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The only interesting thing I know about Aborigines is they're the only known people who didn't invent the bow and arrow. As a hobbyist archer this is fascinatin

The only interesting thing I know about Aborigines is they're the only known people who didn't invent the bow and arrow. As a hobbyist archer this is fascinating to me. They apparently didn't need it, as they're still around.

coderenegade 4y ago
It's the wood. You can rank woods by the amount of strain energy per unit of mass that they can take before breaking. The higher this figure, the better the bow, because it'll store more energy for a lower mass in the limbs before it breaks, and the differences can be fairly significant. The best bow woods are all at the top of this list, along with a few that should be good in theory but aren't used likely for other reasons (i.e. the plant just doesn't produce the kind of limbs you need to make a bow). The best Australian woods are fairly ordinary by comparison. On average they're hopeless. This isn't to say you can't do it (people do with spotted gum, which isn't a good bow wood), just that there are better ways of going about it if you want to hunt. I'd be surprised if northern Australians at least didn't know about the bow, because there was frequent contact with Indonesia and people from PNG, all of whom practiced archery. There are oral traditions in places like Arnhem land testifying to this contact going back generations.
- a_bonobo 4y ago
  Most Australian wood is also ultra-hard, you can't have a bendy bow from there. People used to build streets from blocks of Jarrah wood [1]. A much more popular Australian weapon was the combination of spear thrower and spear; that'll take your head off clean. https://fremantlestuff.info/streets/blocks.html#:~:text=Australian%20Jarrah%20proved%20to%20be,resistant%20to%20absorbing%20horse%20urine https://fremantlestuff.info/streets/blocks.html#:~:text=Aust....
  - ChickenNugger 4y ago
    I have a Jarrah cane! I'm completely confident it would stop a steel sword. Probably mess up the edge in the process. It's heavy too.
  - wycx 4y ago
    Including one of the hardest of them all: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allocasuarina_luehmannii https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allocasuarina_luehmannii
- ChickenNugger 4y ago
  Huh! I have a locally made wood bow made from red oak and it's an absolute bastard to shoot. I think the bowyer wanted to one-up my 55# Samick sage so he made it a 56# draw weight. And even with a thick leather armguard it hurts quite a lot to shoot because the brace height is barely over 5" and it doesn't have a trigger grip being a piece of wood. I wonder where red oak ranks on the strain/mass chart. I'm used to hearing about yew being a really good wood for bows, but I'm more into shooting them than making them. I did find this which appears to rank them: https://www.wood-database.com/wood-articles/bow-woods/ https://www.wood-database.com/wood-articles/bow-woods/ but I don't know which if any of those are Australian.
  - coderenegade 4y ago
    Yeah that page is a decent start. Dividing modulus of rupture by the density of the wood gives you the Joules/kg that the material will take before breaking. Yew is quite good. Osage, lemonwood, black locust, hickory etc. are all very good. Elm works but it's worse than yew. Bamboo should also be very good, but its properties vary widely and aren't really captured on that site. Australian river red gum is theoretically decent, and I know that people have made serviceable bows from it. I think merbau backed with bamboo is about as good as it gets for Aussies, and merbau is an import.
    - UncleEntity 4y ago
      > Bamboo should also be very good, but its properties vary widely and aren't really captured on that site. I was watching a video the other day about samurai bows which are made of laminated bamboo. Quite comparable to the English longbow as those things go.
- int_19h 4y ago
  What's more intriguing is that we know for sure that Polynesians did know about the bow, and at least some of them even knew how to make it - but, for whatever reason, it wasn't used for anything "serious" like warfare. It's tempting to chalk it down to some kind of strong cultural taboo, e.g. to keep the wars at a "manageable" level of destruction. But then why did Maori eagerly adopt firearms once they got access to them, and used them in warfare between themselves?
realjhol 4y ago
They also didn't invent the wheel or build a space program
- justatdotin 4y ago
  or nuclear weapons. or pfas.
emmelaich 4y ago
There is the Woomera though. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woomera_(spear-thrower) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woomera_(spear-thrower)
pantry-man 4y ago
They're also the only culture to invent the boomerang which is a weapon that comes back to the thrower. Pretty cool if you ask me
- vkou 4y ago
  Returning boomerangs were unlikely to have been used as weapons.
- cscurmudgeon 4y ago
  Not really. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boomerang https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boomerang Although traditionally thought of as Australian, boomerangs have been found also in ancient Europe, Egypt, and North America. There is evidence of the use of non-returning boomerangs by the Native Americans of California and Arizona, and inhabitants of South India for killing birds and rabbits.
- girvo 4y ago
  Hunting boomerangs didn't return to the thrower. Picture a symmetrical returning boomerang you're used to, now massively shorten one of the "legs": that's the hunting boomerang I've been shown
  - Gustomaximus 4y ago
    To be a bit more specific returning boomerangs were used to hunt birds. While the non returning boomerangs you refer to were used for land animals and warfare.
adolph 4y ago
Dude, they had boomerangs and digerydoos. Who needs one-way arrows when you have been droning things since the beginning.
- bigDinosaur 4y ago
  As others have commented, boomerangs didn't work for hunting like the way they're culturally depicted. Thinking about it I have no idea how it'd even be possible to kill an animal and have the missile return given the necessary collision.
  - B1FF_PSUVM 4y ago
    If you stun or kill the animal, it's no big deal to pick up the weapon when picking up the carcass. But I sure would like to have a near miss not being followed by a search for the weapon.
    - bigDinosaur 4y ago
      Yes, that's a good point. It's certainly a cool design.
  - adolph 4y ago
    Ok, so the boomerang isn’t quite like a hunting drone, or unscrewed aerial vehicle, but the didgeridoo makes quite a drone nonetheless. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Didgeridoo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Didgeridoo
golemiprague 4y ago
[dead]

