| You've asked quite a big question! Surprisingly for something so simple (two sticks and string), knitting is a relatively young craft. It's probably around only 1500 or so years old, give or take.
There are a couple of schools of thought on knitting's ultimate origin and history. The one in widest acceptance right now posits a western Mediterranean origin possibly in the 6th or 7th century. The home of knitting is thought to have been somewhere in the greater Anatolian region of which Turkey is a small part today. (Interestingly enough, there were several other major inventions that have origins in the same general time and place, including the horse stirrup.)
From there knitting spread south and north, with the main route of transfer being south into the Middle East. Knitting then spread with the expansion of the early Islamic world. Knitting seems to have circled across the top of North Africa, moving up into the Iberian peninsula. By the time it got there the craft was already pretty sophisticated and included stranded colorwork and knitting in the round. Silk knitting from Moorish Spain was prized by the mid-1200s, and was traded into the rest of Europe.
Some historians add another northern route of dissemination up along the historical fur trade routes from Constantinople to the Rus-founded trading kingdoms of early Russia, and from there to the Baltic area including Poland. This northern route theory is being discussed in academic literature, and although it is gaining ground, is not yet universally accepted.
A good source for info on knitting's history written for the general (as opposed to academic) reader is the recently republished "History of Hand Knitting" by Richard Rutt. Rutt addresses the Islamic route, but the academic works on the northern route weren't available in English when he wrote his book in 1987. His book does go into considerable detail debunking folk mythology surrounding knitting's origin, and differentiating true knitting from earlier types of work that can look similar to the untrained observer.
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