Quote:

the eariest examples of knitted cloth date from about 450CE (common era) but--footprints, preserved in what was mud, but became floor (inside of burial chambers in the pyramids) suggest knitting goes back long before the year 450.(1,000BCE or so)...



Several sources I found by Googling (which may of course be entirely wrong e.g. (this is the easiest to cite although probably the worst) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_knitting ) suggest that the current thinking is that even the Egyptians weren't doing "real" knitting until the 14th century.