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Message: <blockquote data-quote="GameDaddy" data-source="post: 5989331" data-attributes="member: 80711">How was it then, that the usefulness of the Bow wasn't shared in the same way that the usefulness of the heavy spear was? Where there wasn't cliffs, V-type traps were used extensively, where a long line of stakes or fencing was put up (in the water, it was rock dams), and the whole tribe would form a line scaring prey into the open side of the V then scaring the prey deeper into the funnel into a pre-designated Kill zone at the narrowest part of the V. The most successful tribes hunted this way ensuring a plentiful supply of fresh protein. When they hunted out an area, they'd move to a new area, and then some years later return to their original hunting grounds after the local fauna had replenished itself. It was a renewable food resource.The successful lone heroic hunter is a myth, as usually such individuals were either outcasts for committing taboos, or had lost the bulk of their tribe because of a hunt gone bad, or a war with another tribe. All (even the children) were expected to participate and help with the hunt.In the Americas, it's more like 70-80,000 years ago, give or take a few millenium. The Neandertals disappeared as a race around 35,000 BC. and Big Game saw a sharp decline at the end of the last great ice age some 19,000 years ago. 4,500 BC was the time of the last Wooly Mammoths, so yeah, I could definitely see bows coming into widespread use in heavily hunted areas around 6000 BC. There was no need for writing. This goes back to them already having everything in their environment to sustain them indefinitely. Without any active forces influencing them, humanity, h. sapiens even more than neandertals, simply isn't motivated to invent and innovate, as there is no reward for spending time doing that that does not exceeds the other rewards already attainable for investing in sustaining the tribe. "Neanderthals possessed the gene for language and had sophisticated music, art and tool craftsmanship skills, so they must have not been all that unattractive to modern humans at the time."Reference: <a href="http://news.discovery.com/human/genetics-neanderthal-110718.html" target="_blank">All Non-Africans Part Neanderthal, Genetics Confirm : Discovery News</a>To give you a modern day example, we can already build cars that get 200 MPG or better, no one is doing so however, because there is still plenty of fossil fuels available at a such a low price as to make building such cars an undesirable prospect. Let the gas run out, and then watch what happens.</blockquote>

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