Who is credited for inventing the bow?

John Derek?

Mesolithic hunters, I think likely from central Asia. But since those societies were non-literate, we have no records. It may also have been a case of simultaneous and separate invention, wherein it was invented in several places during a certain time period without it spreading by diffusion.

I remember hearing a story from some indigenous people in this area (northeast) about the invention of the bow and how it made hunting so easy that they almost overhunted. So the animals tried to make their own bows to punish humans, but each had to give up something of themselves to do so. Eventually some punishment was given out to teach the humans not to overhunt, and everyone was happy again.

Everyone knows it was Ayla from Clan of the Cave Bear…

Apparently the Chinese were using bows 20,000 years ago.

Per http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bow_and_arrow :

“Sixty-thousand-year-old stone points which might be identified as arrowheads have been found in a cave in South Africa. By 16,000 BCE flint points were being bound by sinews to split shafts. Fletching was being practiced, with feathers glued and bound to shafts.

The first actual bow fragments are the Stellmoor bows from northern Germany. They were dated to about 8,000 BCE but were destroyed in Hamburg during the Second World War. They were destroyed before carbon 14 dating was invented and their age was attributed by archaeological association. The second oldest bow fragments are the elm Holmegaard bows from Denmark which were dated to 6,000 BCE. High performance wooden bows are currently made following the Holmegaard design.”

A friend of mine who makes historical bows loves the Holmegaard design. Shoots pretty good.

One of the issues in evaluating it based on archaeological evidence is that traditional societies have been recorded using more than just stone for arrow heads. Burnished hardwood actually makes a pretty mean point. Some primitive skills people can grind down bone points for spears and arrows to be razor sharp. These materials break down more, and are harder to find evidence of.

My history teacher at school always told me it’s origins lay in China. A certain Mr. Twang being credited as the world’s first bowmaker. I suspect however my teacher was taking the piss!

I wondered which bow you were talking about (both in pronunciation and definition.) You clarified it above. Still, it could be the bow you tie with a ribbon, the bow you make to the queen, a violin bow, etc. And then there are the verbs and adjectives.
I don’t know anything much about weapons.

@Sunny2 the kind that shoots arrows.

You might think of Urghhh as a cave man, but he didn’t actually live in a cave. His people were nomadic, foraging here and there, and travelling, eventually, through the broad savannas of what is now know as Mongolia.

The problem Urghhh;s people were having was that they couldn’t catch many of the animals they were chasing. They were too fast, and the population had grown too large for the hunters to support using traditional techniques.

For reasons too complex to go into here (mostly because I don’t want to make them up), the tribe couldn’t split off a splinter group as they normally would in order to keep the population to a manageable size. I think there were other tribes lurking and it had been a harsh winter. That sort of thing. (Dang! I went into it anyway!)

So Urghhh is sitting around the campfire complaining to his wife about having to go further and spend more and more time to catch meat. His wife asks him, “Urghhh, my love, what would help you catch meat more efficiently?” (Except she didn’t use those words, because English wasn’t invented then and besides, they probably couldn’t talk at all; using mind reading instead).

So Urghh says, without thinking, “I need some kind of spear thrower that throws spears after the meat in a much faster way.”

Well, Urghhh’s woman, dutiful as she is, stays up all night and in the morning she kisses her man and hands him a strange contraption with a curved piece of wood attached at both ends by a piece of leather string. She also gives him some short sticks with sharp stones as points.

Urghhh says, “What’s this, woman?” Urghhh’s woman knows he won’t pay any attention, so she whispers in his ear that if he tries this thing, she’ll make it worth his while that night.

Wouldn’t you know, Urghh tries the bow and arrow and he shoots down three meat animals from a distance of 60 paces.

Everyone thinks Urghh is a hero, and soon he becomes the headman of the tribe, and he takes many more wives and his first wife is forgotten and sent to clean up the shit of their domesticated animals.

So you see, While Urghhh’swife truly invented the thing, Urghh got all the credit.

Typical.