Fishing from the earliest times - Blog

ESKIMOS, TASMANIANS, BUSHMEN 19stone implements represent rather the condition of Palaeolithicman." 1Sollas goes even farther : " The Tasmanians, however,though recent were at the same time a Palseohthic or even, ithas been suggested, an Eolithic race : they thus afford us anopportunity of interpreting the past by the present— a savingprocedure in a subject where fantasy is only too hkely to play aleading part. ' ' 2 But their usual technique is against Eohthicism.If these authoritative statements be accurate, can we nothazard a shrewd conjecture from examination of the implementsand of the methods prevalent amongst the backward or unciviHsedtribes closely resembhng our Cave Dwellers, as towhich was probably the first implement or method employedfor catching fish ? Can we, in fact, from the data availablefrom the Eskimos, Tasmanians, and other similar races soreconstruct our men of Dordogne and elsewhere as to adjudgeapproximately whether first in their hands at any rate was theSpear, the Hook, or the Net ?Such a quest seems one of the incidental motives ofG. de Mortillet in Les Origines de la Chasse et de la Peche, 1890,which modifies in several particulars his earlier Les Originesde la Peche et de la Navigation, 1867. We find from his pagesand those of Rau's Prehistoric Fishing (1884), and of Parkyn'sPrehistoric Art (1916), that a comparative examination of theabove races, as it ramifies, discloses not only a close resemblanceto Palaeolithic Man in the material, nature, and fashioning oftheir tackle, but also in their art and method of expressingtheir art.Such similarity of art, evident in the Eskimos, standsrevealed by the Bushmen of Africa (especially in the cavesformerly used for habitations by the tribes of the Madoborange) in no less obvious or striking degree. " The nearestparallels to the finer class of rock carvings in the Dordogne arein fact to be found among the more ancient specimens of similarIn H. Ling Roth's The Aborigines of Tasmania, London, 1S90 (see Preface^by Tylor on page vi), " It is thus apparent that the Tasmanians were ata somewhat less advanced stage in the art of stone implement making thanthe Palaeolithic men of Europe."* Cf. W. J. Sollas, Ancient Hunters, London, 191 1, p. 70.