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LoreChano t1_j9rnnh7 wrote

Reply to comment by DisciplineFancy4290 in Homo sapiens may have brought archery to Europe about 54,000 years ago by Yazan_Research

The most amazing thing is how did they even come up with bows and arrows in the first place. An atlatl is kind of obvious, maybe, it's just an extension of your arm, someone might have realized it eventually. But a bow? That's much harder and much less obvious. Humanity took millennia to invent much more obvious things such as the wheel or monjolos.

Using wood's elastic proprieties is not obvious at all. Choosing the right kind and shape is essential. Bows also have no "prototype stage", a bow either works perfectly or it is useless. Someone 50k years ago came up with completely useful bows capable or hunting at least small animals. This person must've been a genius.

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ButtNutly t1_j9ru4be wrote

>Using wood's elastic proprieties is not obvious at all.

Anyone who's been in a forest on a windy day would disagree.

>Bows also have no "prototype stage", a bow either works perfectly or it is useless.

Nonsense.

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LoreChano t1_j9t9tpa wrote

What you say makes no sense. Green, alive wood is completely different and it's not logical at all to escalate that into a bow.

I'm into archery and have tried making a bow myself, using metal tools. It was incredibly hard and didn't result in something that could be used to hunt real game. Imagine doing that with stone tools and no previous knowledge.

And no, bows have no prototype stage. Unless the bow was something else and someone realized that it could be used to launch projectiles, which personally is my favorite theory.

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stovenn t1_j9s1p5w wrote

> Using wood's elastic proprieties is not obvious at all

There is a kind of snare (spring snare) which bends a still-alive sapling with a rope joining to a noose and trigger on the ground which can catch mammals images

This is simpler than a bow and could have been on the inventive pathway towards a bow and arrow.

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LoreChano t1_j9ta6tk wrote

I personally think that bows began as something just like that, something else, maybe another tool used for a completely different purpose,or a musical instrument (there are instruments similar to bows in some places in Africa) and someone realized that they could use if for launching arrows.

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stovenn t1_j9v04tk wrote

That's an interesting idea.

I'd be very interested to know when the earliest stringed musical instruments appeared.

(And before that the earliest use of "string" or "rope" in some form).

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Maskeno t1_j9s1s2v wrote

I walked past a small twig hanging off a tree today, tried to push it out of my way, and it fwapped me on the lip. It's not even the first time in my life I've done that, so I'm obviously not a genius to observe it.

From there maybe I'd make it a toy if I were a bored cave man. Maybe I'd tie some rope my cave dad taught me how to make on one end and flick it around. It's really not so much of a stretch that upon observing some boucy wood and rope that you could use that rope to propel something else. Maybe a rock. Wait. Spears work pretty well on those animals we like. What if I made a small spear and flung that with it?

Of course, it's easy to say it's easy 50k years later, but still. The logic isn't too hard to believe.

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CharonsLittleHelper t1_j9sfcu1 wrote

To be pedantic - it wasn't the wheel which had to be invented. That IS obvious. It's the axel which was the big invention. Civilizations without the axel still used log rollers etc. to move big heavy things.

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