MEXICO 21 
To any claim for precedence of the former over the latter, a 
champion of the Net demurs on the ground of climatic 
conditions, which he not unreasonably urges prevent any 
proper analogy in this respect being drawn between them and 
our Cave Men. 
Touching the similarity of the Tasmanian to the Troglodyte, 
Ling Roth amplifies, especially as regards the material, etc. 
of the Spear, the evidence contained in Tylor’s already quoted 
sentence. This in conjunction with Captain Cook’s earlier 
statement that the Tasmanians, while experts with the Spear, 
were ignorant of the use of a Hook, and, according to Went- 
worth, of a Net, would have gone far in helping our quest and 
in establishing the precedence of the Spear. 
Unfortunately the evidence of Lloyd and others that these 
aborigines speared fish as a pastime, coupled with the fact 
that while they consumed crustacee they abstained (probably 
from reasons of tabu or totem) from eating scaled fish, sharply 
differentiates their Kultur from that of our prehistoric fisher- 
men “at whose bellies hunger was gnawing.” ! 
From Mexico, and especially from the representations in 
Yucatan, I had hoped for new factors helping to solve our 
problem. First, because these had so far escaped the meticu- 
lous examination of the Madelainian, and second, because 
they were the product of an ancient people, the Mayas, who 
ranked fish as an important item of their diet, and pursued 
fishing with the Spear and the Net.? 
' With the Aztecs, who in the thirteenth century inherited 
the Maya culture, now dated as regards their architecture back 
to the first three centuries A.D.,3 the hook arrives, or rather 
appears. Aztec skill in fishing stands well attested. Their 
artificial fishponds or vivaria, and the importance which they 
1 Cook’s Thivd Voyage, Bk. I. ch. vi. W. C. Wentworth, A Statistical, 
stc., Description of New South Wales and Van Diemen’s Land, London, 1819, 
p. 115: “ They have no knowledge whatever of the art of fishing’; the only 
fishing was done by women diving for shell-fish. G. T. Lloyd, Thirty-three 
age . ee and Victoria, London, 1862, pp. 50-52. Ling Roth, 
2? No Maya hook has as yet been brought to light, although this was 
aueeyee by practically all the races aboriginal or other from Alaska to 
eru. . 
® Cf. T. A. Joyce, Mexican Archaology, London, 1914. 