coderenegade 4y ago

It's the wood. You can rank woods by the amount of strain energy per unit of mass that they can take before breaking. The higher this figure, the better the bow, because it'll store more energy for a lower mass in the limbs before it breaks, and the differences can be fairly significant. The best bow woods are all at the top of this list, along with a few that should be good in theory but aren't used likely for other reasons (i.e. the plant just doesn't produce the kind of limbs you need to make a bow). The best Australian woods are fairly ordinary by comparison. On average they're hopeless. This isn't to say you can't do it (people do with spotted gum, which isn't a good bow wood), just that there are better ways of going about it if you want to hunt. I'd be surprised if northern Australians at least didn't know about the bow, because there was frequent contact with Indonesia and people from PNG, all of whom practiced archery. There are oral traditions in places like Arnhem land testifying to this contact going back generations.

a_bonobo 4y ago
Most Australian wood is also ultra-hard, you can't have a bendy bow from there. People used to build streets from blocks of Jarrah wood [1]. A much more popular Australian weapon was the combination of spear thrower and spear; that'll take your head off clean. https://fremantlestuff.info/streets/blocks.html#:~:text=Australian%20Jarrah%20proved%20to%20be,resistant%20to%20absorbing%20horse%20urine https://fremantlestuff.info/streets/blocks.html#:~:text=Aust....
- ChickenNugger 4y ago
  I have a Jarrah cane! I'm completely confident it would stop a steel sword. Probably mess up the edge in the process. It's heavy too.
- wycx 4y ago
  Including one of the hardest of them all: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allocasuarina_luehmannii https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allocasuarina_luehmannii
ChickenNugger 4y ago
Huh! I have a locally made wood bow made from red oak and it's an absolute bastard to shoot. I think the bowyer wanted to one-up my 55# Samick sage so he made it a 56# draw weight. And even with a thick leather armguard it hurts quite a lot to shoot because the brace height is barely over 5" and it doesn't have a trigger grip being a piece of wood. I wonder where red oak ranks on the strain/mass chart. I'm used to hearing about yew being a really good wood for bows, but I'm more into shooting them than making them. I did find this which appears to rank them: https://www.wood-database.com/wood-articles/bow-woods/ https://www.wood-database.com/wood-articles/bow-woods/ but I don't know which if any of those are Australian.
- coderenegade 4y ago
  Yeah that page is a decent start. Dividing modulus of rupture by the density of the wood gives you the Joules/kg that the material will take before breaking. Yew is quite good. Osage, lemonwood, black locust, hickory etc. are all very good. Elm works but it's worse than yew. Bamboo should also be very good, but its properties vary widely and aren't really captured on that site. Australian river red gum is theoretically decent, and I know that people have made serviceable bows from it. I think merbau backed with bamboo is about as good as it gets for Aussies, and merbau is an import.
  - UncleEntity 4y ago
    > Bamboo should also be very good, but its properties vary widely and aren't really captured on that site. I was watching a video the other day about samurai bows which are made of laminated bamboo. Quite comparable to the English longbow as those things go.
int_19h 4y ago
What's more intriguing is that we know for sure that Polynesians did know about the bow, and at least some of them even knew how to make it - but, for whatever reason, it wasn't used for anything "serious" like warfare. It's tempting to chalk it down to some kind of strong cultural taboo, e.g. to keep the wars at a "manageable" level of destruction. But then why did Maori eagerly adopt firearms once they got access to them, and used them in warfare between themselves?

realjhol 4y ago

They also didn't invent the wheel or build a space program

justatdotin 4y ago
or nuclear weapons. or pfas.

emmelaich 4y ago

There is the Woomera though. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woomera_(spear-thrower) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woomera_(spear-thrower)

pantry-man 4y ago

They're also the only culture to invent the boomerang which is a weapon that comes back to the thrower. Pretty cool if you ask me

vkou 4y ago
Returning boomerangs were unlikely to have been used as weapons.
cscurmudgeon 4y ago
Not really. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boomerang https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boomerang Although traditionally thought of as Australian, boomerangs have been found also in ancient Europe, Egypt, and North America. There is evidence of the use of non-returning boomerangs by the Native Americans of California and Arizona, and inhabitants of South India for killing birds and rabbits.
girvo 4y ago
Hunting boomerangs didn't return to the thrower. Picture a symmetrical returning boomerang you're used to, now massively shorten one of the "legs": that's the hunting boomerang I've been shown
- Gustomaximus 4y ago
  To be a bit more specific returning boomerangs were used to hunt birds. While the non returning boomerangs you refer to were used for land animals and warfare.

adolph 4y ago

Dude, they had boomerangs and digerydoos. Who needs one-way arrows when you have been droning things since the beginning.

bigDinosaur 4y ago
As others have commented, boomerangs didn't work for hunting like the way they're culturally depicted. Thinking about it I have no idea how it'd even be possible to kill an animal and have the missile return given the necessary collision.
- B1FF_PSUVM 4y ago
  If you stun or kill the animal, it's no big deal to pick up the weapon when picking up the carcass. But I sure would like to have a near miss not being followed by a search for the weapon.
  - bigDinosaur 4y ago
    Yes, that's a good point. It's certainly a cool design.
- adolph 4y ago
  Ok, so the boomerang isn’t quite like a hunting drone, or unscrewed aerial vehicle, but the didgeridoo makes quite a drone nonetheless. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Didgeridoo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Didgeridoo

golemiprague 4y ago

[dead]