The knots are definitely prehistoric, the oldest fish net is over 9000 years old. The net was practically modern – instead of nylon, it was made of willow bark – so the earliest knots are probably quite a bit older. Chimpanzees are known to make knots in wild, so a good guess is that humans have been using knots as long as there has been humans.

hi! this question would be worth x-posting to our sister sub, /r/AskAnthropology, since there are a few more anthropologists & archaeologists over there