Why bows?

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ArabArcher35 said:
Ezias said:
Now I think that a good question to ask would be why the wheel didn't develop in the Americas when it had developed everywhere else (as far as I know).
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The wheel never independantly developed, as far as I know. It was invented in Sumeria around 3500 B.C., and spready during the next sevaral thousand years to most of the Old World. In Egypt, the early Pharaohs had to make use of giant sleds to move the great limestone blocks that their pyramids were made of, as they did not have the wheel.
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Yeah, I'm aware that it wasn't developed, I just think that it's an interesting question as to why a pretty simple (or at most relatively simple imo) concept wasn't developed.  Granted we are a bit biased on such a thing since we've been benefiting from the wheel for thousands of years.
 
Eogan said:
Tarrak said:
But even braked clay bullets were dangerous... very dangerous. The most feared Aztec weapon, among Cortez' men, was the sling. It killed men through their helmets at least, don't know if it killed through their breastplates though (doubt it).
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Err... I thought that was the Atlatl.
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Could be... But the sling had several advantages over the Atlatl which makes it less likely to me.

But we could of course just demote it (the sling) to "one of the most feared weapons". :wink: I could easily have messed that up for "most feared weapon" since I'm a bit of a slingophile.
 
NCrow15 said:
Its an interesting site, but that guy is obviously obsessed with Atlatl to an unhealthy degree.
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Granted. :smile:

NCrow15 said:
On the site he blames the invention of the bow and arrow as the cause of all of lifes problems:

"It can be argued that it was when the Bow and Arrow was developed and subsequently replaced the Atlatl that we humans began to deviate from our natural condition and take more from the environment than the environment could naturally replace itself. The Bow and Arrow was a more efficient technology for what we felt at the time to be a better life, but it in fact turned into the never-ending arms race, which continues today. For thousands of years when humans used the Atlatl we were in harmony with nature; what would our environment be like today if we had never progressed beyond that technology?"

This is funny.
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It's funny, but it may also be somewhat true.  Making new darts for the atlatl is much more involved than making new arrows, so that may very well have been the invention that allowed humans to truly dominate over other animals.  He just puts the blame on the bow, where I think self-promotion is the nature of every species and any other creature that had come to dominate the planet would have behaved similarly.
 
Well, the arms-race, if you can date it to that (I doubt that people began using bows becasuse another tribe was more powerful with them), was started long before. From the pointed heavy rock in our early ancestors' hands, to a club, over the heavy spear, to the thrown huntingspear, to the atlatl... And a lot in between.
 
I think that if we're to talk about arm's races we'd have to try and draw a line between advancements for ease of living/hunting (ie survival) and advancements to destroy your neighbor better.  I know that oftentimes they are intertwined, but I don't think that one can say the bow started the arms race when I believe (granted no evidence i know of) that it was first thought up to expedite the hunting process.  Now something like the nuke (i know i know, huge jump) was amde to destroy our enemies -- big difference.
 
Heard of a fire bow before?  it is the most efficient way to make a fire without any fancy equipment.

Just conjecture, but I imagine nearly every (successful) culture would have come up with or adapted a firebow, and from there it would be less of a step to an arrow flinger.

I think the only places bows are not prevalent are places with really hot climates thata re relatively isolated.  they seem to have blowguns, atl atls, etc.  So, that supports it at least.  Maybe some research has showns how it came about though.
 
Ezias: I agree.  A hunting weapon that could be used on humans is not the same as a weapon designed soley for killing humans.  It's like the difference between a hunting rifle and an uzi.  My point was that with the bow, hunting would become simple and efficient enough that people could start devoting more and more time to non-survival pursuits- one of which is developping military technology.

I don't think the "arms race" developped with the bow, and I agree that it probably started at the point of "rock vs. bigger rock vs. sharper rock", but I don't think it became a major part of society until society developped to a point where survival was no longer a primary concern.  The human priority list goes: Water > Food > Shelter/Safety > Companionship > other stuff.  Until you get past the first four, things like art and war aren't an issue.  During the time they were using the atlatl, most societies were working their way past the Shelter/Safety stage.

