36 INTRODUCTION 



and use of these points. Some pronounce them mere arrow 

 heads. 1 



Against this view leans the fact that, while they have been 

 recovered mainly from the French caves, no real proof as yet 

 exists of Palaeolithic Man north of the Pyrenees being acquainted 

 with the bow. Paintings discovered in 1910 at Alpera in the 

 south-east of Spain show, however, men carrying and drawing 

 bows, and arrows with barbed points and feathered shafts, but 

 no quivers. Northern Man, if he did not paint, may well have 

 employed, arrows, for hunting scenes, in which they should 

 figure, as at Minatada and Alpera, are wanting in France. 



Other writers maintain that these points were the arma- 

 tures of hunting spears, others, arguing from their easy detach- 

 ment, that they were the heads of fish-spears or harpoons. 

 But this contrivance seems far too compHcated for our primi- 

 tive piscator. No writer proves conclusively what was the 

 exact purpose of these points, or whether, in fact, the fish- 

 spears or harpoons had detachable heads. E. Krause suggests 

 that as the earliest fish-spears were of wood, they readily lost 

 or broke their points when striking rocks, etc. ; hence came 

 bone and then flint points. 2 



The Spear-Harpoon stands out as the one fishing weapon 

 whose existence is undeniable, whose employment is pre- 

 dominant. It is too world-wide and too well-known to need 

 lengthy description. 



Reindeer-horn supplied in general the material of the 

 earlier heads, stag-horn of the later. ^ The heads tapered 

 (like Eskimo and other harpoon heads) to a point and were 

 barbed (as the two accompanying illustrations indicate) on 

 both sides. They have sometimes toward the lower end little 

 eminences or knobs, and sometimes barbs provided with 

 incisions or grooves, which some surmise held poison, 



^ Many of the Solutrean tanged blades and pointes ^ cran are small enough 

 to suggest their use as arrow-heads, and Rutot has described tanged and 

 barbed " 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 and 

 trident. Owing to the refraction of light and other reasons a spear is difficult 

 of accurate direction, but the broader surface of the trident helps to lessen 

 the factor of error. 



