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Re:Aboriginal Australian genomes reveal Indian ancestry by ChickenNugger on Wednesday March 01, 2023 @06:38PM (#34989938)
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.

Re:Aboriginal Australian genomes reveal Indian ancestry by coderenegade on Wednesday March 01, 2023 @06:52PM (#34990049)
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.

Re:Aboriginal Australian genomes reveal Indian ancestry by a_bonobo on Wednesday March 01, 2023 @07:02PM (#34990138)
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=Aust....

Re:Aboriginal Australian genomes reveal Indian ancestry by ChickenNugger on Wednesday March 01, 2023 @07:12PM (#34990214)
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.
Re:Aboriginal Australian genomes reveal Indian ancestry by wycx on Wednesday March 01, 2023 @08:27PM (#34990770)
Including one of the hardest of them all: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allocasuarina_luehmannii
Re:Aboriginal Australian genomes reveal Indian ancestry by ChickenNugger on Wednesday March 01, 2023 @07:09PM (#34990193)
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/ but I don't know which if any of those are Australian.

Re:Aboriginal Australian genomes reveal Indian ancestry by coderenegade on Wednesday March 01, 2023 @09:52PM (#34991329)
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.

Re:Aboriginal Australian genomes reveal Indian ancestry by UncleEntity on Thursday March 02, 2023 @08:36AM (#34995453)
> 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.

Re:Aboriginal Australian genomes reveal Indian ancestry by int_19h on Thursday March 02, 2023 @12:50AM (#34992459)
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?

Re:Aboriginal Australian genomes reveal Indian ancestry by realjhol on Wednesday March 01, 2023 @06:55PM (#34990075)
They also didn't invent the wheel or build a space program
Re:Aboriginal Australian genomes reveal Indian ancestry by justatdotin on Wednesday March 01, 2023 @09:31PM (#34991180)
or nuclear weapons. or pfas.
Re:Aboriginal Australian genomes reveal Indian ancestry by emmelaich on Wednesday March 01, 2023 @07:10PM (#34990198)
Re:Aboriginal Australian genomes reveal Indian ancestry by pantry-man on Wednesday March 01, 2023 @07:12PM (#34990217)
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
Re:Aboriginal Australian genomes reveal Indian ancestry by vkou on Wednesday March 01, 2023 @07:29PM (#34990370)
Returning boomerangs were unlikely to have been used as weapons.
Re:Aboriginal Australian genomes reveal Indian ancestry by cscurmudgeon on Wednesday March 01, 2023 @08:03PM (#34990603)
Not really. 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.
Re:Aboriginal Australian genomes reveal Indian ancestry by girvo on Wednesday March 01, 2023 @08:08PM (#34990640)
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
Re:Aboriginal Australian genomes reveal Indian ancestry by Gustomaximus on Thursday March 02, 2023 @07:52AM (#34995048)
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.
Re:Aboriginal Australian genomes reveal Indian ancestry by adolph on Wednesday March 01, 2023 @11:11PM (#34991896)
Dude, they had boomerangs and digerydoos. Who needs one-way arrows when you have been droning things since the beginning.
Re:Aboriginal Australian genomes reveal Indian ancestry by bigDinosaur on Thursday March 02, 2023 @12:29AM (#34992325)
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.
Re:Aboriginal Australian genomes reveal Indian ancestry by B1FF_PSUVM on Thursday March 02, 2023 @07:05AM (#34994741)
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.

Re:Aboriginal Australian genomes reveal Indian ancestry by bigDinosaur on Thursday March 02, 2023 @08:16PM (#35004534)
Yes, that's a good point. It's certainly a cool design.
Re:Aboriginal Australian genomes reveal Indian ancestry by adolph on Thursday March 02, 2023 @03:59PM (#35002001)
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