What it all comes down to is that the bow allows society to push its way clear of the "need for companionship" stage and into the other fun pursuits of mankind: art, war, philosophy, discovery, knowledge, religion, "dynastic" pursuits, and wealth.  It's not necessarily because of the bow that every culture got to that point (eg. the native North Americans used the atlatl much longer than any other society and brought the technology to its apex) but the efficiency and cheapness of the bow and arrow would be a major boon to any society trying to get to that point.

So yes, the bow may have been one of the catalysts that helped men move from living "in and with" nature to living "above" natural law.
 
Eogan said:
Ezias: I agree.  A hunting weapon that could be used on humans is not the same as a weapon designed soley for killing humans.  It's like the difference between a hunting rifle and an uzi.  My point was that with the bow, hunting would become simple and efficient enough that people could start devoting more and more time to non-survival pursuits- one of which is developping military technology.

I don't think the "arms race" developped with the bow, and I agree that it probably started at the point of "rock vs. bigger rock vs. sharper rock", but I don't think it became a major part of society until society developped to a point where survival was no longer a primary concern.  The human priority list goes: Water > Food > Shelter/Safety > Companionship > other stuff.  Until you get past the first four, things like art and war aren't an issue.  During the time they were using the atlatl, most societies were working their way past the Shelter/Safety stage.

What it all comes down to is that the bow allows society to push its way clear of the "need for companionship" stage and into the other fun pursuits of mankind: art, war, philosophy, discovery, knowledge, religion, "dynastic" pursuits, and wealth.  It's not necessarily because of the bow that every culture got to that point (eg. the native North Americans used the atlatl much longer than any other society and brought the technology to its apex) but the efficiency and cheapness of the bow and arrow would be a major boon to any society trying to get to that point.

So yes, the bow may have been one of the catalysts that helped men move from living "in and with" nature to living "above" natural law.
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I like everything you say :smile:  Only thing I would say is that then one could argue thatsettling into more agrarian societies started 9or at least was part of) the arms race -- so blame the grasses/corns/whatever that people planted en masse to survive  :razz:

Again, not criticizing what you said at all Eogan, just pointing out soemthing else that would fall under the same argument
 
Yup, agreed.
When we became farmers we laid the seeds for war.

We bunched up very large groups, we began needing the land, much more than before (back then we could 'just' move to another place), and we also began owning stuff much more.
So if your farmland is less fertile than the next town over there... what then? Should they just sit back and relax while you labour day in out? In most cases it would be a simple 'yes'. But once in a while enough people would say 'no', and war would be the result.
Before there wasn't much incentive to going to war. There wasn't really anything to steal from the other tribe/pack, at best it could be a revenge for them killing what you believe is your game. But since you all migrate with the animals it is hardly something that was considered 'yours'. It would take a lot more than simple hunting the same ground to get the groups to fight.
They would of course fight... it is in the human nature to fight at times. But it wouldn't be war per se, and it would have been like that for ages and ages.

And a little nitpick.
Art came before the bow. A long time before it. Bows aren't considered older than ca. 10,000 BC (interestingly enough the same time the first agrarians came about), while art is more than 35,000 years old, perhaps as much as 45,000 years old.
 
Llew2 said:
ArabArcher35 said:
They HAD TO BE developed independently in the New World, as there was no contact between the Americas and the Old World until Leif Erikkson landed in Vinland.
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sorry to contradict you old boy, but that is not true.

the Egyptians are the first ones to reach the new world, they are the ones that brought civilisation to the Aztecs, Mayans, etc.
there are tons of reasons for this conclusion, and I could write pages on it, but I'll just give a few reasons. the Aztecs and Egyptians both have the Sun God Ra. they both build stone pyramids where they bury their dead, (the Aztecs had to haul their stone hundreds of miles through muddy jungle to reach the building sites).
and a guy called Thor Heyerdahl made the voyage from the Mediterranean sea to south America in a reed boat, using only what the Egyptians would have used, so it defiantly could be done.

