Which came first, the Bow or the arrow?

Jack,
I am sure in some areas we can say the arrow. The remains of spear throwers (atlatl in America and woomera in Australia) are world wide and very old. We know from American examples that the spears thrown could be fletched like arrows. In Australia, the spears are longer and have never been fletched. However, fletching is not a necessity for an arrows as several million archers in the island of New Guinea prove.

The existence of people in Australia is very old (at least 60,000 years), but I do not know if anyone has tracked the use of spear throwers. Ancient ones have all been eaten by termites or burnt in fires. In America, bone and stone fittings have survived in archaeological settings.

Some cultures with very old archery traditions like the New Guineans and the South American Indians use large bows and javelin sized arrows. Others like the San in South Africa use small bows and tiny arrows.

What do you think?

What about the bow drill? What about the bow for firestarting? The bow for music making? Are there any other opinions? -j-

Jack, I like those kind of questions, cause they are so basic.

I don?t think they there is any scientific proof of what cames first. But in this case it could be interesting to have a look at growing children.
I do lot of bowery and archery with children and kids. It is obvious that most of them are much more interested in the arrow than in the bow. They try to throw an arrow by themselves or start some swordplay with the arrows.......
The bowdrill, the bow for fire-making and the stringed-instruments are tools for producing much more energy than a human being is able to do by itself. For to develop and to handle such a tool (a kind of early machine) you need experience and "a more grown-up or another state of mind" than a child has or our very early ancestors have had.

So I would say the arrow came first.

Michael

There's a nice little fiction book in Hungarian about the adventures of a horde of Cro-Magnon men in the Carpathian basin. They invented the bow and arrow accidentally - originally these tools were used for music making. Of course, it's just fiction.
However, some archaeologists think the earliest hard evidence of archery was actually found in Hungary: the small stone points of the Szeletien culture (about 36 000 years ago) - these are too small to be atlatl dart heads or anything like that, so they must have been arrowheads.
Szabi

One other theory I have seen is that bows came from traps that were set to project a spear when they were triggered.

There has been a lot of speculation over the centuries and there are many myths about the origin of archery.

The San people use bows as musical instruments, but how do you tell if they invented one use before the other?

Jack, the first true long distance projectile weapon was the light, long arrow, or as we atlatlists call it "the dart". It is propelled by the Atlatl thrower. This happened long before the bow and arrow system was invented. Even the Neanderthal men used rocks and heavy thrusting javelins, but I believe it was the Modern Man out of Africa who had this new efficient weapon. Incidentally I have written a short story of how I believe the Atlatl was invented. You can find it here (in english) >>>http://www.perinnejousi.fi/keskustelu/v ... .php?t=544

PV
PS. You need to login to see the picture referred to....

Pekuvee; I read your arguments and saw your Finnish website ( I really enjoyed the pics of the historic reenactment arrowshooting)

So which came first, the bow or the arrow? -j-

Which came first, the Bow or the arrow?

By Chinese tradition, the pebble bow was invented before the arrow. :shock:

Stephen; Very interesting, when might one imagine that the first pebble bow was used? How would one know? -j-

This won't be a fair answer I am afraid but I could not do without mentioning that in Turkish, saying "OKYAY" is easier and more familiar then saying "YAYOK". (OK=the arrow, YAY=the bow).
And the archery is OK?ULUK (oukchuluk) while the name of the vast and famous land saved for archery in Istanbul by the Ottoman sultans is called OKMEYDANI. And in literature the eyebrows of the beloved represent "the bow" and come only secondary while the eyelash are thought to be "the arrows" that pierce the heart with a sudden gaze of her. Thus the arrow is more important and valuable. As the great sufic poet Fuzuli ones said "O doctor! You tend to cure my heart which is hit by the arrow of my beloved. Take the wounded heart away and leave the arrow there!"
There are lots to say on this.I hope you enjoyed.
efdaluddin

Istanbuli, I really like your post. World archery culture is so rich! And people think archery is just about making holes with an arrow in a piece of paper. :?

Jack: no way to date pebble archery. Certain oracle bone characters dating from about 1,300BCE are interpreted as representing a pebble bow. ("Chinese Archery" p. 179.)

S.

In a text by Rausing, he indicates that miniature bows probably identifiable as springs for some type of traps were found alongside famous bog bows dating from the neolithic, 2 or 3000 BC.

What interests me about this possibility is that if these are trap parts, it implies a triggering mechanism. Could this be the precursor of the crossbow? A spring trap does not necessarily indicate a projectile and the exact antiquity of these devices is not known. -j-