Wrong sized game. Mammoths would have just shaken off arrows, it would have taken a hundred. It would require the deeper thrusting spear to make lethal wounds in a mammoth.
After the larger animals like sloths and mammoths were gone, spears became smaller so that they could be thrown instead of thrusted at smaller faster game. Then the Atlatl came along so the smaller spears could be thrown faster and further. Then finally along came the bows and arrows much much later.
Sometimes passed down traditional methods are hard to override with newer innovation so it is a long slow process. We can look around us today and see many cases of this very same thing still holding us back from certain new innovations. :)
It’s human nature to resist change...
“It’s human nature to resist change.”
Yeah, but every now and again there’s a maverick.
It could have happened that way, but I hate to think people took that long to invent the bow.