JC Turner, P Van De Griend, C Warner: History and science of knots, Aarhus 1996 devotes its first chapter to Pleistocene Knotting. It comes to the conclusion:
Knots and cordage have been used by humans for a very long time. There is good evidence of them from non-perishable artefacts of up to more than 300 000 years ago (see the Summary table...). And there is good reason to believe that they might have been used with wholly perishable materials for a long time before that. But there was no evidence at all from artefacts or art of just what knots were used, until actual samples of knotted cord, preserved by some unusual circumstance, were found (for examples see Chapter 2).
The earliest evidence available suggests that binding knots and lashings of some kind were used, and evidence for bends is nearly as old. The early use of hitches would seem very likely; stopper knots, and fixed or (particularly) sliding loop knots, might also have been in very early use, but we would expect specific indications to be very rare and hard to recognise.
The referenced summary table looks like this:
The theory that homo erectus used rafts to cross Wallace's line "at least 700 000 years ago" is mentioned and sourced to an article:
P.Y. Sondaar et al., Middle Pleistocene faunal turnover and colonization of Flores (Indonesia) by Homo erectus. Comptes Rendues de l'Academie des Sciences Paris 319, 1994 p. 1260
Since then, the discovery of Homo florensis and the work on revealing its ancestry seems to confirm an arrival on the island about one million years ago.
One of the authors of the cited chapter, Robert G. Bednarik, is an outspoken proponent of dating back the evolution of human culture into the time of homo erectus. The more I try to learn about his arguments, the more I find that the evidence he cites for his position seems to rely on quite optimistic interpretations.
He has explored the implication of perforated objects more in his paper Robert G. Bednarik: The technology and use of beads in the Pleistocene, in: Archaeology of Gesture, Cork 2005:
But beads convey a great deal more information about their makers and users than their history. Technologically alone they illustrate not only the ability to drill through brittle or often very hard materials, but also they imply the use of cordage. The very essence of a bead or pendant is to be threaded onto a string; it would simply be pointless to perforate a small object for another purpose but to pass a string though it. However, the use of cordage also suggests the use of knots, because a string needs to be closed to form a loop to be effective. Although the ends of a string may be joined by means other than a knot, e.g. by the use of adhesive or by plaiting, these alternative means are either impracticable or they are technologically even more complex than the use of knotting.
While the argument itself has its merits, his following claim is not that solid, i. e. that the earliest known objects "with indisputably human-made perforations"
are the two perforated pendants from the Repolusthöhle in Styria, Austria. If their age estimate is correct, they are in the order of 300,000 years old. One is a wolf incisor, very expertly drilled near its root. The second is a flaked bone point, roughly triangular and perforated near one corner.
The dating of the artefacts in the cave has a contentious history. The Museum Joanneum Graz which holds all findings from the cave has published a yearbook which reviewed the research. It contains an article, which unfortunately is not available online
Daniel Modl – Martina Pacher: Die Pseudoartefakte und der Wolfszahnanhänger aus der Repolusthöhle (Steiermark, Österreich) – Mit einem Diskussionsbeitrag zum Neandertaler und dem Mittelpaläolithikum im Südostalpenraum, in: Schild von Steier 26, Graz 2014, p. 176–211
The general review of the excavation history and the dating attempts can be read, but does not talk about the wolf incisor specifically:
Daniel Modl – Michael Brandl – Martina Pacher – Ruth Drescher-Schneider: Abriss der Erforschungsgeschichte der Repolusthöhle (Steiermark, Österreich) mit einem Bericht zu einer Feststellungsgrabung im Jahr 2010, in: Schild von Steier 26, Graz 2014, p. 28–97
According to Bednarik, the most common upper paleolithic category of beads is made from ostrich shells. While their fragile nature makes finds from the middle paleolithic very sparse, his paper cites the finding of three round and perforated beads from "El Greifa site E", which according to him appear to be 200,000 years old.
The site seems to be Al-Ghrayf in the Libyan district of Fazzan, although the name of the exact site cannot be matched to that gazetteer; and the finding of the eggshell beads is not mentioned. I also struggle to find an original report of the finding.
