Neither one
Fish hooks have evolved many times in numerous cultures. The earliest known examples of bent barbless hooks are from the First Egyptian Dynasty (~ 3000 B.C.) and by ~1200 B.C. barbed hooks were in use in Ancient Egypt. We have to reach farther back into more primitive cultures to trace how the fish hook was born.
The first direct antecedent of our fish hook was a device that archeologists call a gorge. These were bits of spindle shaped bone or wood that was notched in the center so a line could be tied to it. A gorge was shoved into a chunk of bait, the fish was allowed to swallow it, and when the line was yanked, the gorge set cross-wise inside the fish and he was hauled in. One of the earliest types of gorge was unearthed 22 feet below the surface in a peat bed in the valley of the Somme in France. It is believed to be about 7000 years ago.
Turning to more modern times we find many examples where native peoples recently used relative primitive fishing equipment. The Eskimos and the bushmen of South Africa were using the gorge even in very recent times. In 1846 Canadian Ojibway people were still known to be using gorges. In fact, there are contemporary examples of all stages of the development of the hook scattered over the earth. South Sea Islanders were making hooks from bits of common wire that were in use when our armed forces visited the Islands while fighting World War II. These are as crude as the earliest single barbless wire hooks unearthed by archaeologists. In some localities a modified gorge had been used to catch eels in the twentieth century.
The progressive development of the hook is seen in artifacts left by the cultures that lived in the Swiss Lakes country. Once this culture began to work with bronze they designed a metal gorge. It was a wire, straight on either side, but with a little hump in the middle where the line was attached, and merely another gorge. This is known as a bricole.
The next change was to give a slight curve to the wire arms of the gorge. This is the beginnings of the curve that was later to shape into a hook. Then some ancient artisan twisted the wire so an eye was formed in the center. It was just a step from that to lengthening the two arms of the gorge, making the curve greater, and the shaping of a definite hook on either side of the central eyelet.
Archeologists believe that the idea for making a barb on the hooks was derived from the spear. Barbs gave the hooks more holding power just as a barbed point was harder for an animal to dislodge. The ancient bronze hook, single and barbed, is in its shape and design the same that we use today. The people who built their houses on pilings above waters of the Swiss lakes and fashioned hooks from bronze are believed to have lived there at least twenty centuries ago. The Egyptian barbed hook was in use before this time but the artifacts from the Swiss lake dwellings present a nicely documented series of changes from gorge to single hook. This process was likely repeated in other cultures, with development of the various next-steps dependent on factors like contemporary technological development, lifestyle, and interactions with other societies
Wiki...
The fish hook or similar device has probably been made by man for many thousands of years. Examples of some of the earliest recorded fish hooks were from
Palestine about 7000
BC. In 2011, archaeologists in the Jerimalai cave in
East Timor discovered the world's oldest fish hook, a shell hook between 16,000 and 23,000 years old.
[2] Man has crafted fish hooks from all sorts of materials including wood, animal
[3] and human bone, horn, shells, stone, bronze, iron up to present day materials. In many cases, hooks were created from multiple materials to leverage the strength and positive characteristics of each material.
Norwegians as late as the 1950s still used juniper wood to craft Burbot hooks. Quality steel hooks began to make their appearance in Europe in the 17th century and hook making became a task for professionals.
[4]
The real answer......ME