GoKawiilPeople in North America adopted the bow and arrow as replacement weapons for the dart and atlatl about 1,400 years ago, according to a new paper published in the journal PNAS Nexus. But the adoption was almost immediate in southern regions, while people living farther north initially adopted the bow and arrow as a complement to their existing toolkit, gradually phasing out the atlatl and dart over a thousand years.
That’s according to the latest research from experimental archaeologist Metin Eren’s Experimental Archaeology Laboratory at Kent State University in Ohio, where he and his team try to reverse-engineer a wide range of ancient technologies, from stone tools and ceramics to metal, butchery, and textiles. Eren achieved some notoriety for his 2019 debunking of an Inuit legend, testing rudimentary knives made of frozen feces to see whether they could cut through pig hide, muscle, and tendon. That paper snagged Eren an Ig Nobel prize.
While such work might be colorful, Eren has always emphasized that what he does is very much serious science, not entertainment. His lab has conducted studies on the pitches and octaves produced from the percussive aspects of flint-knapping; common injuries suffered by flint-knappers; the butchering efficiency of Clovis points (field work done jointly with the MeatEater hunters and immortalized on YouTube); and ballistics experiments to test a 1970s hypothesis about whether some stone blades once had some sort of wood or bone backing on the flat, dulled edge (as opposed to the sharp cutting edge), which would have increased adhesion.
Most of Eren’s students get the chance to throw point-tipped spears at a hunting target outside on campus, using an attached atlatl or spear-thrower. The atlatl is an ingenious handheld rod-shaped device that employs leverage to launch a dart or spear. Versions have been developed by several different ancient cultures, including Aztec, Maya, Greek, Roman, and Australian Aboriginal designs.