 Hook
History
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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.
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. |
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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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 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). |
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.
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. |
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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 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. |
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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. |
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A compound hook
from Volosova, Russia. |
A Japanese hook
of reindeer horn. |
From Easter Island, probably
made from human bone.
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