Rope has shaped our modern world in profound ways, claims Tim Queeney in his engaging new history of an overlooked candidate for one of man’s greatest technologies, Rope: How a Bundle of Twisted Fibers Became the Backbone of Civilization. This seemingly simple tool, he argues, reminds us that something without gears or silicon still deserves the designation of technology. No other object has so wrapped itself in our lives, and our daily lexicon — tie up loose ends; cut me some slack; tie the knot; learn the ropes. Over the ages, it has been designed to build hunting spears and Gothic cathedrals, traverse open seas and steep mountainsides, trap defiant bulls and daring magicians, and, in more macabre uses, to hang the condemned. Looking to the future, Queeney speculates that a rope no wider than a human hair will stretch from the Earth to the heavens as an orbiting elevator to space.
Queeney, in his book, traces the evolution of rope and its functions. It began humbly, uniting stone and stick into prehistoric tools such as spears, hammers, and arrows. As harvested strands lengthened, techniques emerged to improve strength and durability by twisting fibers into yarn and yarns into rope, distributing tension more evenly across all fibers. By 2300 B.C., ropes helped erect the stones of Stonehenge and the Egyptian pyramids, enabling coordinated efforts to lift loads too heavy for a single man.
Rope next played an invaluable role in the Age of the Sail, a time near and dear to Queeney, a sailor as well as a writer. While square sails receive much attention — perhaps too much — for enabling oceanic exploration, rope alone prevented ships from exploring the ocean floor. Coated in tar, discarded rope, known as “junk,” the root of our modern term, was repurposed as waterproof caulking between ship planks to make vessels seaworthy. And there was plenty of potential junk. For example, in 1846, each of the 735 American whaling ships carried around 10,000 feet of rope. Some served as standing rigging, securing masts and sails, and compressing the hull. The rest was running rigging, used to manipulate sails and maneuver ships through choppy waters. Without rope, Queeney explains, no ship would ever have left the harbor.
From lashing a spear, to lugging a stone, to lacing a sail, these transitions in rope’s function were not straightforward. Each new application introduced technical challenges. Innovations emerged to meet them, such as applying tar to delay rotting and twisting fibers in new ways to ensure more uniform fiber tension. British master mariner Joseph Huddart, for example, invented the register plate to guide the twisting of fibers after he noticed that uneven stress caused premature fraying.
Today, rope continues to pervade society, though its form has changed as natural fibers have given way to more advanced materials. Metal cables, for example, now serve as rigging for modern ships, suspension bridge supports, and cable car lines. Though less flexible than natural fibers, metal cables support heavier loads and withstand harsher environments. Ropes of synthetic polymers, such as nylon, polyester, and aramid, have also infiltrated our material world. Even the iconic American wielder of rope, the cowboy, has embraced synthetic rope, favoring its light weight and durability. Mountain climbers also rely on synthetic rope, valuing its abrasion resistance to guard against sharp rocks and its elasticity to stretch rather than snap during a fall.
As with synthetic climbing rope, however, the book’s subtitle — How a Bundle of Twisted Fibers Became the Backbone of Civilization — is a stretch. In one argument, he presents rope as essential to monumental architecture, oceanic exploration, and industrialization, but he doesn’t persuasively argue that it surpasses other pivotal technologies, such as wheels, levers, or bearings. Rope cannot be accepted as the premier invention, but as an indispensable part among many. Queeney also suggests that rope has served as the backbone of culture through language, with idioms such as “rope-a-dope,” “throw me a rope,” and “cutting the Gordian knot.” But this linguistic argument lacks nuance. The ubiquity of rope in language reflects its historical utility, but it falls short of being a cultural cornerstone.
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In his charming zeal, Queeney even attempts a quasi-spiritual angle, discussing how early Christian missionaries in Ireland employed rope to illustrate the Holy Trinity, how rope saved the Apostle Paul and the crew from shipwreck in Acts 27, and how rope appeared both in the hands of Jesus as he drove out the moneylenders from the temple and in the hands of his tormentors at the scourging post. These anecdotes add drama but lack theological depth. By leaning on sentiment and selective detail, Queeney misses the opportunity to connect rope’s significance to deeper spiritual or mythological themes.
Rather than embracing rope’s essential but limited supporting role, Queeney stresses his thesis beyond its tensile strength. That said, the idea of rope, in its simplicity, ranking as one of the greatest technologies, offers a refreshing take in the age of Big Science dominated by headlines about artificial intelligence, quantum computing, and gene editing. Even if rope is not civilization’s backbone, Queeney proves that it has held the world together, and its development was more complex than we often credit.
Matthew Phillips is a research and development engineer in New Mexico.