Fishing from the earliest times - Blog

30 INTRODUCTIONwater being boiled in a house, because " this is bad for thefishing." Frazer suggests that the Commandment in Exodusxxxiv. 26, " Not to seethe a kid in its mother's milk," embodiesa like illustration. 1From carvings, whether executed for purposes of amusementor of magic, and from specimens found in the debris of thestations, we derive our knowledge of the earliest implementsand methods employed in Perigord and elsewhere for taking fish.A study of these warrants, to my mind, the conclusion thatonly two weapons can be traceably attributed to PalaeolithicMan. First and pre-eminent the Spear (or Harpoon with itsvarious congeners) with possibly adjustable flint-heads, andsecond, but to a far less extent, the Gorge, or as it has beenbetter termed, " the bait-holder."Of a Troglodyte Net no representation exists, no specimensurvives. The absence of an actual specimen can perhaps beexplained by the perishable nature of the fibres or wythes usedfor its construction.The undeniable survival of pieces of Nets among the lakedwellers seems somewhat to negative the explanation. 2 Butthese may have survived because of the presence, while those ofthe Palaeolithic Age may have perished because of the absenceof some preservative power in the substance in which they wereembedded.The absence from the latter and the presence in the formerdebris of Net sinkers, etc., strongly, if not conclusively, corroborateBroca's conclusion that the Cave men of the VezereValley and elsewhere were strangers to the Net.We possess, in my opinion, no evidence of Hooks (as1 W. H. Dall, " Social Life among the Aborigines," The American Naturalist(1878), vol. xii. J.vol. iii. p. 123.G. Frazer, Folk Lore in the Old Testament (London, 1918),- See Dr. F. Keller's The Lake Dwellers in Switzerland (translated, London,1S78, by John Edward Lee), vol. ii. pi. I3(), fig. 2. This net of cord withmeshes not quite three-eighths of an inch in width was almost certainly made,it was certainly well suited, for fishing. Another example with meshestwo inches wide, probably formed part of a hunting net. R. Munro, TheLake Dwellings of Europe (London, 1890), p. 504, mentions fishing-nets fromRobenhausen and Vinetz—both belonging to the late Neolithic Age.O. Schrader, Reallexikon der indogermanischen Altertumskunde (Strassburg,1901), p. 242, records " remains of nets " in the Stone Age settlements ofDenmark and Sweden, which he classes as fishing nets.