The comparative ethnologist detects in all these cases an attempt to establish direct relations between the hunter or the fisher and his quarry. Primitive man in search for food frequently seeks to establish an impalpable but in his eyes very serviceable connection between himself and the object of his quest by working a likeness of his desired prey.
Such a likeness, according to the doctrine that a simulacrum is actively en rapport with that which it represents, bestows on its possessor power over the original—“l’auteur ou le possesseur d’une image peut influencer ce qu’elle représente.”[44] The cases are simply the commonplaces of homœpathic or imitative magic.[45]
We find that just as the savage attempts to appease the ghosts of men he has slain, so he essays to propitiate the spirits of the animals and fish he has killed: for this purpose elaborate ceremonies of propitiation are widely observed.[46] Of similar character and intent are the taboos observed by fishermen before the season opens, and the purifications performed on returning with their booty.
Magic, exercised not so much to propitiate as to avoid offending some power—in the following instance the element of water—originated the rule (existent among the Eskimos fifty years ago) that forbade during the salmon season any water being boiled in a house, because “this is bad for the fishing.” Frazer suggests that the Commandment in Exodus xxxiv. 26, “Not to seethe a kid in its mother’s milk,” embodies a like illustration.[47]
From carvings, whether executed for purposes of amusement or of magic, and from specimens found in the débris of the stations, we derive our knowledge of the earliest implements and methods employed in Perigord and elsewhere for taking fish.
A study of these warrants, to my mind, the conclusion that only two weapons can be traceably attributed to Palæolithic Man. First and pre-eminent the Spear (or Harpoon with its various congeners) with possibly adjustable flint-heads, and second, but to a far less extent, the Gorge, or as it has been better termed, “the bait-holder.”
Of a Troglodyte Net no representation exists, no specimen survives. The absence of an actual specimen can perhaps be explained by the perishable nature of the fibres or wythes used for its construction.
The undeniable survival of pieces of Nets among the lake dwellers seems somewhat to negative the explanation.[48] But these may have survived because of the presence, while those of the Palæolithic Age may have perished because of the absence of some preservative power in the substance in which they were embedded.
The absence from the latter and the presence in the former débris of Net sinkers, etc., strongly, if not conclusively, corroborate Broca’s conclusion that the Cave men of the Vézère Valley and elsewhere were strangers to the Net.
We possess, in my opinion, no evidence of Hooks (as distinct from Gorges) or of anything resembling Hooks proper—viz. hooks made out of one piece, recurved, and with sharpened ends—being used by the Old Stone Man.