yarn and decided to turn it into clothing.

Let’s assume it all started with cold and irritation.

It all began in a cold cave

Picture an ordinary prehistoric morning. Cold. Draughty. The mammoth is minding its own business and clearly has no intention of sharing its wardrobe.

A human looks at the wool. Then at themselves. Then at the wool again.

Somewhere around here begins humanity’s extremely long relationship with yarn.

Knitting needles, admittedly, would arrive much later. But let’s not allow facts to ruin a perfectly good scene.

The first sweater? Probably a nightmare

Early experiments with clothing were rarely what you would call a capsule collection.

Some things were woven. Some tied together. Some joined with a needle. Some probably fell apart at the worst possible moment.

Mammoths, had they worked as fashion critics, would have been merciless.

Humanity carried on anyway.

And at some point, the task of “not freezing to death” began to look suspiciously like “could we make it pretty as well?”.

That is where everything went off the rails.

And now, the pharaohs

No, we have no reliable evidence that a pharaoh sat beside a pyramid with knitting needles, nervously counting stitches.

A pity.

Egypt did, however, leave us some of the most famous early textiles connected with the prehistory and development of knitting. True knitted pieces from Egypt appear much later than the age of the pharaohs.

Still, the image of a pharaoh who has just dropped a stitch already exists in my head, and it is far too late to evict him.

Picture the pharaoh’s court. Gold. Grandeur. Eternity.

And then, quietly:

“Who touched my ball of yarn?”

The cat looks away. But we do remember who you were not supposed to suspect in ancient Egypt.

The Middle Ages: knitting becomes officially respectable

By the Middle Ages, knitting was firmly established and gradually becoming a serious craft. Knitted pieces stopped looking like suspicious experiments and started appearing wherever there was money, status, and very cold feet.

So humanity needed centuries to turn a stitch into technology.

And then a few more centuries to turn it back into a hobby.

Beautiful.

Then came the machine

And everything sped up.

In the sixteenth century, William Lee invented a knitting machine for stockings. The monarchy was not immediately impressed: Elizabeth I refused him a patent twice.

Possibly one of the earliest documented cases of a tech start-up failing to secure funding.

Machines became faster. Production grew. Clothes became more alike.

And people kept knitting by hand anyway.

Suspiciously stubborn activity.

And here we are

Today, humanity no longer particularly needs knitting to survive.

There are factories. Shops. Next-day delivery. You can buy a sweater faster than you can choose the yarn.

And still, someone keeps sitting there with needles, spending hours on something a machine could make in minutes.

Because it stopped being only about warmth a long time ago.

Sometimes you simply want to decide for yourself where the colour goes. How long the sleeve should be. Where symmetry ends. And why that strange stitch is staying exactly where it is.

So after several thousand years spent perfecting clothing production, we somehow rediscovered the pleasure of making it slowly.

The mammoth would be confused.

The pharaoh, I think, would approve.