Study Finds Bow and Arrow Swept Western North America 1,400 Years Ago

Study pinpoints when bow and arrow came to North America

Radiocarbon results suggest a single origin and rapid diffusion through cultural transition networks.

A New Weapon Arrives: How the Bow and Arrow Changed North America

Ancient bow and arrows. Credit: Museum staff / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 3.0 A new study says the bow and arrow spread across western North America about 1,400 years ago, marking a major shift in how people hunted and fought. But the change did not unfold the same way everywhere. In the south, the bow quickly pushed aside older weapons. In the north, it shared space with the atlatl for centuries. The study, led by Briggs Buchanan of the Unive…

The adoption of the bow and arrow in western North America

A study clarifies the date of an important technological milestone: the adoption of the bow and arrow in western North America. The replacement of older weapons by bows and arrows occurred independently in several prehistoric cultures. Briggs Buchanan and colleagues explore this transition in western North America, where the bow replaced the atlatl and dart as the primary hunting technology.

1,400 Years Ago, the Bow and Arrow Took Over Western North America —Reshaping Hunting Traditions

Learn how ancient weapons show when the bow and arrow replaced the atlatl, and why the transition played out differently across western North America.

Bow and arrow arrived about 1,400 years ago across western North America, study finds

A study clarifies the date of an important technological milestone: the adoption of the bow and arrow in western North America. The replacement of older weapons by bows and arrows occurred independently in several prehistoric cultures. Briggs Buchanan and colleagues explore this transition in western North America, where the bow replaced the atlatl and dart as the primary hunting technology. The study is published in PNAS Nexus.

Rapid adoption of bow technology across western North America ∼1,400 years ago

The replacement of the atlatl and dart by the bow and arrow marks a major technological transformation in the human past, yet the timing and dynamics of this transition in North America remain poorly resolved due to the poor preservation of organic weaponry. Here, we compile and analyze a dataset of 140 radiocarbon dates from 136 well-preserved organic weapons recovered from western North America, spanning approximately the last 10,000 years. Usi