Against this view leans the fact that, while they have been recovered mainly from the French caves, no real proof as yet exists of Palæolithic Man north of the Pyrenees being acquainted with the bow. Paintings discovered in 1910 at Alpera in the south-east of Spain show, however, men carrying and drawing bows, and arrows with barbed points and feathered shafts, but no quivers. Northern Man, if he did not paint, may well have employed, arrows, for hunting scenes, in which they should figure, as at Minatada and Alpera, are wanting in France. Other writers maintain that these points were the armatures of hunting spears, others, arguing from their easy detachment, that they were the heads of fish-spears or harpoons. But this contrivance seems far too complicated for our primitive _piscator_. No writer proves conclusively what was the exact purpose of these points, or whether, in fact, the fish-spears or harpoons had detachable heads. E. Krause suggests that as the earliest fish-spears were of wood, they readily lost or broke their points when striking rocks, etc.; hence came bone and then flint points.[65] The Spear-Harpoon stands out as the one fishing weapon whose existence is undeniable, whose employment is predominant. It is too world-wide and too well-known to need lengthy description. Reindeer-horn supplied in general the material of the earlier heads, stag-horn of the later.[66] The heads tapered (like Eskimo and other harpoon heads) to a point and were barbed (as the two accompanying illustrations indicate) on both sides. They have sometimes toward the lower end little eminences or knobs, and sometimes barbs provided with incisions or grooves, which some surmise held poison. [Illustration: BROKEN HARPOON. From Kent’s Cave. SINGLE BARBED HARPOON (Bruniquel). DOUBLE BARBED REINDEER HARPOON (La Madelaine).] [Illustration: DOUBLE BARBED HARPOON. _Neolithic._ From Sutz, Switzerland. Observe the hole for attaching the line.] The Harpoon makes its appearance in the middle or (according to Osborne) early Magdalenian deposits. Its crudest form shows a short, straight piece of bone, deeply grooved on one face, the ridges and notches along one edge being the only indications of what later developed into the recurved barbed points of the typical Harpoon. These barbs or points, retroverted in such a manner as to hold their place in the flesh of the fish, do not suddenly appear like an inventive mutation, but very slowly evolve as their usefulness is demonstrated by practice. The shaft is very rarely perforated at the base for the attachment of a line[67]; it is cylindrical (later flat) in form adapted to the capture of large fish in streams. The harpoons may possibly have been projected by means of the so-called _propulseurs_ or dart throwers, which resemble the Eskimo and Australian implements of to-day.