And theres the fact that the Aztecs have a "White skinned people with hair on there faces" that came and taught them everything they know.

About Thor Heyerdahl:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thor_Heyerdahl
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Wow , can u tell me more about that history ?

sound interesting and yet kinda confuse
 
Kublai_Khan said:
Llew2 said:
ArabArcher35 said:
They HAD TO BE developed independently in the New World, as there was no contact between the Americas and the Old World until Leif Erikkson landed in Vinland.
Click to expand...

sorry to contradict you old boy, but that is not true.

the Egyptians are the first ones to reach the new world, they are the ones that brought civilisation to the Aztecs, Mayans, etc.
there are tons of reasons for this conclusion, and I could write pages on it, but I'll just give a few reasons. the Aztecs and Egyptians both have the Sun God Ra. they both build stone pyramids where they bury their dead, (the Aztecs had to haul their stone hundreds of miles through muddy jungle to reach the building sites).
and a guy called Thor Heyerdahl made the voyage from the Mediterranean sea to south America in a reed boat, using only what the Egyptians would have used, so it defiantly could be done.

And theres the fact that the Aztecs have a "White skinned people with hair on there faces" that came and taught them everything they know.

About Thor Heyerdahl:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thor_Heyerdahl
Click to expand...

Wow , can u tell me more about that history ?

sound interesting and yet kinda confuse
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There's also little absolute evidence there. The Egyptians were not white-skinned, and most of them did indeed shave. Pyramids are probably the easiest type of large stone structure to build, and the Aztecs used pyramids as Temples, rather than as tombs for their Emperors, so they are much more similar to the Step Pyramids (or Ziggurats) of Mesopotamia (Babylon, Iraq, etc.) than the Egyptian pyramids. They were also completely solid, with no inner catacombs.

The first Central American people to build pyramids were the Maya (The Olmec lasted from 1200 BCE to 400 BCE). The Maya only built Pyramids in the postclassic era (around 900 AD) which is LONG after the fall of Pharonic egypt.

His theory is flawed.

In addition, Aztec mythology is incredibly different from Egyptian mythology, and included about 5 or 6 different sun gods.

The point is, if you end up believing every ancient text to be completely true, then you might end up believing a lie. You need to have a measure of skepticism when it comes to things like this.
 
I agree with what you've said, AA -- but if i remember correctly the american pyramids did have inner-structures similar to egyptian ones.  Dont think they were as vast, but they did exist.
 
The most I've heard of anything but an outer-structure for Mesoamerican pyramids is some pits beneath them for sacrifices.

And on subject, probably training; the crossbow was less effective than most bows in range and power, but made up for it in ease of training (a good crossbowman took a few month to train as opposed to years for bowmen) and the arquebus became the dominant ranged weapon on the battlefield because it took a few weeks.
 
NCrow15 said:
Eogan said:
I recommend checking out Atlatl Bob.  The first two sentences on his home page:
"The Bow and Arrow is not the novel invention people today believe it to be, but rather a progression of existing technology. The existing technology, for thousands of years, was that of the Atlatl and Dart."
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Its an interesting site, but that guy is obviously obsessed with Atlatl to an unhealthy degree. On the site he blames the invention of the bow and arrow as the cause of all of lifes problems:

"It can be argued that it was when the Bow and Arrow was developed and subsequently replaced the Atlatl that we humans began to deviate from our natural condition and take more from the environment than the environment could naturally replace itself. The Bow and Arrow was a more efficient technology for what we felt at the time to be a better life, but it in fact turned into the never-ending arms race, which continues today. For thousands of years when humans used the Atlatl we were in harmony with nature; what would our environment be like today if we had never progressed beyond that technology?"

