For instance, when shooting arrows, they do it one by one, which gives the enemy a chance to dodge the arrows. Implementing basic strategies (such as shooting arrows simultaneously) of war would have a huge impact on their success against their enemies, which makes me think that it is not so easy to come up with these strategies in the first place.
The claim that shooting arrows simultaneously is more efficient seems surprising to me given my experience of archery and what I heard about it. Success at archery is a lot about aiming arrows and that’s easier if you shoot one then if you shoot many.
Arrows are also valuable and you likely don’t want to shoot all of your arrows to early in war.
If both sides are obeying a warrior code that lets you gain prestige but limits lethality, then you don’t want to defect by escalating the lethality of attacks, because then your enemies might too. Warrior codes are often part of a prisoners dilemma.
DIamond mentions that North Alaska Inuits are an exception at having trained shooting arrows at once. I cannot add anything besides that it makes me want to read something about military strategy, it is a fascinating topic and I know little about it.
The claim that shooting arrows simultaneously is more efficient seems surprising to me given my experience of archery and what I heard about it. Success at archery is a lot about aiming arrows and that’s easier if you shoot one then if you shoot many.
Arrows are also valuable and you likely don’t want to shoot all of your arrows to early in war.
This is a late reply, but in some societies, intentionally not killing your enemy is the point. See counting coup in the Americas. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counting_coup
If both sides are obeying a warrior code that lets you gain prestige but limits lethality, then you don’t want to defect by escalating the lethality of attacks, because then your enemies might too. Warrior codes are often part of a prisoners dilemma.
DIamond mentions that North Alaska Inuits are an exception at having trained shooting arrows at once. I cannot add anything besides that it makes me want to read something about military strategy, it is a fascinating topic and I know little about it.