In America, stone fish-hooks are rare. The most ancient are of bone, and resemble those now in use. They have been picked up in Dakota, and in the cinderheaps of Madisonville (Ohio), in Indiana, in Arkansas, on the shores of Lake Erie, and in a kitchen-midding of Long Island. The greater number of them are polished, and some of them have near the top a hole by which they could be fastened to a line or cord. The fish-hooks of California are remarkable for their rounded forms and sharply curved points; the top was covered with a thick layer of asphalt to which the line was probably fastened. They are numerous in all the islands of the Pacific coast. In that of Santa Cruz Schumacker excavated a tomb which must have been that of a fish-hook manufacturer, for care had been taken to place near the deceased, not only the implements of his craft, but also a number of fish-hooks in various stages of advancement. The Californians used the shells of the Mytilus Californicus and Haliotis to make fish-hooks, and these were even more curved than those made of bone. The shape seems but little suited for fishing, but even in our own day the natives of the Samoa Islands use similar tackle with great success. The Indians of the northwest coast make fish-hooks of epicea wood, and those of Arizona utilize for the same purpose the long spikes of the cactus. It is very probable that European as well as American races knew how to use wood in the same manner. During the lapse of centuries, however, these fragile objects have been reduced to dust, and we are unable to make any further conjectures on the subject.
The use of bronze, the first metal to be generally employed, does not seem to have introduced any great modifications in fishing-tackle. Bronze fish-hooks are, however, thinner and lighter than those in other materials, and resemble those in use amongst fishermen at the present day. A certain number have been found in the Lake Stations of Switzerland, in lakes Peschiera and Bourget, as well as in Scotland, Ireland, and the island of Fünen off the coast of Denmark. We must not omit to mention the important foundry of Larnaud, or the cache of Saint-Pierre-en-Chatre, both so rich in bronze objects. In America, where the copper mines of Lake Superior were worked at a remote antiquity, a few rare copper fish-hooks have been found, the greater number in the Ancon necropolis.[22] Gold fish-hooks are comparatively more numerous, and have been discovered in New Granada and the Cauca State.[23] One of these was found some forty-nine feet below the surface of the ground, and as there is no trace of disturbance, we cannot assign to it a recent origin. The gold fish-hooks are about four inches long, and look like big pins with the lower end bent back upon the upper.
Other fishing implements were also used by our prehistoric ancestors. At Laugerie-Basse a rough drawing shows us a man striking with a harpoon a fish that is trying to escape. These harpoons were generally made of reindeer horn (Figs. [10] and [13]). Some had but one barb, others several. One of the largest was found in the Madeleine Cave; it is eight inches long, and has three barbs on one side and five on the other. Most of these weapons have a notch in the handle, with the help of which they could be firmly fastened to a spear or lance. Different fashions prevailed in different localities, and sinews, leather thongs, roughly plaited cords, creepers, and resinous substances were often pressed into the service.
Figure 13.
A, a large barbed arrow from one side of the Plantade shelter (Tarn-et-Garonne). B, lower part of a barbed harpoon from the Plantade deposit.
Many harpoons have been found in the caves of the south of France; others come from Belgium, from Keyserloch in Germany, Kent’s Hole in England, from Conches, Wauwyl, and Concise in Switzerland. Excavations in Victoria Cave, near Settle (Yorkshire), yielded amongst other interesting objects a bone harpoon cut to a point and with two barbs on either side. On the banks of the Uswiata, a little Polish river flowing into the Dnieper, two harpoons made out of the horns of some bovine animal were found, both in perfect preservation, and with several barbs.[24] Count Ouvaroff, in an excellent work published a little before his death, mentions a bone spear from the shores of the Oka, and Madsen and Montelius speak of Scandinavian harpoons. These weapons must have been especially useful in the North during the severe frosts of winter. The fisherman made a hole in the ice and struck the fish with his harpoon when the poor creatures came up to the surface to breathe.
From the most remote times the Americans knew how to make and use harpoons. As many as twenty-eight different kinds are known.[25] In some the barbs are bilateral, but most of them have them on one side only. Some, however, are made of stag or elk horn, and one harpoon from Maine is made of whalebone. A harpoon-point found near Detroit (Michigan) is nearly a foot long by one inch thick. Excavations in a rock shelter in Alaska yielded a harpoon which lay side by side with some of the most ancient Quaternary mammals of America. A good many copper harpoon-heads are also mentioned; one of the largest from Wisconsin is ten inches long. Others have been found in the island of Santa Barbara (California) and in Tierra del Fuego, where the natives of the present day still use similar ones. These harpoons with barbs are by no means simple weapons, the idea of which would naturally occur to the human mind, so that it is really extremely strange to find weapons so entirely similar in regions so different and so widely separated from one another. This constant similitude in the working of the genius of man is, as We shall never tire of repeating, one of the most striking facts revealed by prehistoric researches.
Herodotus tells that the Pœni (Carthaginians) plunged baskets into the water and drew them up full of fish. It is probable that the Lake Dwellers of Helvetia employed a similar process, but these ancient Swiss were already more advanced than that. They knew how to cultivate hemp, to spin it, and to make nets of it; the remains of some of these nets have often of late years been taken from the beds of the lakes.
It is almost impossible to class with any certainty the numerous Lake Stations of Switzerland. Some few certainly date from the Stone age, others from the transition period, between it and that of the early use of metals, or even from the Bronze age. As therefore they have been occupied at different times by different people, some of them having even been still in use in the time of the Romans, it is most difficult to fix with any precision the date to which belong the various objects mixed together beneath the deep waters of the lakes. We can only say that the nets differ very much in the size of the meshes, and the thickness of the rope used. Those found at Robenhausen are very like those in use in France at the present day. There has, in fact, been no advance in the art of making fishing-tackle since the remote days of the Lake Dwellers.