Bows and arrows have been with us for at least 100,000 years. I'm sure they were our primary means of obtaining meat for most of that time, as we have been domesticating animals for only about 5,000 - 10,000 years. Bows and arrows were invented independently by most cultures in the world, and of course were adopted by other cultures that came in contact with the cultures that invented them. The only major culture that hasn't had a tradition of using the bow and arrow are the Australian Bushmen.
So you would think that during the long period of time we have been using the bow, we might have evolved in a direction of being more proficient with the bow. In other words, if you could take a child from a period of time before the bow existed, and a child from modern times, would the modern child have a genetic advantage in learning to shoot the bow? I'm sure in some sense he would: if a person were proficient with the bow, he would be considered more desirable as a mate, and therefore his children might also be more proficient with the bow, through a process of natural selection. Over time, a whole population might move in the direction of being more proficient with the bow, similar to cross-breeding hunting dogs for the most desirable traits.
But this is really a chicken and the egg question, I think. Did we select the bow or did the bow select us? Because it was independently invented in so many different cultures, it makes me wonder. What I mean by my question, which sounds somewhat ridiculous the way I stated it, is similar to the question of how we human beings ended up looking the way we do and surviving the way we survive.
Of course there is the religious answer, that God made us this way, and then there is the scientific answer, that we evolved to be the way we are because that way worked, and other evolutionary paths didn't, and so they died out. And while there will never be agreement between the two camps as to how it all started, both camps would agree that we have a critical mandate to be resourceful, whether from God or as an instinct to survive. There is no doubt in my mind that the single most resourceful thing that human beings accomplished was the use of the bow and arrow, even moreso than the use of fire or the invention of the wheel.
So going back to my question, as to whether we selected the bow or the bow selected us, let's use the example of air. We didn't select air; air was there and unless we could survive by breathing air, we wouldn't last long on this earth. So in a sense, air selected those animals who could survive by breathing it, and that is true whether it was planned that way by God or happened that way by evolution. In my way of thinking, the bow and arrow are so important to the history of man, I don't think man could have survived without them other than some small groups of primitive people here and there. So in that sense, the bow and arrow, throughout most of man's history has been closer to a necessity like air than a convenience like the wheel.
Topic: Instinct like behaviour (Read 206 times)
