Before 50,000 BCE–900 CE: (The Bow and Arrow in Global Perspective — A Popular Presumption That the Bow Was Always the Typical Weapon of Native Americans, bu…

Before 50,000 BCE–900 CE: (The Bow and Arrow in Global Perspective — A Popular Presumption That the Bow Was Always the Typical Weapon of Native Americans, but the Americas Actually Show Long Reliance on the Spear-Thrower with the Clovis Culture of 11,000–9000 BCE Using Larger Blades Unsuited to Arrows, the Bow Possibly Gaining Primary Importance in Many Areas Only 1,200–900 Years Ago, the Biodegradability of Bow and Arrow Materials Making the Full History Difficult to Reconstruct but Worth Pursuing Given the Key Place of This Weaponry in Subsistence and Warfare): There is a popular and widespread modern-day presumption that the bow and arrow was and somehow always has been the typical weapon of Native Americans right back through the millennia. And indeed there is some archaeological evidence for bow and arrow use early in the settlement of the Americas, but also evidence for subsequent millennia-long periods when this kind of weapon appears to have dropped out of use. The prevalence early on of the kinds of larger blades unsuited to the arrow, such as those found in the widespread Clovis culture of 11,000 to 9000 BCE, along with the continuing use of the spear-thrower in Middle America down to recent millennia, reveal over the long term a more widespread reliance in the Americas on this type of weaponry than on archery. The bow and arrow, despite its near universality among Native Americans in very recent centuries, may finally have gained primary importance in many areas only with the arrival of new developments in archery technology as recently as 1,200–900 years ago. Because the bow, bowstring, and arrow shaft are composed of eminently biodegradable materials, lasting evidence for this weaponry in sites dating thousands of years ago tends to be limited to stone points that investigators can plausibly argue to have been arrowheads. Working out the fuller place of the bow and arrow across the longer term of world history will not be easy, but these are stories — because of the key place of this weaponry both in early human subsistence advances and in ancient and more recent warfare — that are well worth seeking better to understand. The global history of projectile weaponry, in other words, is far more complex than any simple narrative allows, and Africa sits at the origin of both competing technologies.