Dietrich Sahrhage

Fishing is one of the oldest activities of man. The hunter-gatherers of the Stone Age not only fed on game and plants but also on fish and other aquatic animals. Living as nomads, they were bound to the neighbourhood of springs, rivers and lakes for drinking water, hunting game at the watering places and using the dense vegetation. No wonder that they soon discovered rich aquatic resources for their food. Also in coastal areas, preferred as migratory routes, they were able to collect and catch many fishes, crustacea and molluscs.

It is striking that fishing gear was developed in different regions of the world to rather similar, sometimes almost identical, forms, although the globe was still only thinly populated. Whether the various techniques were invented independently in different civilizations since human intelligence led to similar solutions (convergence), or whether the experience was distributed by migrations and cultural exchange (diffusion), is an open question.

The oldest indications of fishing, about 2 million years old, are bones of Tilapia and shells of molluscs together with simple pebble tools and human bones left by Homo habilis in the Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania, but no fishing gear was found.

It may, however, be assumed that already during the Palaeolithic times humans were able to develop a palette of simple techniques to reach their goal. Men went hunting for fish with the same gear used for small game, particularly with wooden lances equipped with stone points (Fig. 1). Women and children collected crustacea and molluscs in shallow waters. People soon managed to catch fish with their bare hands and to build stone walls and wooden hedges to improve fishing possibilities. Branches of bushes were stuck into the ground in waters where fishes concentrated to shelter. The hunters also discovered that fish were attracted by light from fire. Most likely they built fish traps similar to those used for game, but any material evidence decayed long ago.

Fig. 1 Group of Bushmen hunting fish with lances. Drawing after prehistoric rock painting at the Tsielike River, South Africa (Battiss 1945).

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A great step was the invention of the javelin. This tackle was used by Homo erectus some 400,000 years ago, as proved by finds in Lower Saxonia, Germany.

Neanderthals (Homo sapiens neanderthalensis), living in Europe and the Near East some 200–30,000 years ago, fed mainly on meat, as indicated by their petrified excrements, but fish also played an important role. This was shown by bone remains of trout and salmon on their resting places along rivers in France and Spain.

Much progress was achieved after modern man (Homo sapiens sapiens) originated. This began about 150,000 years ago somewhere in southeastern Africa and spread out over the globe, reaching Australia around 40,000 BCE and the American continents via the Bering Straits about 15,000 BCE, perhaps earlier. Now more delicate spear points, blades and scrapers of stone, were produced, and later tools of bone and antler.

Modern humans invented the harpoon, a sharp barbed piece of bone, detachable from the spear shaft, which kept the prey (game or fish) on a retrieving line when it stuck in the body of the animal (Fig. 2). Such gear was found on many locations in the world and has been used frequently up to the present. The oldest harpoon head, found in East Africa, is about 90,000 years old.

Fig. 2 Harpoon of prehistoric fishermen on the coast of southern Peru used for hunting seals and possibly sharks. The harpoon consists of seal bone with a flint point and ligature of leather or sinew. Shaft is of wood, retrieving line of plant fibre (Lavallée, Pour La Science 2001). Used with the permission of Pour La Science.

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Another ingenious invention was a spear-throwing instrument, later called atlatl by the Aztec of Mexico, which was distributed widely over all continents (Fig. 3). The oldest known atlatl was used in northwestern Africa 25,000 years ago; Australian aborigines still hunt with similar tools today. The atlatl was increasingly replaced by bows and arrows, known in Europe since 25,000 BCE, and in America since about 2,500 years ago. Many native people even today fish with this technique.

Fig. 3 Atlatl, spear throwing sling from the cave of Mas-d'Azil, Ariège, southern France, about 20,000 years old (after Stodiek and Paulsen 1996). The 32 cm long stick is decorated at the end with a highly artistic sculpture of a fawn and a bird. The end of a spear is put against a spur of the sling, and – as with a catapult – the hunter can propel the spear with a force much greater than that of a hand-thrown spear.

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Angling may have started during the latest glacial epoch with the gorge, a little wooden stick, pointed at both ends, with a ring furrow for fixing a line (Fig. 4). Curved fishhooks seem to appear only after the Ice Age in the subarctic hunter civilizations of northern Eurasia from where this method spread out to Europe and to the Far East and America (Fig. 5).

