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Chapter II
Prehistoric Archery
Part 2 of 2
The weapon consists of about two-thirds of a thin stem or branch of yew, and is hot cut from a thick
trunk, as is now the practice. The stem was split longitudinally into two unequal portions, and the
larger portion was then shaped. No doubt the rounded side was the belly, or portion held towards
the archer. It would follow that the 'sap,' or part of the wood next the bark, where the sap flows,
formed the belly. This is contrary to the practice of modern bowyers, who always use the sap, which
is the more elastic part of the wood, for the back.
Though few bows remain to us of the age of polished stone, the number of arrow-heads that survive
affords incontestable evidence that they once existed. Specimens of stone arrow-heads have been
found, in greater or less profusion, in almost every country in Europe.[7] From Africa they are scanty,
but more may be discovered when archaeologists have paid greater attention to that continent. Still,
some have come from the dolmens of Algeria and the Egyptian tombs. In Asia comparatively few
have yet been found, and no doubt the cause is the same to which the scarcity of specimens from
Africa must be attributed. They have been obtained, however, in India and Arabia, and in Japan. In
North America they exist in large numbers, and, indeed, are manufactured to this day by the
Californian Indians and by the Eskimo of Greenland. They also occur ill Mexico, and in South
America, in Peru, and as far south as Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego, in which latter country they
are still made by the natives. None have yet been obtained in Australia or New Zealand, in which
countries the natives do not use bows.
The material of which stone arrow-heads are composed is generally silex in some form. In most
cases they are chipped from flint, which is nearly pure silex. In Greenland the Eskimo make them
of chert, and in Mexico, and some other localities, they are made from obsidian, or natural volcanic
glass, and silex enters largely into the composition of both these minerals.
The forms of stone arrow-heads are very various, but they are all more or less cuneiform, or wedge-shaped, and they may be grouped into two classes; viz. (1) those in which the apex of the wedge is
used for penetration, and (2) those in which the wedge is reversed and the base forms the cutting
edge; the latter group is called by archaeologists 'chisel' edged. The first class is by lar the
commonest, and is subdivided by Sir John Evans[8] into five main forms, which, however, run into
each other, many intermediate forms being found. These five forms are the Leaf-shaped, the
Lozenge-shaped, the Tanged--which a stem or tang is added for insertion into the shaft-- the
Barbed, and the Triangular. Perhaps the tanged should hardly be regarded as a separate class, as
barbed, triangular, and perhaps lozenge-shaped, arrow-heads are all found with and without the
tang.
Neolithic Arrowheads
(From Sir J. Evans 'Ancient Stone Implements of Great Britain')The Californian Indians manufacture barbed arrow-heads with a nick on each side, for convenience
in attaching them to the shaft. An arrow-head of obsidian, precisely similar in form and method of
attachment to the modern Californian examples, was found in the ancient Swiss Lake Dwelling at
Robenhausen.
The reversed wedge or chisel-edged form is much less common in Europe, though it is occasionally
found. It appears to have been commonly used in ancient Egypt, and I have seen a modern African
arrow with an iron head of this form in the Berlin Ethnographical Museum.
It is difficult to see why the wedge should have been adopted so universally as the right form for
arrow-heads; and, indeed, it is remarkable that any single form should be so widely spread and so
persistent. The matter is the more curious when we consider that the wedge is by no means the
simplest and most natural form. The natural form would be merely a sharp and hardened
continuation of the shaft. The addition of a wedge-shaped excrescence would seem to impede
penetration rather than to assist it. This has suggested to me the probability that the typical arrow-head form may have been copied from some convenient natural object which w as used for the
purpose before the art of manufacturing arrow-heads from stone was invented. One class of objects
which would be found in great plenty at once suggests itself--viz. the teeth of land or sea animals.
A comparison between the engravings of sharks' teeth and the triangular and barbed forms of
arrow-head (p. 21) seems to suggest something more than a coincidence.
The similarity in form is most striking, and possibly we have here the origin of the barb, which has
been applied to many implements since those early days. A further coincidence may be noted in the
serrated edge which is a striking feature in the teeth of many sharks, and which is also found in many
arrow-heads. this device, of doubtful utility in an arrow-head, is hardly likely to have occurred to
the mind of primitive man, unless it was suggested by solve existing natural object, from which he
was copying.
In a Lake Dwelling at Moosseedorf, near Bern, in Switzerland, an arrow-head has been found, of
bone, which has a very finely serrated edge,[9] and is also slightly barbed. I have not heard of any teeth
being found actually bound into arrow-shafts, and, indeed, it is hardly likely that any such now exist,
as very few stone arrows even have come down to us in this condition. At Ebersberg,[10] on the Ischl,
in company with stone and bronze implements, a number of fossil sharks' teeth were discovered,
the use of which seems to be unknown. Stone celts were found, but no stone arrow-heads; only one
bronze arrow-head was discovered. It is at least possible that these teeth were used as arrow-heads.
