1. Fragments of arrows made of reindeer horn from the Martinet Cave (Lot-et-Garonne).—2. Point of spear or harpoon in stag-horn (one third natural size).—3. and 4. Bone weapons from Denmark.—5. Harpoon of stag-horn from St. Aubin.—6. Bone fish-hook; pointed at each end, from Wangen.
Prehistoric mail also turned to account the teeth of animals. We may quote in this connection the molars of a bear from which the enamel and the crown have been removed, and the thickness of which has been lessened by rubbing ([Fig. 11]). The small flints picked up in great numbers in the department of the Gironde also date from a remote antiquity; they are sixteen millimetres long by four wide, and though we cannot assert it as a fact, they are supposed to have been used for catching fish.
Figure 11.
Bears’ teeth converted into fish-hooks.
Figure 12.
Fish-hook made out of a boar’s tusk.
The Museum of Lund possesses two flint fish-books of a curved shape, one of them, which is four centimetres long by nearly three wide, was found by the seashore; the other and smaller one came front the shores of Lake Kranke.[20] Fish-hooks made of bone, which is more easily worked than flint, very soon replaced those in that material. They are numerous in the Lake Stations of Wangen, Mooseedorf, and St. Aubin. Some are cut out of the horns of oxen, others of stags’ antlers; while others again are made of boars’ tusks (Fig. 12), but all alike greatly resemble modern forms. The peat-bogs of Scania have yielded a bone fish-hook seven centimetres long, which is considered very ancient, and the Museum of Stettin possesses one, also very old, found in a gnarly deposit of Pomerania. We must not forget to mention, although it probably belongs to a much more recent period, a fish-hook in reindeer horn, now in the Christiania Museum. It was found in a tomb in the island of Kjelnoë, not far from the Russian frontier. Numerous skeletons, wrapped up in swathings of birch-bark, repose in this tomb. All around lay fragments of pottery, lance- and arrow-heads,[21] and combs of reindeer horn, the date of which it is impossible to fix exactly.