So who was the first to make and use fishhooks?

[Fiskadoro]

A. Chimpanzees

B. Ancient Polynesians

C. Portuguese

D. Darkhorse

E. Iceman

F. Neanderthals (Icemen)

G Dinosaurs

[jorluivil]

Neither one

Fish hooks have evolved many times in numerous cultures. The earliest known examples of bent barbless hooks are from the First Egyptian Dynasty (~ 3000 B.C.) and by ~1200 B.C. barbed hooks were in use in Ancient Egypt. We have to reach farther back into more primitive cultures to trace how the fish hook was born.
The first direct antecedent of our fish hook was a device that archeologists call a gorge. These were bits of spindle shaped bone or wood that was notched in the center so a line could be tied to it. A gorge was shoved into a chunk of bait, the fish was allowed to swallow it, and when the line was yanked, the gorge set cross-wise inside the fish and he was hauled in. One of the earliest types of gorge was unearthed 22 feet below the surface in a peat bed in the valley of the Somme in France. It is believed to be about 7000 years ago.
Turning to more modern times we find many examples where native peoples recently used relative primitive fishing equipment. The Eskimos and the bushmen of South Africa were using the gorge even in very recent times. In 1846 Canadian Ojibway people were still known to be using gorges. In fact, there are contemporary examples of all stages of the development of the hook scattered over the earth. South Sea Islanders were making hooks from bits of common wire that were in use when our armed forces visited the Islands while fighting World War II. These are as crude as the earliest single barbless wire hooks unearthed by archaeologists. In some localities a modified gorge had been used to catch eels in the twentieth century.

The progressive development of the hook is seen in artifacts left by the cultures that lived in the Swiss Lakes country. Once this culture began to work with bronze they designed a metal gorge. It was a wire, straight on either side, but with a little hump in the middle where the line was attached, and merely another gorge. This is known as a bricole.
The next change was to give a slight curve to the wire arms of the gorge. This is the beginnings of the curve that was later to shape into a hook. Then some ancient artisan twisted the wire so an eye was formed in the center. It was just a step from that to lengthening the two arms of the gorge, making the curve greater, and the shaping of a definite hook on either side of the central eyelet.
Archeologists believe that the idea for making a barb on the hooks was derived from the spear. Barbs gave the hooks more holding power just as a barbed point was harder for an animal to dislodge. The ancient bronze hook, single and barbed, is in its shape and design the same that we use today. The people who built their houses on pilings above waters of the Swiss lakes and fashioned hooks from bronze are believed to have lived there at least twenty centuries ago. The Egyptian barbed hook was in use before this time but the artifacts from the Swiss lake dwellings present a nicely documented series of changes from gorge to single hook. This process was likely repeated in other cultures, with development of the various next-steps dependent on factors like contemporary technological development, lifestyle, and interactions with other societies


Wiki...

The fish hook or similar device has probably been made by man for many thousands of years. Examples of some of the earliest recorded fish hooks were from Palestine about 7000 BC. In 2011, archaeologists in the Jerimalai cave in East Timor discovered the world's oldest fish hook, a shell hook between 16,000 and 23,000 years old.^[2] Man has crafted fish hooks from all sorts of materials including wood, animal^[3] and human bone, horn, shells, stone, bronze, iron up to present day materials. In many cases, hooks were created from multiple materials to leverage the strength and positive characteristics of each material. Norwegians as late as the 1950s still used juniper wood to craft Burbot hooks. Quality steel hooks began to make their appearance in Europe in the 17th century and hook making became a task for professionals.^[4]




The real answer......ME

[Salty Dog]

I ain't buying the Wiki story
I'm going with F. Neanderthals (Iceman's relatives)
How old is Iceman anyways? I wouldn't be surprised if he invented fishing.

[ericko]

You did all that on your lunch break....hmmmm

[Fiskadoro]

.... and the answer is:

Believe it or not G. Dinosaurs probably did it first.


Yep that is a real crow using a hook it made itself to lift a tube out of a hole so it can then turn it on end dump out the food inside.

Sound far fetched? It's not.

Crows have been documented using multiple tools that they make themselves in the wild. One of their favorites is a variety of hooks which the construct out of twigs with V shaped branchings. They cut one side long like a hook shank then cut the other side short and then sharpen it with their bills essentually making it into a crow sized gaff hook the size of a large fish hook.

Though crows do fish, actually with bait, they do so by throwing floating food on the water like bread crumbs then grabbing fish with their bills when they come for the crumbs.

What they use their fishhooks for in the wild is gaffing tasty grubs down inside small holes in hollowed out in trees, but they are not above making hooks to spear chunks of meat in containers in captivity or just to lift things to get to something they want. The crow above was not given any twigs to play with so he improvised and bent his own hook out of wire. Not bad for a bird brained improvised design.

Crows use of tools eclipses all the primates, and every other animal, but one, man. Their use of tools, ability to manufacture and improvise new tools, problem solving, and use of audible language to not only express ideas to one another but even from one generation to the next has shown crows to be one of the most intelligent animals on the planet.

Descendents of Dinosaurs they split off from them during the Jurassic 150 million years ago, they then branched off from other birds about 17 million years ago and have been roughly in their current form for about 10 million years, which means they were probably making tools long before our Homo Habilis ancestors made our first tools roughly 2 million years ago..

Naturally we don't have the first twig fish hooks made by those Homos (not gay) our early ancestors, or anyone that predated them. The only ones we do have were made of things that last, stone or bone made much later. Archeological life expectancy of twigs aside, I imagine the first hooks we made were done with branched twigs sharpened on one side with a long shank on the other. Probably built by some clever fellow who was probably imitating.....




A Crow.

Jim

[blitzburgh]

HOLY CRAP. That is some cool info! This made me look up this topic and I found this video. You have GOT to be kidding me......
http://bcove.me/w4v3huyf

[addicted2sp33d]

NOVA did a really interesting study about Crows and their relative intelligence.

http://video.pbs.org/video/1621910826/

Not only are they problem-solving smart, and even complex-problem-solving smart (multiple tools, multiple stages), they can also communicate their findings to their offspring and friends, so that other crows can have the same knowledge, and solve the same problems even if they've never seen the problem before.

I know in my neighborhood, crows know which day is trash day better than people.

[StinkyMatt]

Damn!


We need the WSB to go off real bad!



You guys are way too bored.........ghosts, please save me from reading more of this.

[dmrides]

Is this one of those Jim Crow laws?

[addicted2sp33d]

Originally Posted by StinkyMatt

Damn!


We need the WSB to go off real bad!



You guys are way too bored.........ghosts, please save me from reading more of this.

You're here too...

I'd rather be outdoors today too - currently stuck in my office.