We often talk about the "threads of a story." It turns out that the story of greater thinking and organization in the human race is truly a story of threads.
Threads woven into cloth and joined by thread got us out of the habit of wearing animal skins, and gave civilization a major push forward.
In her book The Fabric of Civilization: How Textiles Made the World, Virginia Postrel shows how textiles not only gave us clothing to wear, their manufacture gave us seemingly unrelated fields, like bookkeeping and banking.
The author stretches out a long bolt of cloth in a visit to the Jefferson Exchange.