Such a quest seems one of the incidental motives of G. de Mortillet in Les Origines de la Chasse et de la Pêche, 1890, which modifies in several particulars his earlier Les Origines de la Pêche et de la Navigation, 1867. We find from his pages and those of Rau’s Prehistoric Fishing (1884), and of Parkyn’s Prehistoric Art (1916), that a comparative examination of the above races, as it ramifies, discloses not only a close resemblance to Palæolithic Man in the material, nature, and fashioning of their tackle, but also in their art and method of expressing their art.
Such similarity of art, evident in the Eskimos, stands revealed by the Bushmen of Africa (especially in the caves formerly used for habitations by the tribes of the Madobo range) in no less obvious or striking degree. “The nearest parallels to the finer class of rock carvings in the Dordogne are in fact to be found among the more ancient specimens of similar work in South Africa, while the rock paintings of Spain find their best analogies among the Bushmen.”[19]
The Africans, it is true, perfected their engravings on the surface of the rocks more frequently by “pecking.” But both they and Palæolithic man make free and successful use of colours, of which the African possesses six as against the three or four of his European brethren. Each race depicts fish and animals so life-like as to be easily identifiable.
What evidence as to priority do the Eskimo methods of to-day yield us? Cartailhac but echoes Rau, Salomon Reinach, and Hoffmann[20] in his assertion that the prehistoric Reindeer Age compares practically with the actual age of the Eskimos. Their fishing spears in material, shape, and barb resemble the Palæolithic.
Their carvings and engravings of fishing and whaling scenes on bone and ivory show clear kinship to the Dordognese.
Hoffmann’s able study of the Eskimos not only brings out these similarities, but also specially notes the closeness with which they observe and the exactitude with which they render anatomical peculiarities of fish and animals. As portrayers of the human form, on the other hand, they must be reckoned far from expert. The caves of France and those of Spain in general, although the paintings of the human form at Calapata and other places are far more finished and far more frequent than the French drawings, disclose curiously the same power and the same deficiency as characteristic of Troglodyte art.[21]
No race probably in the world depends so greatly on fishing for a livelihood as the Eskimos. From them, if from any, we should derive most light and leading. With them the Spear and the Hook form the chief, and till recently probably the only, tackle. Nets, on account of the ice, play little part. To any claim for precedence of the former over the latter, a champion of the Net demurs on the ground of climatic conditions, which he not unreasonably urges prevent any proper analogy in this respect being drawn between them and our Cave Men.
Touching the similarity of the Tasmanian to the Troglodyte, Ling Roth amplifies, especially as regards the material, etc. of the Spear, the evidence contained in Tylor’s already quoted sentence. This in conjunction with Captain Cook’s earlier statement that the Tasmanians, while experts with the Spear, were ignorant of the use of a Hook, and, according to Wentworth, of a Net, would have gone far in helping our quest and in establishing the precedence of the Spear.
Unfortunately the evidence of Lloyd and others that these aborigines speared fish as a pastime, coupled with the fact that while they consumed crustaceæ they abstained (probably from reasons of tabu or totem) from eating scaled fish, sharply differentiates their Kultur from that of our prehistoric fishermen “at whose bellies hunger was gnawing.”[22]
From Mexico, and especially from the representations in Yucatan, I had hoped for new factors helping to solve our problem. First, because these had so far escaped the meticulous examination of the Madelainian, and second, because they were the product of an ancient people, the Mayas, who ranked fish as an important item of their diet, and pursued fishing with the Spear and the Net.[23]