This is funny.
Click to expand...

It's also blatently false since the Native Americans managed to kill off (to the point of extention) almost every single large land mammal in the Americas using the Atl Atl.  I'm not exactly sure when the bow and arrow replaced the Atl Atl in the New World, but certainly the Native Americans used spears to take down the Mamoths and other large creatures that are now extinct because of overhunting, even if bows were available.

Personally, I think you see bows everywhere because they were invented BEFORE man spread across the world.  It's pretty obvious that the humans who populated the new world came across the bearing straight.  There is some contention about exactly when this happened, but my guess is it occurred last during the last Ice Age some 10-12000 BC.  I think it's entirely possible that bows were being used before that time.  So that's why bows are universal.  They traveled with the people who originally populated the entire world.
 
that's true.

plus, it's generally accepted that the root of mankind's destruction of nature is... human nature. Man developed agriculture because all the megafauna were dead, made cities because since a few farmers provided for many people, they needed something to do, developed technologies to make life easier, ad infinitum
 
Kissaki, there is a button in the corner of your posts that says "Modify". It kind of disgusts me when I see people make a double post, then a triple post soon after.

And I do not see why or how the Egyptians would go to Mexico. It does not seem to me they would have any incentive to go, yet - the ancient Egyptian culture is one of the oldest civilizations, and so I think they were mainly focused on developing themselves.
 
As a reply to the recurring theme of where the native americans came from, and how they developed the bow, and it is quite simple really, and also explains why the Australians never developed the bow, the native americans came from, during the last ice age, in France and other Western European areas, local game started dying off, so, the natives there, who had the bow from the expansion of human kind from middle east on to europe, decided to up and migrate across the giant ice sheet that crossed the entire atlantic ocean, and proceeded to populate north america, and some would have moved south and became the Mayans/Aztecs.  Then, some time later, when the land bridge from Modern-Day Russia -> Modern Day Alaska rose up, I forget the estimated time of this, but was some thousands of years after the ice age, the north Asian Peoples crossed that due to increasing competition with neighbors due to increasing population of Europe and Asia, these two races, Asian and European later interbred, and formed the Native Americans, and if you think about it, they look a little asian, Dark hair, eyes and skin, but lighter skin tones than the asians, and with more European like faces. This also explains why Native Americans have the highest frequency of Diego Positive blood types, as this blood type generated in Northern Asia.  If this is where the Native Americans had the bow originate from, it explains why Australian aboriginals never developed the bow, as the only contact from africa-> Australia was well before the use of bows.

I believe this also awnsered ops question, one more little thing I ought mention I am part Native American  :grin: hurrah! Huzzah!
 
This is the first I've heard from that. Now, admittedly this is a history I know nothing of. But America first colonised by way of the Atlantic Ocean? I'm most surprised.

Wikipedia (not an universally reliable source, true) states such a theory exists, but is not that widely accepted, though it is supported by recent genetic research. The rest of the article states that native Americans are for the most part much more like Siberians, as the possible migrations from Europe must have been small in scale. It does say something about new crafts being introduced by these peoples, but further searches reveal that this immigration took place long before the bow and arrow was invented. (the earliest evidence for bows in europe is after the end of the last ice age, if my random internet sources can be trusted. Which is doubtful.)

Still, very interesting. Anybody with more knowledge care to comment?
 
It's been mentioned a few times that the aztecs and egyptians had not developed the wheel. I have heard differently: that the eqyptians didn't use it since on sand wheels are just sleds anyway (and the nile did their transportation), and that the aztecs had developed the wheel but used it only for toys and the like (can't remember why).

Anyone else know about this?
 
The egyptions used rollers to move their big blocks of stone, I seem to recall. They must also have gotten to know the wheel later when they were invaded by the Hyksos people who used chariots. They certainly had it when they adopted the chariots into their own armies.

I also remember hearing the story about the Aztecs having toys with wheels. Don't have a source, though.
 
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