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Pre-Historical Hooks
Mankind's superior status in nature can be ascribed
to our ability to develop and use tools and technology
in our struggle to survive. As far back as we know in
history, people have caught fish for sustenance.
 Innumerable
methods have been developed in order to catch the various
fish species living under quite different conditions,
from arctic to tropical waters. Many of the fishing
methods and types of tackle that have been developed
over thousands of years are still in use, both for sport,
sustenance and commercial fishing. Our focus here is
to give a brief, general presentation of the development
and historical background of the fish hook.
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The carving above
is from Bohuslän in Sweden.
These carvings often conceal a magic motif,
although there are many which merely
depict the happenings of everyday life.
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 Nobody
knows how long various kinds of fish hooks have been
in use, but it is quite probable that the Cro-Magnon
Man, who appeared on the scene 30 - 40,000 years ago,
was familiar with and used fish hooks in his struggle
to survive. The first known types of fish hooks were
made of different materials. A problem for archaeologists,
trying to establish the historical facts about fish
hooks, is that the materials used were not very durable.
We have reason to believe that the very first types
of fish hooks were made of wood.
If you take a branch with twigs that
stick out at suitable angles, it will take very little
to make it into a reasonably good hook, and who could,
for instance, wish for a sharper point than the pointed
thorns of a hawthorn bush. A hook made from this material
can be just as sharp as a modern hook. In the British
Isles fishermen from Wales to the Thames have caught
flounders with hawthorn hooks right up to our time.
Other hook materials that we know of are shells, bone
and horn. Among other things, Native Americans used
the claw of a hawk and the beak of an eagle to make
hooks.
An Indian god fishing off the coast
of Peru. The picture of the boat of rushes, with its
terrifying dragon's head, is a ceramic decoration from
the Mohica period which depicts the highest deity in
combat with the demons of the sea. (v. Hagen, The Desert
Kingdoms of Peru, London, 1965).
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Many people assume that the use of wooden hooks must
have been more or less impractical. Since wood floats,
the hook would probably have to be fastened to a stone
or something else that was heavy enough to make it sink.
But, it would be a rash assertion to maintain that fish
will not take a floating hook. The fact is that fishermen
have often regarded floating hooks as an advantage.
Up until the end of the nineteenth century, and perhaps
even later, Lapp fishermen used wooden hooks in the
great cod fisheries in Lofoten in northern Norway. They
carved their hooks of juniper, a tough variety of wood,
and burned the point to make it hard. As late as the
1960s, Swedish fishermen preferred hooks made of juniper
for burbot fishing. They claimed that the smell of juniper
actually attracts the fish and also that the burbot
has a tendency to spit out ordinary steel hooks. Juniper
hooks with three sharp points, on the other hand, are
impossible to dislodge.
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A type of hook used by fishermen
in Småland, Sweden, and the method they used for
fixing the 'hook'. Only one of the three points sticks
out from the bait fish, and serves as a barb when the
bait is swallowed. (Illustration from the Norwegian
magazine "Fiskesport", 1957).
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The Stone Age man had implements good
enough to make extra fine hooks from bone. The fact
that no one knows when bone hooks came into use, is
largely due to the fact that bone as a material seldom
defies the ages. Only under exceptionally favourable
conditions, with extra calcareous soil, can bone be
preserved for thousands of years.
The oldest known hooks seem to be the
ones that have turned up in Czechoslovakia during
the excavation of the skeletal finds from late Palaeolithic
times. Ancient hooks have also been found in Egypt
and Palestine. The oldest, found in Palestine, is
believed to be 9,000 years old.
Etruscan fishermen on the
sea, detail from Tomba della Caccia e Pesca in Tarquinia,
assumed to have been painted around 510 BC. (Reproduced
from a drawing in a FAO dissertation by R. Kreuzer,
Fish and its Place in Culture, 1973).
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In Norway, the oldest known fish hooks were dug up
in "Vistehulene", some caves situated at Jæren,
not far from Stavanger in the south-western part of
Norway. These hooks are believed to be 7-8,000 years
old. Finds of bone material on a ledge called Skipshelleren
near Bergen are rather more recent. This is the richest
discovery of bones that has been made in Norway, and
among the wealth of implements here -- tools and equipment
for hunting and fishing -- fish hooks have been found
that show painstaking workmanship.
 Forty-three
hooks and the remains of hooks have been found in the
Vistehulene caves at Jæren in south-western Norway.
The oldest are possibly 7,000 years old.
Three types of hooks from the rich find at Skipshelleren,
situated close to the city of Bergen in western Norway.
A somewhat more morbid example of a material used for
fish hooks, can be been found on Easter Island. As there
were no large mammals on this island, there was a shortage
of bone, and the custom was adopted of making hooks
of human bone. Since human sacrifices were made on Easter
Island until the first missionaries arrived at the turn
of the last century, they had an abundant supply of
human bone.
In addition to hooks made out of one peace of wood,
stone or bone, the Stone-Age Man often made compound
hooks, with components -- often of different materials
-- tied together. Compound hooks were stronger than
the other types. While it is easy to break a slender,
rounded bone hook, it would take a lot to break a securely
tied compound hook.
As a general rule it appears that the most ancient
hooks were made without barbs or any other refinement.
The oldest hooks that have been found in Denmark and
Norway indicate that only after thousands of years were
they equipped with barbs, grooves, bulges or holes to
facilitate attachment of the bait and line.
A compound hook from Volosova, Russia.
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A bone hook from Maglemose, Denmark, c. 6,200 BC.
No one will dispute the beauty of this hook. It was
found at Jortveit in Eide, Aust-Agder County, Norway,
and is considered to be 4,000 years old.
A Japanese hook of reindeer horn.
From Easter Island, probably made from human bone.
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