Prior to discussing the comparison between carbon arrows and the aluminium arrows, it is necessary to understand a little history of the arrow. The evolution of the arrow shaft began when the first bow and arrow set was invented. Historians have researched this topic and are under the impression that this occurred during the Palaeolithic era which was around thirty five thousand to eight thousand years before Christ (B.C.). During that era a certain individual must have cognitively thought of the concept that, instead of throwing a spear at their animal of choice for their meal that they would rather launch a large stick, attached to a piece of vine or twine in order to thrust a smaller spear at a higher rate of speed at the animal and harvest their food more efficiently. This would ensure a greater quantity of force applied to this small spear.

This individual together with his fellow tribesmen must have then built a bow and several arrows and then practiced for many hours to become skilled at launching it at animals. It obviously took a lot of patience, perseverance and determination to discover the correct material to make the arrows resulting in good, consistent arrow flight. For many thousands of years primitive man used wood to make his arrows from. Some archers today still favour the use of wood (i.e. carbon) but as is the case with all of man's endeavours study and innovation resulted in improvements to the materials used to make the carbon arrows, as well as bows and bow accessories. The first step up from wood or carbon was aluminium. Wood, which is now known as carbon and has been transformed into carbon, started as the material of choice because it could be shaped and straightened into arrow shafts.

Through experimentation, it was realised that a straight arrow shaft could and did fly more accurately than a shaft which was skew or not as straight as it should have been. Wood was used as the only construction material for arrow shafts until the time came when primitive man discovered the metals that were mined from the earth and how those metals could be heated and moulded into any required shape. It was then discovered that when the first metals, such as bronze, copper and iron, were used as arrow shafts, they were far too heavy in weight and would fly only short distances. These metals became useful as points for arrows because they could be more easily sharpened compared to the huge effort that it used to take to sharpen stone to become the arrow heads. The aluminium arrow story initially started in nineteen thirty nine when James Easton first started to experiment with aluminium and using it to create an arrow shaft. Two years later, Larry Hughes was the first archer to win the American National Archery Championship while using aluminium arrows. James Easton continued to develop production techniques which would provide a more consistent aluminium arrow shaft.