Mankind’s history is permeated with the struggle for survival. Obtaining food is the main objective of this struggle. Before agriculture and cattle breeding, to provide themselves with food people used to hunt, collect edible plants and fruits, and, of course, fish. Fishing was a guaranteed source for providing the family with food, so people preferred to make settlements near water sources.

It is hard to imagine what they used for fishing in these distant times. Excavations of settlements from the Neolithic era have shown that people already had fishing gear like tridents, spears, and even primitive hooks made of stone, animal bones, and tree thorns.

The Sea of Azov with its fish stocks, the lower reaches of steppe rivers, channels and rivers of the Azov lowland, and the Kuban River itself with its tributaries created favorable conditions for fishing. Fishing was one of the most important branches of the economy for the Meot people, and it was especially developed among the tribes of the Eastern Azov region. The pike perch, sturgeon and carp were the main commercial fish in this area. Catfish were also caught in the Middle Kuban territories. People fished with nets, including a type of dragnet, and hooks. Clay sinkers for nets and large bronze and iron hooks were found in large numbers during archeological expeditions in the territories of Meot settlements.

The Adygeysk Museum of Local Lore presents a harpoon that was randomly found in 1988 by schoolchildren on the shore of the Krasnodar reservoir. It is a long metal rod with a sharp hook at the tip and a conical socket for a wooden handle at the base.

Before it was transferred to the museum, the harpoon was kept in the school museum of school No. 3 in the city of Adygeysk. Aminet Kadyrovna Thagapso, a history teacher, donated it to the museum. In 2002 the associate professor of the Department of History and Museology of the Kazan State University of Culture and Arts, Nikolai Evgenievich Berlizov did the dating and description of the harpoon.