36 INTRODUCTION 
and use of these points. Some pronounce them mere arrow 
heads. ! 
Against this view leans the fact that, while they have been 
recovered mainly from the French caves, no real proof as yet 
exists of Paleolithic Man north of the Pyrenees being acquainted 
with the bow. Paintings discovered in rg10 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 complicated 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.? 
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.2 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. 
1 Many of the Solutréan tanged blades and pointes 2 cvan are small enough 
to suggest their use as arrow-heads, and Rutot has described tanged and 
barbed ‘‘ arrowheads ” from Paleolithic deposits in Belgium. 
2 Op. cit., p. 160. But why? Flint points break quicker than wood. 
3 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. 
