This Was Once A Universal Tool For Teaching, Survival, And Power
It marked a higher level of brain function and showed advanced human behavior
There’s something about the evolution of our species that’s always fascinated me. Namely, how did you get from monkeys in trees to humanity that rules our planet today? Obviously, it’s a complex journey.
Most would say intelligence, and that’s a solid choice. But is that all? What other aspect of that ancient primate moved it from the realm of animals into something beyond? Some feel our ability to throw is that tipping point.
In his book The Ape That Understood The Universe, Steve Steward-Williams calls humans the “throwing ape,” claiming the ability to throw projectiles separates us from primates. Similarly, Professors Michael Lombardo and Robert Deaner at The Conversation say:
“Humans are the only species that can throw well enough to kill rivals and prey. Because throwing requires the highly coordinated and extraordinarily rapid movements of multiple body parts, there was likely a long history of selection favoring the evolution of expert throwing in our ancestors.”
That base skill and intelligence made projectiles better over time. From spears and spear-throwing tools, an idea grew. At some point, an ancestor long ago stumbled upon something that would change our species forever and put us solidly on top of the food chain. The technology followed our kind across the planet. Moreover, it became so universal, that philosophies and religions used its image as a teaching tool for great moral lessons.
It also helped build one of the world’s largest empires.
While we think of it as a sport now, archery was monumental to our development as a species. It’s also been with us for a long time.
The First Evidence Of Bow Usage
“The bow and arrow is thought to signal higher-level cognitive functioning and is considered a hallmark of complex modern human behavior.”
— Backwell, L., Bradfield, J., Carlson, K., Jashashvili, T., Wadley, L., & D’Errico, F. (2018). The antiquity of bow-and-arrow technology: Evidence from Middle Stone Age layers at Sibudu Cave. Antiquity, 92(362), 289–303.
According to Lucinda Backwell and her colleagues in their scholarly paper above, the earliest evidence of projectiles are spear points thought to be five hundred thousand years old. However, the more complex bow and arrow shows up much later.
Backwell’s team found a cylindrically shaped boned fragment in the Sibudu Cave on the East Coast of South Africa.
It’s thought to be about sixty-two thousand years old and has a similar structure to bone arrow points found in the Later Stone Age. The point also has some similarities to non-poison arrowheads the modern San people of the region still use.
The Sibudu Cave point is about two inches long and about a quarter inch thick, it also has significant charring. This is logical due to where it was found: inside a hearth area. It also showed signs of being created with stone tools.
Backwell and her associates created seven copies of the point from eland (Taurotragus oryx) metacarpals, like the local San people.
They gave six of these arrowheads to a local San tribesman who fit them on reeds with animal sinew and fired them from a homemade bow with a nineteen-pound draw. The final one was thrown into a fire to char it.
The shooter fired the arrows at a goat carcass, penetrating it from ranges of twenty-eight to twenty-two feet, using arrows repeatedly until the points broke or they hit the ground. Backwell’s team then examined all the heads with a powerful CT scanner.
The charred replica head showed similar cracks to the original Sibudu Cave point. Moreover, the heads used as arrows all showed stress cracks towards their rear (where the reed pushed into the head.) The Sibudu Cave point had similar marks towards its back, confirming it as a likely arrowhead.
But this wasn’t the only discovery. Another team found evidence of bow usage in Europe about fifty-four thousand years ago, while archeologists in Sri Lanka found bone arrow tips thought to be about forty-eight thousand years old.
However, something else spread with archery. It became more than a survival tool, growing into a universal method for teaching deep philosophical lessons.
The Wisdom Of Archery
“In ancient India, the bow symbolized the human being; each of its two ends signified Man’s higher and lower self, or his heavenly and earthly nature. There is always a string which connects these two ends which needs to be tied with just the right tension in order to use it effectively.
— Vineet Lalan, The Acropolitan Magazine
In his article, Vineet Lalan goes into some of the significant ways the bow is used as a teaching tool in India. He says its shape is employed to describe the nature of man. In addition, he mentions a story of archery as a metaphor to teach the value of concentration in the Indian epic of the Mahabharata.
The bow is also used as a teaching tool for the Lakota Tribe as well. In an interview with NPR, author Joseph Marshall III speaks of its significance. As a child Marshall’s grandfather demonstrated how to make the tool by hand.
His grandparents used the combination of bow and arrow to explain a harmonious relationship between the sexes.
The bow was described as feminine and the arrow as masculine. Both are needed to make the device and greater world function. It was the type of lesson not taught in school which became more vivid with the bow in his hand. Marshall believes archery isn’t only tradition but passes on culture.
Early Christians also used archery to describe the concept of sin. The Greek word hamartia, used in archery, means to miss the mark. Likewise in life, your aim can be off, making you miss moral marks.
And speaking of Greeks, both Stoicism in Rome and Greece made use of archery to describe philosophical concepts. According to research fellow at King’s College London John Sellars:
“The good Stoic, Antipater suggested, is like an archer: he does everything he can to hit the target, but his happiness does not depend on whether he hits the target or not. What matters is shooting well, for whether the arrow hits the target or not depends on other factors outside of the archer’s control.”
A Japanese school of Buddhism also teaches similar lessons by employing archery. Eugen Herrigel chronicles his time in Japan studying the bow in Zen In The Art Of Archery. He says it’s not treated like a sport.
Herrigel describes archery as “spiritual exercises…whose aim consists in hitting a spiritual goal so that fundamentally the marksman aims at himself and may even succeed in hitting himself.”
In fact, striking the target isn’t the ultimate goal, your form is.
According to Herrigel, as he became better with the bow, he got better with himself. The author also recounts how archery evolved from its origin of “bloody contests.” Although drawing blood was the bow’s greatest achievement.
The Tool Of Conquest
The Steppe region of Eurasia has always had a deep relationship with the bow. But a poor nomadic tribesman named Temüjin and a rag-tag gang of followers eventually combined archery, horses, and organization into something world-conquering.
You’d know him better as Genghis Kahn, and by the beginning of his empire, his army carried one of the most devastating weapons on the planet.
According to the experimental archeologist and bow researcher Luvsannorov Munkh, the thirteenth-century Mongolian bow was the culmination of three thousand years’ worth of development.
Munkh says:
“It is a composite bow made of leather, horn, and wood. The outside is animal sinew, held together with fish glue and covered with tree bark to protect against water.”
The researcher claims the Mongolian bows had incredible range. Munkh’s own Mongol bow has a seventy-eight-pound draw and fires arrows almost five hundred meters (about sixteen hundred feet). He also takes part in current archery contests held in Mongolia, so the skill hasn’t died out.
Munkh says children were taught to ride at three and could use a bow on horseback to hunt by the age of five. Therefore, by the time they grew into men, you could imagine their proficiency in both skills.
In Genghis Khan and the Quest For God, author Jack Weatherford notes the entire Mongol army was calvary, so nothing slowed it down. Moreover, the riders were such adept archers, that they became a weapon system in their own right, spreading the Mongol Empire nine million square miles at its peak.
A Bow Shot In Evolution
While humanity’s brain pushed the species from its primate origins, throwing and projectiles played a large part as well. The simple bow enabled one user to carry dozens of spears. It also increased range.
Archery helped our kind to dominate the food chain and survive. The bow was so widely adapted, that it became a universal tool to teach higher-level philosophy and religious concepts. Inevitably, it was a tool for empire-building as well.
Humanity could be summed up as creative, destructive, deep-thinking, survivors. So, you might say the bow fits us well. It’s much more than a hobby, it’s a physical manifestation of our species.
-Originally posted on Medium 10/22/23