oldest bow

[jerv]

http://users.skynet.be/fa057790/Rosendahl.pdf

interested to know what the other bow people think
it's not all in french and there are some interesting photos.
given the excellence of the holmegaard design it would seem probable that the bow was the result of a fairly long archery tradition.
My personal theory is that the bow came to promenance when the forests started to dominate the northern ecosystems. The spearthrower and dart uses similar technology to the bow, atlatl darts look very similar to new guinean and amazonian arrows.
the spearthrower may well have been suited to hunting large game (reindeer, horses) in huge herds in an open environment. While the bow may have been more suited to hunting small groups of animals (boar, deer) in a closed forest setting.

 

[bent-stick]

I saw this a few months ago and I've got a translation and I've been sent a picture of someone pulling up a replica. I'll try to find it when I get home tonight.

I think it might be a bit of a stretch to assume it was a bow. The abstract in the paper acknowledges this.

It's only nocked at one end. There is no sign of wear at the arrow pass. You could just as easily argue that it was a pole for a pole sling.

I'm not sure how Scots Pine reacts to the compression and tension and whether the changes will be evident in something that has been in the mud for 10,000 years but chrysals or tension splits would be the absolute clincher.