I did a little Googling on this but haven’t found much of an answer, mostly info on how bow construction has changed and what early arrowheads were made of.
Was there a progression leading up to the typical bow & arrow? I know about spears (naturally) and atlatls but the idea of using feathers as stabilizers seems like such a jump that I can’t help but think that there must have been a mid-step. But I can’t think of one. At the same time, an arrow without fletching is useless. From what I understand from a college course on Native Americans, the bow & arrow developed here independently from the Old World since the original paleolithic folk to come over were still spear-users.
So then we have two places where someone said “You know, if I attach this string to this bendy stick and then put these feathers on the end of this stick…” Do we have reason to believe that it happened like that? Or did the use of stabilizers first emerge with some other thrown projectile before being used on arrows?
There are two steps you might find intermediary.
One is the launching stick (I don’t know the official name), a long stick with a cup on the end. You would put the end of the spear into the cup and fling it with the launcher. The extra leverage gave you more speed and force.
And of couse for strings there’s the sling shot. First a bag on a string that you hurl, holding one end of the string. Then attached to a springy branch.
The feathered ends may also have been inspired by finding that a stick with a couple leaves still attached would fly straighter.
That’s the atlatl but I don’t know if they ever used stabilizers on the projectiles. The pictures I’ve seen of it suggest not and the spears were just typical spears, only launched differently.
It could be that in throwing javelins, men noticed that it went straighter when spin was applied. And maybe some unknown genius actually figured correctly about using feathers to impart spin.
But feathers may have originally been attached for a whole different reason. Since feathers come from birds, they have a strong association with flight. Early hunters may have attached feathers to their arrows as a sort of talisman to make them “fly like a bird.” It wouldn’t take too long to see that feathers attached just so actually gave significant improvements to accuracy and distance.
But I do wonder if there are significant differences between primitive old and new world bows.
I don’t think we know much about the evolution of archery. Wikipedia, which is normally a very good source for this type of stuff says:
And then it jumps right to ancient, though historical, times.
However, it would seem that fletching would have been developed for the atlatl, and then transfered to arrows intact. How fletching was discovered for atlatl darts is probably not known either.
FWIW, no spin is required, though it certainly helps stabilize the arrows a lot quicker. Modern arrows can be fletched with no offset (straight fletches), though why you’d want to, I don’t know. In the case of a straight fletching, you’d be adding drag, which would tend to keep the back end in the back, and the pointy end up front. Weight bias towards the front is very important in archery. FOC links to more on th etopic.
In an arrow without a heavy point, or one that has more back weight, the fletchings become even more important to stabilizing flight. In ‘olden days’ I’m sure that many arrows were thicker at the base (nock end) than the front (point/broadhed) due to their construction from branches, and as a result the fletches would greatly stabilize it’s flight.
One big problem in understanding the evolution of the bow is that all tis parts decompose eventually. That’s a huge pain in the buttocks for researchers. You have to try and take a handful of surviving items and guess. Arrowheads are common, of course.
I have no doubt that at any distance beyond point blank a projectile without fletching is inferior to one with, but isn’t that exactly the step you’re looking for. I have found at least one site that claims darts specifically used in recreated atlatls could still be useful without fletching. (I mention it not for the scientific background, but because it appears the web page is about someone who actually uses his recreations.)
Wouldn’t a bow and arrow with unfletched arrows be useful for small animals and birds?
I’m not master of the atlatl but my impression of it is that it’s basically a javelin thrower. It puts the spear/dart/projectile into roughly the same arc you’d put it in if you threw it the traditional way, only with more force.
I’m not master of archery either but my limited experience tells me that an arrow where the fletching has been stripped ranges anywhere from worthless to dangerous depending on which wild angle it flips off at and who is standing there. Mind you, my experience has been with aluminum arrows, not wood, feather and stone affairs. But I think the lack of inertia-giving weight means that, without something else to keep it going straight, it’s not going to go where you want it to go. If it goes anywhere.
Before bows, there were darts. And an arrow is just an update on the original dart. I speculate that the answer you are looking for might actually be wrapped up in blowgun technology.
Primitive blowgun darts are often nothing more than long thorns (carved or natural) wrapped with a natural fiber, either plant or animal, glued with natural resins. This is similar to fletching arrows in processs and technology. I figure that people realized through observation and experience that the “plug” of primitive blowgun darts (or what is known as the “cone” on modern blowguns) not only made the launch posssible but acted as a rudimentary stablilizer during flight. It was probably not a great leap to apply this well known fact to later dart/arrow technology.
Actually, stretchy Dennis-the-menace sling-shots weren’t used much in antiquity – David (as in vs. Goliath) twirling slings are completely different, more effective, and were used up to the Middle Ages.
Twirling slings on the end of a staff were occasionally used, and I could see someone experimenting with using a springy branch for that though.
Ok, this is interesting and made me look further down that road. I found this additional cite (PDF warning) which discusses the rise of “Stone Age” technology and states in part
So apparently unfletched arrows have been in ‘common’ use which eliminates the “how did we just decide to make a working arrow?” question and allows for a smoother progression.
I’ve been looking for a decent cite for the idea that the bow may have come from the bow drill method of starting a fire. I know I have heard the theory presented before, but it doesn’t seem to have very much in the way of backing.
Just to clarify my theory on the anthropology of the modern fletched arrow… I believe the inventor of fletching was the geometry of a cylinder .
The blowgun and dart predates the bow and arrow and if you examine a blowgun dart they are just arrows in mininature (piston, shaft, and tip.), the modern arrow being a macroscopic device. The difference is that the fletched piston of a blowgun dart serves a different primary function- it’s only purpose was to plug and ensure the airtight seal of a cylinder in order to propel a small sharp stick at high velocity. Incidental and accidental to that, we discovered that the fletched piston also stabilized the flight of the dart…and Bam! The arrow was invented (as well as rocketscience, the modern combustion engine, and every gun since).
People probably first shot straight sharp sticks with the bow, but some guy probably made the crossover after realizing… “Man these sticks that I’m shooting with my bow sure do suck! They fly all over the place and I hafta get so damn close to the fricking _______ (Insert large beastie of your choice) to actually hit him that it’s going to get me killed one of these days. My Blowgun never does this…what’s the difference?” A little chin scratching, and voila, fletched sticks.
That’s just one possibility however, and it’s just my hypothesis and opinion.