The Age of Rope?

The history of humankind is written with materials and reflected in the titles of archeological periods that mark the significant steps in the Homo Sapiens progress towards civilization - real and imagined ones. Stone age, Iron age, Bronze age, Golden age. They are so familiar to us, so convincingly solid, that we rarely question their material premise. Alas, this seemingly reliable premise of civilization is frail and partial, or, as it often happens with the presumably hard evidence, is founded on a lack. 

What is lacking, you could ask? Are not the museum collections and excavation sites of ancient cities full of astonishing constructions and artifacts of stone and metal, from the simple to the elaborate, that confirm the evident significance of the solid substances in the triumphant march of the human kind towards perfection and prosperity? 

Let me ask you then: how did they carry this all? 

Yes, yes - how did they drag it all from place to place, how did they keep the parts together? 

With their two hands? 

No. With ropes and baskets. 

When some human tribe soared forth to kill the last remaining mammoth, to fish the crick for the then abundant salmon, or to attack the neighboring neanderthals - how did they assemble and drag the throwing stones or forced the fish out of the water? 

With nets and lines. 

If not for the sling that happened to fall into the hand of the young shepherd later known as king David, Goliath would still roam free, and the narratives of Middle-Eastern mythology and the three monotheistic religions, would have looked different. 

What remained of the very original cover of sex organs, our beloved pinnacle of shame, dread and fascination? Nothing. Leaves, grass, tree bark, animal hides and sinews - all of them organic materials, ephemeral, perishable substances, feeble, pliable, flexible, unreliable, so easily, almost willingly subjected to manipulation and pressure, yet so easily messing up, getting confused, entangled and resistant, when left without supervision.  

No wonder that sculptors concerned with dignity and grandeur of the human form preferred the solid stone and bronze, melting and then solidifying, to the soft and changeable mildness of cloth. No wonder that painters made every effort to conceal the canvass. When it was seen and acknowledged, textile remained the material of theatre stage decorators, puppeteers, witches, seamstresses, couturiers and hangmen - a suspicious and unreliable crowd.

Were we to replace the titles of mankind ages, were we to fill in the lack, what would our history sound like? 

The Age of Hide, the Nest Age, the Age of Rope, the Age of Bark, the Age of Basket, the Age of Blanket, the Age of Flax, the Age of White Sheet, the Age of Tears, the Age of Sack, the Age of Stain, the Age of Quilt, the Age of Suit, Cotton Age, Nylon Age, The Age of Underwear, Spandex Age, the Age of Silk, the Age of Tatters, Net Age, Fold Age, The Age of Wraps. 

Will this still be the history of mankind?

Maybe this will be the history of MATTER and inconspicuous DEED, that remain on the threshold of our bodies and houses, that we notice in passing or not at all, that we know off but prefer not to mention, not to face, not to fathom, 

I’d rather not, 

we’d better not, 

we’d rather wrap ourselves up and tie with a string