A paper in Science Advances claims evidence for bow and arrow use 54.000 years ago in Europe.  It strikes me a energetic wishful thinking, but here's the link, you decide.

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.add4 675

The link didn't any subject matter about archery. I see a space in the last numbers?

Remover the space and it will work. This site does that for some reason.

I think we tend to underestimate the wherewithal, including the intelligence and ingenuity of early man. I have no clue what could have transpired over 50,000 years ago, so I really can't comment on it. I do know we have been awed many times with the developmental acumen of our ancient predecessors, so I'm not likely to be surprised at the possibility of bows, or other mechanical arrow launchers back then. It gets the left brain working and that is a good thing.

There are many mysteries of the past for which there are too few clues to produce a solution.

In archaeology, it is much easier to discern a sequence than a specific time element.

Must be true, it's on the internet!!!

I'm not an archeologist, but I consider myself a lay student of human evolution. I've read a lot of techinical articles like this one on stone tools. This article is very well researched. A lot goes into what may be just a line or two in the article. Like, when they say they tested the size of the stone points and shaft diameter size with ethnographic data and experimental models. That means they remade the points and tried them on various size shafts, propelled by various methods such as bows, throwers, and hand thrown. I think they present pretty good evidence for bow and arrow use in the place and time they specify.

Atlatl artifacts show up over 10k years before bow artifacts, so it seem the stone artifacts examined in the linked piece would more likely be atlatl points, if projectile points at all--they could have had other uses.

Here'a suggested line of research to indicate which appeared first, and when: Repeated use of each results in deformation of arm bones, a different type for each weapon. Examining skeletons from the subject periods might show when each came into use.

Some clues:

Mungo Man, from 42,000 BP displays arthritis in his right elbow, a pathology referred to today as the "Atlatl elbow," resulting from many years of forceful torsion from using an atlatl.

The skeletons of English bowmen had over-developed shoulder and arm bones to compensate for the growth of muscle around those areas, arm bones also slightly curved.

Early bowmen likely had lower weight bows than the English, and likely used less often, so evidence would be less extreme but likely noticeable. 

Many of those points seemed too small to be atlatl points.

My take, we don't know what we don't know. And there's a LOT we don't know. Heck... there's even more that we'll NEVER know before humans are gone.

Follow the science. Only the GOOD science. A lot of it is junk. Be an objective cynical realist, don't rush or reach to believe, seek real proof, then things will naturally fall into their appropriate places.

What Jeff said, atlatl darts would likely have larger points, but I wasn't there, so there is that. And yes, we don't know much at all really, when contemplating to the history of man.

As the Pennsylvania Dutch saying goes, "Ve Gedt Too Soon Oldt Und Too Late Schmardt".

Archeology is relatively young. It's improved with time, knowledge and technology, but we're late to the game. Evidence has been buried, hidden, decomposed... the Earth is living, healing, hiding every day, for longer than we can imagine. Nature waits for no man.

I think we’re our pride gets in the way is that we think we’re so smart, and that those “cavemen” were somehow lacking in intelligence… but one of the criteria we used to define “modern” humans is the volumetric capacity of their brain case, and we’ve been pretty much the same ever since; a somewhat cynical person might even observe that our average intelligence as a species has been on the decline for some time now!

It’s a shame that all of the cordage that they made was crafted from such perishable materials, because, if we knew exactly win, cordage became available, we’d have some insight as to when it would’ve become possible to create a bowstring.

And frankly, I think the development of cordage was quite a feat. That’s not something which would just spring to mind… So it took some real inspiration to get us there. Stone tools seem a much more obvious invention, because you can imagine some early human cutting himself on a sharp rock and thinking that these sharp rocks might come in kind of handy… and then it’s not such a stretch to think that you could probably break a rock to get more sharp bits, and then technique could progress fairly quickly just through trial and error….

Time laughs at Man. Eternity laughs at Time.

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.add4675

So by extension, eternity laughs at man. In actuality eternity holds no real value for man, and laughs at him for believing otherwise.

“So by extension, eternity laughs at man. In actuality eternity holds no real value for man, and laughs at him for believing otherwise.”

So by extension, eternity laughs at the Word. (Ecclesiastes 3:1-11 )

Odd I found that when wanted to check the pithy quote.

Maybe they were arguing, small point higher velocity, or heavier point to better penetration. Lol

Cordage does not need to be invented for archery to begin. One strip of rawhide does the job.

Funny how this topic can get so philosophical!

I saw an article recently on late Natufian (12,000-10,000 years ago, Middle East) stone points and arrows. There were 3 main types. 1. microliths embedded along the arrow shafts, kind of like the razor inserts on broadheads but further down the shaft; 2. pointed tips on the end of shafts like we think of arrows now; and 3. broad tips on the end of arrows, with chisel like edges facing forward, with no sharp point. Similar to what we call bone cruncher points today. The researchers said these chisel tips were found in the bones of animals as large as elephants. That makes me wonder... how heavy were their bows, to penetrate an elephant to the bone with a chisel tip point? Then of course, how did they nock the arrows on the string? And how did they draw the bows? Split finger? 3 under? Thumb and forefinger? Did they use gloves, or tabs? Or maybe rings, or even strings to draw the bows? And did they argue with each other about which points were best? Best grip on the string? And so on?

OK, sort of joking. But I do really wonder how they drew their bows, if they were heavy enough to hunt elephants with them. Anyone? Anyone?

Safe to say man invented the bow and arrow a long azz time ago. A lot of technological advancement is by trial and error. If something works it catches on. 'Lightbulb' moments are few and far between. Especially for me. lol

I suppose you’re right about that, Runner, though that makes me wonder… You can’t get a “strip” of rawhide without a pretty satisfactory “knife”…. So was the first cordage from plant fiber, or rawhide? I guess maybe we started lashing things together with strips of bark, and it went from there once we realized that it would be nice to be able to link shorter sections of material into something long enough for a particular task… So which came first, the plant-fiber bowstring or the rawhide? Maybe there are still tribes in the Amazon or New Guinea or even the Kalahari which might help answer that, though I would think that humidity could play a role in the life expectancy of a natural-materials bowstring… so that doesn’t necessarily solve for which came first….

I did see an interesting article some years ago about cordage, and apparently there are basically laws of physics which govern the ability to produce the stuff, and the inference is that if cordage exists anywhere else in our universe, it will be fashioned in exactly the same way that we do it here. I think that’s a very cool thought; archery literally has the potential to be universal…

Kind of cool that this pastime of ours links us in a way to time & space beyond our own…

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