(www.themandus.org)
Posted on 08/19/2013 6:27:17 AM PDT by Renfield
The invention of the bow and arrow allowed users to shoot projectiles more rapidly and more accurately than with the traditional spear.
A new theory argues that this innovation resulted in more than just a technological revolution. It also had profound social consequences wherever the bow was adopted.
Stony Brook University biologists Paul Bingham and Joanne Souza developed the “social-coercion hypothesis” as an explanation for the rise of social complexity. They recently outlined their work in the journal Evolutionary Anthropology.
According to this idea, the introduction of a more-effective weapon system gave social groups a safer, more-reliable way to coerce uncooperative individuals to support the efforts of the group or to seek another one somewhere else....
(Excerpt) Read more at dispatch.com ...
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Correct, but since your common knowledge wasn’t subject to peer review it can’t be considered science. You need peer review to take obvious observations and twist them into grandious sweeping conclusions.
And we needed these two to tell us that better weapons changes things.
I think the politically correct term is "assault bow".
Right, the author is saying something that we have known for a very long time.
Technology is married to politics.
Another aspect of the bow, is it takes time to master it. This gives full-time warriors a big advantage over farmers who don’t have much time to practice archery.
***These villages often were surrounded by a palisade or a ditch, and bodies buried at these sites frequently have arrowheads lodged in their bones, indicating that the bow and arrow were used as military weapons.****
But, but we’ve been taught for the last thirty five years that pre-Colombian culture was a paradise on earth, till the evil white men arrived!
I have years of experience in SCA combat. I can assure you that fighting with primitive melee weapons is an art to be mastered as well. Those who are new to the sport are trivially easy to defeat by the more experienced.
The article might not go into the depth of the study, but as far as I can tell from it, the study and maybe entire field seems an exercise in making vague speculations then interpreting them into whatever evidence you find. Any thinking person would readily expect that the invention of the bow would change things, like how people hunted or fought wars, which is what the evidence they spoke of showed. That part of the theory that is not obvious seems the part that is vague and un-testable, and that which remains pure speculation and hand waving.
I have years of experience in SCA combat. I can assure you that fighting with primitive melee weapons is an art to be mastered as well. Those who are new to the sport are trivially easy to defeat by the more experienced.
The article might not go into the depth of the study, but as far as I can tell from it, the study and maybe entire field seems an exercise in making vague speculations then interpreting them into whatever evidence you find. Any thinking person would readily expect that the invention of the bow would change things, like how people hunted or fought wars, which is what the evidence they spoke of showed. That part of the theory that is not obvious seems the part that is vague and un-testable, and that which remains pure speculation and hand waving.
In England during the middle ages, a law was passed by Edward I compelling all able bodied males over the age of seven to practice archery every Sunday after church. The upshot was that the militia in every teown and village had longbowman, making them a fearsome resource for recruiting an army against the French or Scots, but also more able to cause a nuisance against the aristocracy. Some people say the prevalence of the armour piercing longbow amongst the common man enabled the development of England’s tradition of individual liberty, which the Americans later inherited.
Some society flourished without the bow, such as the Capellans. They relied heavily on the kligat, a type of boomerang.
Larger populations could have resulted in all sorts of changes to society, and the bow and arrow might have been only one of a myriad of technologies and/or social arrangements to have affected these cultures.
There are many twists and turns to this. For example, few woods make suitable bows, and even then, most can only be used to make “short bows”. If the bows are too long, they will break.
The exception is the Welsh or English longbow, made of Yew, that first made its appearance known in the 7th Century, but was still a strategic advantage over the short bow in the Battle of Agincourt (1415), best known for the Shakespeare play, Henry V.
Unfortunately for those in warmer and drier climates, though they obtained Yew bows, the wood soon dried out and they broke in ordinary use.
Back to primitive times, the use of bows and arrows was quite different on an individual basis, compared to the tactics of a group. With spears, the emphasis on the group was, for example, a single animal. But arrows were so efficient that as soon as an animal was down, the group could concentrate fire on another animal.
In turn, this forced some degree of nomadic behavior, as once animals were killed, they had to be processed on the spot before they rotted. This included tanning hides, smoking and grinding meat, carving bones into tools, etc.
And with human conflicts involving bows and arrows, spears and other weapons still played a major part.
James Burke figured that out over 30 years ago.
Connections
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TqnOo-KIh5Q
i read that the draw weight of the english longbow was around 90 pounds making it a ferocious wep,
true?
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