Where do knitting needles come from?

Ah... another one of those burning questions, like "what's the difference between blue and grey eyes (a genteel reader wishes to know)" or "why does washing stain pink instead of green?"

I knit. Some would say obsessively (although I've got it down to a one-a-year habit now), others would say occasionally (that would be the one-a-week crowd). And I've wondered for a while about just who first worked out that taking a stick and a piece of thread would create something warm, woolly and usually of questionable colour sense. Much is recorded about knitting styles and patterns, but very little is said about the humble needles that created them. So once more on a quest, dear friends...

What I know about knitting needles is this: most British knitting uses two long needles. Some folks in Northern Scotland use one needle and dextrous thumbs. Scandanavians use 4 or 5 short doubled-pointed needles, or two short needles joined by a long string. Lengths vary with taste, as do materials: metal, plastic and bamboo are all common, but needles were originally made from bone. And many of these objects are so frightening or annoying to non-knitters that they are routinely banned from aircraft cabins.

And so to curious research. First, nobody knows when knitting really started, but several sources agree that it wasn't 4th century Egypt or 10th century Scandinavia: things that look like knitting from these periods were really created using a complex form of needlework (as in one needle) known as Naalbinding; wikipedia is delightfully pointed about archeologists who can't tell this from real knitting. The rest of knitting needle history is relatively recent. Straight knitting needles probably happened in the 1800s, double-pointed needles are much older, the first recorded use of the term knitting needle dates to 1598, original needle materials included shell and bone which were replaced by less environmentally sensitive materials, and I have been unable to find any more online information than that on this subject.

The hunt continues, but in the meantime, there's always the knitting cartoon set.