Fishing - One Of Our Oldest Sports But Once Used Only For Getting Food

Next time you drop a line in the water off the side of a ship supplied with the most recent sonar devices, dig into the cooler beside your feet for a fave libation and kick your feet up to enjoy a chilled day of fishing.

Fishing is one of the oldest activities known to occupy. Archaeologists have found traditional dumps of shell and bone, cave paintings outlining fishing and even hooks made of bone. There's even a concept that states we would be nearer to the fish we try and catch than we think. The marine Ape Theory says that humans spent a time living by and catching their food from the shallows of lakes and oceans. The questionable speculation says years of living that helped us to look different to the apes and chimpanzees thought by some to be our ancestors because of this time evolving by water.

The traditional brook Nile was an angler's nirvana. The Egyptians depended on fresh and dried fish as a staple in their diets, and the many techniques they used have been well represented in numerous traditional representations from their lives. Although they'd some tools like nets, baskets and even hooks and lines, the fish caught were regularly clubbed to death. Perch, catfish and eels were among the most significant catches in the Egyptian times.

The other bed of civilization, Greece, failed to share Egypt's love of fishing. Still, there's an outline on a wine cup from five hundred BC that shows a boy kneeling over a stream with a live capture net in the water below him. It's confusing why the boy was 'fishing' however, since the device is obviously for live capture. There is also proof the Romans fished with nets and tridents off the sides of boats. One of their most famed Gods, Neptune, is outlined generally with a fishing trident. There are references to fishing in the Bible, too.

Maybe the most recognizable tool for fishing is the hook. No-one knows for certain, but it is quite likely prehistoric man was using some form of a hook over forty thousand years back. Professionals had some issues pinning down precise dates since they know most of the materials used back then were most likely wood and not extremely sturdy. English Isle anglers catch fish with hooks made of the hawthorn bush, right up to the present time.

Though Stone Age man had the tools necessary for making bone hooks, it is tricky for scientists to get precise dates since bone doesn't outline its age well. The oldest known hooks have turned up in Czechoslovakia, but others have turned up in Egypt and Palestine. The Palestinian hooks are said to be over nine thousand years old, establishing that fishing has been about for a particularly long time indeed.

Indians on Easter Island made their hooks from a hideous material. Since human sacrifices were abounding in the area for a period of time, the locals made their fish hooks out of the most bounteous material around human bone. Fish hooks made from human bone were ordinary there till missionaries turned up at the turn of the last century. As well as hooks made from stone, bone or wood, traditional man regularly mixed material to make composite hooks with barbs that kept the bait on.