Landmarks in the history of string

According to today’s Telegraph Archaeologists investigating a flooded Stone Age settlement just off the coast of the Isle of Wight have found a piece of string that is 8,000 years old. The four-and-a-half inch long string was made from tough stems of honeysuckle, nettles or wild clematis that were twisted together.

Marine archaeologists discovered it when they found a pre-historic camp 30 feet below the surface, 200 yards off the Isle of Wight. The team cut small blocks of the sea floor out for analysis after seeing the wooded remains of the settlement by chance. The string was buried in one of them. The find is remarkable because the fibres, made of organic matter, would usually decay quite quickly.

The results have been published in British Archaeology magazine. Editor Mike Pitts described it as a "fantastic find".He said: "I don't think the average person realises what an important piece of technology string has been over the ages."

Experts believe the settlement was flooded at the end of the last ice age, when glacial sheets that covered most of Europe melted.

Hopefully I will be back with more tales of mankind's greatest friend string