Fishing from the earliest times - Blog

20 INTRODUCTIONwork in South Africa, while the rock paintings of Spain findtheir best analogies among the Bushmen." iThe Africans, it is true, perfected their engravings on thesurface of the rocks more frequently by " pecking." But boththey and PalaeoHthic man make free and successful use ofcolours, of which the African possesses six as against the threeor four of his European brethren. Each race depicts fish andanimals so Ufe-Hke as to be easily identifiable.What evidence as to priority do the Eskimo methods ofto-day yield us ? Cartailhac but echoes Rau, SalomonReinach, and Hoffmann 2in his assertion that the prehistoricReindeer Age compares practically with the actual age of theEskimos. Their fishing spears in material, shape, and barbresemble the Palaeolithic.Their carvings and engravings of fishing and whalingscenes on bone and ivory show clear kinship to the Dordognese.Hoffmann's able study of the Eskimos not only brings outthese similarities, but also specially notes the closeness withwhich they observe and the exactitude with which they renderanatomical peculiarities of fish and animals. As portrayersof the human form, on the other hand, they must be reckonedfar from expert. The caves of France and those of Spain ingeneral, although the paintings of the human form at Calapataand other places are far more finished and far more frequentthan the French drawings, disclose curiously the same powerand the same deficiency as characteristic of Troglodyte art.^No race probably in the world depends so greatly onfishing for a hvelihood as the Eskimos. From them, if fromany, we should derive most light and leading. With them theSpear and the Hook form the chief, and till recently probablythe only, tackle. Nets, on account of the ice, play little part.^ Evans, op. cit., p. 9. See also an interesting essay by Professor E. T.Hamy, L'Anthropologic, tome xix. p. 385 ff., on La Figure humaine chez lesauvage et chez I'errfant.- C. Rau, op. cit., Washington, 1884. Salomon Reinach, Antiquit/sNationales, vol. i., 1889. W. I. Hoffmann, The Graphic Art of the Eskimo,Report to Smithsonian Museum, 1895, P- 75i-' At Cogul the sacral dance is performed by women clad from the waistdownwards in well-cut gowns, which at Alpera are supplemented by flyingsashes, and at Cueva de la Vieja reach to the bosom. \^erily, we are alreadya long way from Eve 1 Cf. Evans, op. cit., p. 8.