Knives has been a part of life throughout history. The Bronze age could have been the one to bring about significant change with the way knives were and how they are now. This is due to the fact that the Bronze age brought the use of bronze, and after which iron replaced bronze because iron was far more sturdier than bronze.
The greeks and the Romans where the first to be craft folding knives using ivory as blades. They used t to cut fruits due to the ivorys resistance to rust. Then in the 1095 up to 1272, the Crusades was launched by the Europeans. They began traveling all over and this opened a window of opportunity for France to manufacture blades of various shapes and sizes from a variety of materials.
Pocket knives started sometime in the 15th century.