Download word docx Download MP3 Listen to MP3 online
Read below for script, questions and answers.
The Bow and Arrow Script
Hi. Good morning everybody. How are you today? This week, I want to talk to you about the bow and arrow, and something called the archer’s paradox, which I think is rather interesting. Before that, as always, don’t forget, if you click on the link in the About section below here, you can find the script for this talk, you can find questions and you can find answers. And, if you have any ideas for topics you’d like me to talk about, please put them in the comments below. And as always, if you like these talks, please subscribe and you can get them every week.
So, a bow and arrow. Where … when were the bow and arrow invented? Well, we don’t actually know, to be honest. They probably existed about 64,000 years ago, probably. Why don’t we know? Well, because, what is a bow and what is an arrow made of? They are mostly made of wood, and the string is made of animal parts, dried animal sinew, and the arrow is made of wood as well. And what happens to wood? Well, it disintegrates. If you put it on the ground it biodegrades. It gets eaten by bacteria and it disappears. The same with trees outside that die. However, the arrowhead, the top of the arrow, those sometimes last, and they last because they’re basically made of stone, or flint, or obsidian, which is a type of volcanic rock, I think. And, if you get shot with an arrow, the shaft of the arrow very well may biodegrade, but the stone will not. Now, generally, those stones look like regular stones, but quite often, if they’re found inside somebody, you can say, “Ah. That was an arrowhead.” And, of course, arrows and spears are different because a spear head is much bigger than an arrowhead, because it has to be weighted for the spear to fly correctly, which means an arrowhead is much smaller. So, if somebody … if you find a skeleton with obsidian blades inside them, most likely they were shot by an arrow. So, we can guess that arrows and … bows and arrows existed about 64 – 65,000 years ago, which was the Upper Paleolithic period of human life. Continue reading
