Fishing is one of the oldest activities of man. The hunter‐gatherers of the Stone Age not only fed on game and plants but also on fish and other aquatic animals. Living as nomads, they were bound to the neighbourhood of springs, rivers and lakes for drinking water, hunting game at the watering places and using the dense vegetation. No wonder that they soon discovered rich aquatic resources for their food. Also in coastal areas, preferred as migratory routes, they were able to collect and catch many fishes, crustacea and molluscs.
It is striking that fishing gear was developed in different regions of the world to rather similar, sometimes almost identical, forms, although the globe was still only thinly populated. Whether the various techniques were invented independently in different civilizations since human intelligence led to similar solutions (convergence), or whether the experience was distributed by migrations and cultural exchange (diffusion), is an open question.
The oldest...
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Sahrhage, D. (2008). Fishing in the Stone Age. In: Selin, H. (eds) Encyclopaedia of the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine in Non-Western Cultures. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-4425-0_8594
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