Study pinpoints when bow and arrow came to North America

Radiocarbon results suggest a single origin and rapid diffusion through cultural transition networks.

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[Zapitron]

Gotta admit, I'm surprised by how recent that is. When was the bow believed to have appeared in the old world?

I always ass/u/me-d that it was tens, maybe even hundreds, of thousands of years old (so it would have come over when the Americas were first colonized from Asia) but I guess that's not the case.

 

[Zapitron]

Given the method by which the Americas were originally colonized, this isn't surprising if one thinks about it. The Arctic regions aren't very conducive to using bows and arrows nearly as much as spears.

Daaamn, I hadn't considered that. The bow could have been known to people in Siberia and along the Pacific Coast, but once those people migrated to where it wasn't as useful, the tech could be lost within a few generations. By the time their great-n grandkids moved south into the Americas, nobody alive had ever seen a bow.