Fishing from the earliest times - Blog

36 INTRODUCTIONand use of these points. Some pronounce them mere arrowheads. 1Against this view leans the fact that, while they have beenrecovered mainly from the French caves, no real proof as yetexists of Palaeolithic Man north of the Pyrenees being acquaintedwith the bow. Paintings discovered in 1910 at Alpera in thesouth-east of Spain show, however, men carrying and drawingbows, and arrows with barbed points and feathered shafts, butno quivers. Northern Man, if he did not paint, may well haveemployed, arrows, for hunting scenes, in which they shouldfigure, as at Minatada and Alpera, are wanting in France.Other writers maintain that these points were the armaturesof hunting spears, others, arguing from their easy detachment,that they were the heads of fish-spears or harpoons.But this contrivance seems far too compHcated for our primitivepiscator. No writer proves conclusively what was theexact purpose of these points, or whether, in fact, the fishspearsor harpoons had detachable heads.E. Krause suggeststhat as the earliest fish-spears were of wood, they readily lostor broke their points when striking rocks, etc. ; hence camebone and then flint points. 2The Spear-Harpoon stands out as the one fishing weaponwhose existence is undeniable, whose employment is predominant.It is too world-wide and too well-known to needlengthy description.Reindeer-horn supplied in general the material of theearlier heads, stag-horn of the later. ^ The heads tapered(like Eskimo and other harpoon heads) to a point and werebarbed (as the two accompanying illustrations indicate) onboth sides. They have sometimes toward the lower end littleeminences or knobs, and sometimes barbs provided withincisions or grooves, which some surmise held poison,^ Many of the Solutrean tanged blades and pointes ^ cran are small enoughto suggest their use as arrow-heads, and Rutot has described tanged andbarbed " arrowheads " from Palaeolithic deposits in Belgium.2 Op. cit., p. 160. But why ? FHnt points break quicker than wood.^ See Julie Schlemm, Worterbuch zur Vorgeschichte (Berlin, 1908), pp. 555-7.The immediate successors of the single spear were probably the bident andtrident. Owing to the refraction of light and other reasons a spear is difficultof accurate direction, but the broader surface of the trident helps to lessenthe factor of error.