Conclusion

It is hard to find a concluding evaluation of LENOCHS work from todays point of view. This all the more so as we always have to start from the author´s own definitions when reading his work.

More recent literature, like that by H. PETER, have a more special and exact look at the problems of the definition and distinction, though the results may not become any clearer or more comprehensible for the reader who only skims through the books.

Concerning the time when LENOCH´S books were written, he nevertheless made very extensive and costly studies on literature and his worldwide geographical attempts on classification are still unique today.
We paid special attention to LENOCH´S statement that the invention of the boomerang is proved for the Old Europe in his eyes. We think that this statement is not sufficiently proved. As the term "cateia" is used for various and partly totally different weapons (e. g. the spear catapult) by the classic authors, it cannot be proved with absolute certainty that the boomerangs existed in ancient Europe. After studying this literatue we consider it appropriate to say that boomerangs existed in ancient Europe.

BORK, F.: Planetenreihen. In: Zeitschrift für Ethnographie 59, Berlin 1927
PETER, H.: Wesen und Bedeutung des Bumerangs. Wien 1986
WINCKLER, H.: Himmel, Kalender und Mythus. Altorientalische Forschungen II, 1898-1900

To make the temporal categorization easier, we added dates to the text wherever possible. LENOCH´S thesis can be borrowed from the library of the University of Vienna via distance borrowing.
There will be a small fee for the dispatch and, if necessary, a fee for transport insurance. Unfortunately, the illustrated book belonging to the dissertaion was not to be found in 1992. LENOCH´S list of literature is remarkable in length (approx. 30 pages in size DIN A 4).

The text was compiled by:
Carolin Heitmann,
Melanie Osterwinter,
und Ulli Wegner