They rely on artifacts and art. So yeah, it’s quite possible the bow was invented earlier, probably a bunch of times in a bunch of places.
People are smart, but we’re smart in pretty regular and repeatable ways.
Comment on 8999 BC
rumba@lemmy.zip 1 day ago
Blah blah bc time is backward, 9,000 is older than 8,999, now that we have that out of the way I wonder how they calculate the invention of the bow. Like they just haven’t found one anywhere older then that. It’s just green sticks and ropes at some point. Wonder what the chances are there was something prior that we don’t know because it wasn’t built long enough to last.
surewhynotlem@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de 1 day ago
i’d also say there’s a difference between people making notches in a stick and tying a piece of string to it, and actually carving a bow and drying it.
Anyone can come up with the idea for and build a simple bow to test their idea, but figuring out how to make a proper bow takes iteration and is an investment.
HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world 23 hours ago
also bowstring is a hell of a lot more sturdy than twine. probably took a lot of different iteration to find the right fiber/gut to use for the string, the right wood, just beyond getting the idea
Korhaka@sopuli.xyz 22 hours ago
Nettle fibres are pretty easy to make into a string that would be suitable for using with a bow. Making a bow is a lot easier than making the perfect bow. It would have been an iterative process, improving over time.
andros_rex@lemmy.world 8 hours ago
There’s always big error bars on these dates for that kind of reason. Actual archeologists are going to be careful with their language and say things like “the earliest evidence we have for bows is around 9000 BCE.”
LordGimp@lemm.ee 23 hours ago
9000+ BC - no arrow heads
8999 BC to present - butt loads of arrowheads
SippyCup@feddit.nl 8 hours ago
We have “arrowheads” as old as 72000 years old. Some found outside of Africa are 40ish thousand years old. We’re not certain what these objects are, but we’re pretty sure they’re arrowheads.
The oldest evidence for a bow we’ve found is only 9000 years old. But if you think about what a bow is made of, it stands to reason that we wouldn’t find one much older than that.
ryedaft@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
It just says they were invented in 9k BC. That does exclude them also having been invented in 10k BC.
abruptly8951@lemmy.world 6 hours ago
They were invented *by 9k bc :)
sunbytes@lemmy.world 6 hours ago
They may have been mentioned/featured in things that last longer than the bows. Statues, pottery, writing on stone tablets.
Also I think they find skeletons with flint arrowheads in them sometimes too.
So it can be pieced together from lots of small, even partial data points.
But we find new stuff all the time that changes what we thought.
They found a 4000 year old bagless vacuum cleaner the other day.
That last one was a joke.