Archaeologica.org

A bow is basically a stick...which is not going to survive for very long unless very special circmstances apply. Arrows are basically smaller sticks....which will decay even sooner.

Short of a cave art depiction of a hunting scene using a bow/arrow, I doubt that we can ever expect to get solid proof of when archery developed in the new world.

Exactly my view Min, so let's look at the points and see if we can work out what they were used for.
Some seem only suitable for a thin stick, ie an arrow.

http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0002-7 ... reducePage

Here's an article on the adoption of the bow/arrow in Southeastern Prehistory.

Abstract
North American archaeologists have long been interested in distinguishing between dart and arrow points in order to establish when bow-and-arrow technology was adopted in the Eastern Woodlands. A quantitative analysis of point form and qualitative reconstructions of bifacial reduction trajectories from Plum Bayou culture sites in central Arkansas indicate that arrow points were abruptly adopted and became widespread about A.D. 600. Moreover, arrow points are metrically discrete entities that were not developed through gradual modification of dart points in this region as appears to be the case elsewhere. Comparisons with patterns observed in other regions of the East show significant variation in the timing, rate, and direction of the adoption of the bow and arrow, as well as the role of this technological change in Native American economies and sociopolitics. These observations suggest that the bow and arrow were: (1) introduced significantly earlier than some researchers have posited; (2) independently invented by some groups and diffused to others; and (3) relinquished and later readopted in some areas of the Eastern Woodlands in response to changing social, historical, and environmental conditions. Our data also call into question simple unilinear or diffusionary models that claim to explain the development and spread of this technological innovation.

Dr. Heater is with the pre-Clovis vs Gault. Wish he had found it.

gunny wrote:Dr. Heater is with the pre-Clovis vs Gault. Wish he had found it.

No doubt. Hell of a site, ey!!

I'll be buying the site report for sure!

http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0002-7 ... reducePage

Abstract
The belief that the bow and arrow replaced the spear and/or dart as hunting weapons in eastern North America between 1500 and 1200 B.P. is tested using a classification function that identifies bifaces as either spear/dart or arrow points. Results and their alternative interpretations bear important implications for the timing and nature of the technological transition. Moreover, the economic consequences of the transition are at once subtler and less profound than often supposed. Ethnographic data do not support simple notions of a uniform increase in acquisition efficiency across target species with the adoption of the bow and arrow.

For me the interesting point was on the woodlands, a short bow is much easier to use in dense woodlands than a spear thrower, it is also superior aganst smaller game.
Unless the NA Indians were dafter than their old world counterparts I suspect they had the bow earlier than the physical evidence suggests.
Just how many bows have survived in the old world from the millions that must have been made?

Here's a guy who says

Hunting flourished during the so-called middle part of the Upper Palaeolithic. In my opinion, this was promoted considerably by the improvement of hunting implements, particularly the ability to launch projectiles over a longer range after the bow was invented and brought into use between 30 000 and 25 000 b.p.

Boldface and italicising are mine.

http://donsmaps.com/lioncamp.html

Suppose that were so in the Don basin in the Ukraine, then why did it take 24,000 years for the bow to reach America?

Did it RS? We didn't know about T Rex till we found one, and as I pointed out a while back, a broken bow or spear makes good fire wood. Nearly all the early bows over here are broken I believe and presumably broke away from base and were discarded, but as manufacture improved less of them would break with use and would logically be examined at base and replaced, after all, a bow breaking in use can be rather nasty!
Think of how few bows are known and think of the points that we have, I think we must seek points rather than bows.

Of course bows and arrows burn and/or disintegrate. So the likelihood of finding remains of one that's 10,000 yrs old is naturally very small. OTH, if carcasses can be preserved perfectly by ice and/or sediment, so could bows and arrows! If burial gifts can 'survive' dozens of centuries in dry graves, then why never bows and arrows?
Yet bows and arrows were never found in America.
Also, as Min pointed out, if bows and arrows were such an important tool/implement, they would be visible in petroglyphs, statuettes and/or carvings, wouldn't they? Yet, they aren't.

No, imo the bow and arrow are conspicuously absent from the NA indian record because the NA indian simply didn't know it!

Seems logical RS, but I confess to being puzzled as to why NA was so far behind the rest of the world on this.
We also face the contadiction of dating, if man only arrived in the New World as late as the 'Clovis Firsters' argue, common sense says they would have had the bow.

Digit wrote:
Seems logical RS, but I confess to being puzzled as to why NA was so far behind the rest of the world on this.

It's not just 'this' non-development, Digit. There are many like that: the wheel, writing, sailing, bronze, iron, cities, distant trading, etc. etc.
NA indians seem to have done no developing worth mentioning in the holocene. While the rest of the world charged ahead and developed the hell out of themselves!

Why?

I posit they didn't because they couldn't. They lack(ed) the required capabilities.

Or RS, their ancestors got there before these developments arose. Either explanation would fit the known facts.
If you accept that many inventions were a one off, then spread, the rise in sea levels would have left many peoples out of the mainstream of developments.
Some developments were definitely one offs and their spread is well documented.
Whether right or wrong, this does fit.

Digit wrote:
If you accept that many inventions were a one off,

I don't. It's a mixed bag, imo: some inventions were a one-off and subsequently spread, others (most, imo) happened, often approx. simultaneously, in completely different, unconnected!, parts of the world (gunpowder, metal type printing, cities, sailing, distant trading, writing, etc. etc.).

the rise in sea levels would have left many peoples out of the mainstream of developments.

You mean they couldn't copy ('steal'!) ideas from others!
That also means they obviously also couldn't conceive of such developments themselves and needed other races' developments and examples!
Meaning they weren't "original thinkers". Only copycats.

Why not call a spade a spade?

Well that's what I said! I said many were one offs, not all.
So if the Bow was a one off, as I believe it is supposed to have been, and NA was cut off before it spread there, then people must have reached NA before the invention reached them!
The alternative is that the colonisers of NA had the Bow and abandoned it when they crossed from Asia into the New World, which is a little unlikely.
If the Native Americans were a Stione Age people before Columbus then logically they made the crossing as Stone Agers, not that they abandoned metal working etc when they got there.