Fig. 4 The gorge, probably the oldest angling tackle. In Europe it has been used since the Magdalenian, about 16,000 years ago. The stick is put into the bait. When the prey snaps at the bait, the gorge turns transverse as the line gets tight (Evers, Franz Steiner Verlag Stuttgart 1988). Used with their kind permission.

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Fig. 5 Above: Curved fishhooks from the Mesolithic period found at various sites in Denmark (The National Museum of Denmark, Copenhagen). Used with their permission; Below: Compound fishhook of seal bone with mussel shell barb from Quebrada de los Burros on the coast of southern Peru, about 8,000 years old (Lavallée, Pour la Science 2001, drawing by Bailly). Used with the permission of Pour La Science.

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With major climatic changes around 12,000 BCE, large parts of the ice cover melted and the sea level rose in all the oceans. Wide coastal areas were flooded and many valleys and depressions filled with water. People changed their activities increasingly from hunting to fishing with subsequent improvements in catching techniques (Fig. 6). Temporary, and later permanent, settlements on rivers, lakes and the seaside developed where fishing possibilities proved favourable. Dense concentrations of prehistoric fish, seal and whale remains, and huge heaps of shell middens in many places of the world indicate the great importance of aquatic fauna as human food (Fig. 7).

Fig. 6 Reconstruction of a fish hedge with trap from Oleslyst, Denmark, about 4,500 years old. Hazel stakes in the sea bottom held wickerwork panels over a length of about 45 m. Fish, mostly eels, swam along the hedge to deeper water and were caught in a weir at the end (Pedersen 1997; drawing Petersen, Kalundborg Regional Museum). Used with their permission.

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Fig. 7 Hugh mounds of shell middens were left over from meals of Stone Age people in many places of the world, as here in Otuma on the coast of Peru (photo: Tulio Cusman, Lima).

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Remains of fishnets lasted only under special conditions in swamps and arid deserts. Knowing how to knit netting marked a major form of progress (Fig. 8). The oldest nets, excavated in Finland and Peru, are 9–10,000 years old, but the history of nets may go back far earlier. In the Czech Republic 27,000 year-old impressions in clay were found which seem to originate from net meshes.

Fig. 8 Fish nets with different kinds of knots to produce meshes: (a) knotless nets with simple hanging in; (b) nets knitted with "lake-dweller knots," (c) nets knitted with "Peru knots" (von Brandt 1984).

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Many rock paintings and engravings certify the role of fish in the spiritual life of Stone Age people, possibly during magic rites in shamanism (Fig. 9). This is evident also from X-ray images found in Europe, northern Asia, America and Australia, showing the inner organs of the animals (Fig. 10).

Fig. 9 Rock painting of a flatfish (flounder?) in the cave of La Pileta near Ronda in Andalusia, Spain, around 20,000 years old, length 1.5 m (photo: José Bullón Giménez http://www.cuevadelapileta.org/). Used with permission.

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Fig. 10 Barramundi fish (Lates calcarifer) painted by Australian aborigines about 2–3,000 years ago in "Roentgen" (X-ray) style in the Cockatoo National Park, western Arnhemland (photo: Tacon, The Australian Museum, Sydney. Used with their kind permission).

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A sophisticated technique of fishing developed in China, Japan and Peru, where cormorants were tamed to deliver their fish prey to the fisherman who took care of the birds (Fig. 11).

Fig. 11 Fishing with tamed cormorants. Above: An old method used in China (Dabry de Thiersant 1872); Below: Drawing from a ceramic receptacle from the Moche culture, 100 BCE–700 AD in Peru, exhibited in the Museo Amano, Lima (drawing Sahrhage).

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Probably rather early, people started to build vessels for crossing the waters and reaching aquatic resources in deeper areas. For this they used the materials locally available to produce, for example, reed rafts in swamps, dugout canoes in forest regions (Fig. 12), and boats with skin hulls stabilized by wooden sticks.

Fig. 12 Prehistoric dugout canoe, about 8,000 years old, being excavated near Dufuna in northern Nigeria (photo: Breunig). Used with permission.

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Various methods of fish preservation were also developed during the Stone Age: drying over the fire or in the wind and sun to produce stable food for the long winter periods passed mostly in caves, and for migrations, as well as salting and pickling.

Most of the basic types of fishing techniques originated in the Stone Age. They are still widely applied.

References