Behavioral Ecology, Technology, and the Organization of Labor: How a Shift from Spear Thrower to Self Bow Exacerbates Social Disparities

Self-bows replaced spear throwers as primary terrestrial hunting weapons on nearly all continents at different time periods throughout human prehistory. Many scholars have debated whether this transition occurred because of a shift in resource exploitation toward smaller fauna or because of the bow's supposedly superior performance in warfare. Before causal hypotheses explaining this technological shift can be tested, performance characteristics of atlatls versus bows must be well understood. Studies of performance characteristics often address topics such as the range, accuracy, ormaintainability of weapons systems, but this study quantitatively compares the learnability of each weapon. Learning curves for spear throwers and bows are established using contemporary data generated by archers from the Society for Creative Anachronism and atlatlists from the World Atlatl Association. The hypothesis that spear throwers are easier to learn and can be wielded effectively by a wider segment of human populations than bows is supported. Implications for the organization of labor are contextualized in light of socioecological changes generally characterizing the conditions under which shifts from atlatl to self-bow technology occurred in prehistory.