World’s Oldest Fishing Hooks Discovered In Japanese Cave!

How many years do you think fishing has been around in this wonderful place we call Earth?

Would you guess 3,000 years?

5,000 years?

10,000 years?

Try more like somewhere between 30,000 and 40,000 years!

That’s a boatload of generations of fishermen.

And this recent discovery of the oldest fishing hooks in a cave (these rare fish hooks were found in the Sakitari Cave on the island of Okinawa, Japan) gives us more evidence that these early fishermen were more advanced than we thought they were.

Can you guess what these approximately 23,000-year-old fish hooks are made out of?

Shells.

Yep, a hook that could catch fish made out entirely of shells.

Pretty impressive considering I don’t know many anglers today that could make a working fish hook from anything they found outside, let alone from shells.

Here are some other pics of the oldest fishing hooks ever found prior to this recent discovery in Japan.

How did they actually catch fish with these hooks?

Here is how they used these old fishing hooks according to expert Sue O’Connor.

“The inch-long hooks, all of which were made of shells from sea snails, would have been used to catch shallow-water fish, such as grouper and snapper, says Sue O’Connor, an archaeologist at Australian National University, who coauthored a study on the finds in Science. “They would have had a fiber line attached to the shank, and bait put on the hook,” she explains. “Then, they would be cast or lowered into the water and left stationary.”

“They would have had a fiber line attached to the shank, and bait put on the hook,” she explains. “Then, they would be cast or lowered into the water and left stationary.”

Can you imagine catching a grouper using a hook like this?

Let us know your thoughts in the comments.

Fish On!

Click here to read more about this exciting fish hook discovery at the National Academy of Sciences.

Click here to read about Sue O’Connor’s earlier discovery and why they believe fishing had been around for 42,000 years.

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