Fishing from the earliest times - Blog

—LAKE DWELLERS—ICHTHYOPHAGl 97single stage. At first the piles were fixed by all citizens,but since that time the custom that has prevailed aboutfixing them is this, every man drives in three for each wife hemarries. Now the men all have many wives apiece, and this isthe way they live. Each has his own hut (wherein he dwells) onone of the platforms, and each has a trap door, giving access tothe lake beneath :their wont is to tie the baby children by thefoot with a string, to save them from rolling into the water.They feed their horses and other beasts on fish, which aboundin the lake in such a degree that a man has only to open histrap door, and let down a basket by a rope into the water, andthen wait a very short time, when he draws it up quite full offish."iConfirming and illustrating Herodotus's account (L 202)of how a tribe dwelling on the Araxes lived on raw fish, 2 butdepicting more sharply how on fish a whole people were dependentfor everything that made up their fives, comes Arrian'sdescription 3 of the Ichthyophagi of the Persian Gulf.Denied by the barrenness of their country the ordinarysources of subsistence, they were compelled to use fish for everypurpose—food, clothes, houses, etc. These peoples (for theIndian Ichthyophagi are quite distinct from the Arabian) findcomment by many authors e.g. Strabo, Pausanias, DiodorusSiculus. Although by their diet of fish comparatively free fromdisease, they were noted as short-lived.Alexander the Great,with a view to increasing their span of existence, forbade all theIchthyophagi an unmixed diet.Solinus (56, 9) testifies as to their extreme swiftness inswimming : non secus quam marincB helucB nando in mari valent.Marco Polo (III. 41) found on the coast of Arabia an interestingsurvival of the Ichthyophagi.In consequence of the sterilityof the soil they fed their cattle, camels, and horses on driedfish, " which being regularly served to them they eat withoutany signs of dishke. They are dried and stored, and the beastsV. 16, Rawlinson's Translation.^^ See also I. 200, where three Babylonian tribes exist only on fish whichthey dried in the sun, brayed in a mortar, and strained through a Unen sieve.^ Indica, 26.