The suggestion that the choice of material was generally prompted by abundance or proximity of supply seems reasonable. But it must not be pushed as far as the assumption (of which a glance at the evidence as to material adduced by Joyce detects the absurdity) that, because gold was very abundant in Columbia and because gold fish-hooks have been unearthed in Cauca and elsewhere, the primitive angler of that country employed gold as the chief constituent of his hook![62]
Nor, again, is it possible for me to dwell on the evolution or in some countries the possible pari passu development of the single into the double hook (mentioned in England first in The Experienc’d Angler of Venables, 1676), nor yet to trace the various stages by which the simple bone or tusk hook of Wangen or Moosseedorf blossomed out into the barbed metal hook of the Copper Age.[63]
The Spear-Harpoon and some points of reindeer horn alone remain for consideration. Opinion is divided as to the nature and use of these points. Some pronounce them mere arrow heads.[64]
Against this view leans the fact that, while they have been recovered mainly from the French caves, no real proof as yet exists of Palæolithic Man north of the Pyrenees being acquainted with the bow. Paintings discovered in 1910 at Alpera in the south-east of Spain show, however, men carrying and drawing bows, and arrows with barbed points and feathered shafts, but no quivers. Northern Man, if he did not paint, may well have employed, arrows, for hunting scenes, in which they should figure, as at Minatada and Alpera, are wanting in France.
Other writers maintain that these points were the armatures of hunting spears, others, arguing from their easy detachment, that they were the heads of fish-spears or harpoons. But this contrivance seems far too complicated for our primitive piscator. No writer proves conclusively what was the exact purpose of these points, or whether, in fact, the fish-spears or harpoons had detachable heads. E. Krause suggests that as the earliest fish-spears were of wood, they readily lost or broke their points when striking rocks, etc.; hence came bone and then flint points.[65]
The Spear-Harpoon stands out as the one fishing weapon whose existence is undeniable, whose employment is predominant. It is too world-wide and too well-known to need lengthy description.
Reindeer-horn supplied in general the material of the earlier heads, stag-horn of the later.[66] The heads tapered (like Eskimo and other harpoon heads) to a point and were barbed (as the two accompanying illustrations indicate) on both sides. They have sometimes toward the lower end little eminences or knobs, and sometimes barbs provided with incisions or grooves, which some surmise held poison.
