The next time you go fishing, cast your line off the side of a boat with the latest sonar technology, grab your favourite drink from the cooler next to your feet, and put your feet up to enjoy a relaxing day on the water.
Fishing is one of the oldest things that people have ever done. Archaeologists have found old piles of shells and bones, paintings in caves that show people fishing, and even bone hooks. There's even a theory that says the fish we're trying to catch might be closer than we think. The "Aquatic Ape Hypothesis" says that people used to live near lakes and oceans and catch their food in the shallow water. Some people think that apes and chimpanzees are our ancestors. This theory is controversial because it says that the years we've lived have made us look different from them.
The ancient Nile was a great place to fish. The Egyptians ate both fresh and dried fish as a main food source, and the different ways they did this have been shown in many old pictures of their lives. Even though they had nets, baskets, hooks, and lines, the fish they caught were often killed with clubs. In Egypt's time, perch, catfish, and eels were some of the most important fish to catch.
Greece, the other place where civilization began, didn't like to fish as much as Egypt did. Still, there is a picture of a boy kneeling over a stream with a live-catch net in the water on a wine cup from 500 BC. But it's not clear why the boy was "fishing," since the device was clearly made to catch live fish. There is also evidence that the Romans fished from the sides of boats with nets and spears. Neptune, one of their most well-known gods, is usually shown with a fishing trident. There are also fishing stories in the Bible.
The hook is one of the most well-known fishing tools. No one knows for sure, but it's likely that people from more than 40,000 years ago used some kind of hook. Experts have had a hard time putting dates on things because most things back then were probably made of wood, which isn't very strong. Even now, fishermen in the British Isles use hooks made from the hawthorn bush to catch fish. Stone Age people had the tools to make bone hooks, but it's hard for scientists to get exact dates because bones don't show how old they are very well. The oldest hooks that we know of were found in Czechoslovakia. Other hooks have been found in Egypt and Palestine. People think that the hooks from Palestine are more than 9,000 years old. This shows that people have been fishing for a very long time.
On Easter Island, the Indians made their hooks out of a very nasty material. Since human sacrifices were common in the area for a long time, the natives used human bone, which was the most common material, to make their fish hooks. People there used fish hooks made of human bones until missionaries came around the turn of the last century. In addition to hooks made of stone, bone, or wood, ancient people often made composite hooks with barbs that kept the bait on.
