Abstract
ARROW-RELEASE.—Mr. A. L. Kroeber has worked over the material relating to methods of arrowrelease, with special reference to the distribution of the various types and its bearing upon the problems of diffusion. His results are published as No. 4 of vol. 23 of the University of California Publications in American Archceology and Ethnology. Five methods of release are recognised: two, the primary and secondary, depend upon a direct hold on the arrow; the tertiary draws on the string holding the arrow between thumb and index; the Mediterranean draws on the string with the end of the fingers at right angles, holding the arrow between index and middle fingers; and the Mongolian employs a thumb, usually with a ring, to pull the string, this release being closely associated with the composite bow of horn, sinew, and wood. The distribution of the Mongolian release is compact and Asiatic, with an extrp-Asiatic occurrence among the Yahi in nothern California, here attributed to independent invention. The Mediterranean occurs in three areas-Europe to south-east Asia, with the earliest record in Twelfth Dynasty Egypt, Eskimo (Siberia, Alaska, and Baffinland), and in south California, Arizona, and Sonora. These are construed as separate origins. The distribution of the tertiary release is irregular, occurring in central North America, Central America, and the Congo, with-eight cases between India and Melanesia. The secondary is the least wide-spread, being reported, apart from doubtful cases, only from North America. The primary is the most irregular, and appears to be due to the persistence of originally ‘primitive’ or simple methods, and occurs in a distribution marginal to the tertiary release. The general conclusion is that there is a seemingly limited number of normal growth or spread distributions and several probabilities of independent origins.
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Research Items. Nature 119, 904–905 (1927). https://doi.org/10.1038/119904a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/119904a0