What does everyone think about this -- apologies if everyone already was operating under this assumption and as usual I was obtuse:
My original assumption was that man chose the land, set the tees and holes, and then rabbits and sheep followed. Bunkers thus were formed by rabbits, sheep, and man, but man's being along the line of play, and animals wherever.
But was the reality really the reverse of this? Given the complete lack of agronomy, is a more-likely assumption that man located where the turf was amenable to the game? And that the choice of linksland was a product of:
1. Land useless agriculturally, so that no one sought to keep off animals or undo their "destruction" of the land,
2. Place where rabbits and sheep already roamed, providing a closely-mown, ready for play surface?
I assumed that man chose the land and "built" the course first, and sheep and rabbits then somehow "moved in" and started building bunkers over a course whose tees and holes already were fixed.
But isn't it more likely to have happened this way: man chose land where the sheep and rabbits already roamed. He would have been confronted by a land where the animals closely cropped the grass, allowing for play, but that unfortunately was littered with sandy pits and rabbit holes -- an unfortunate byproduct of land otherwise ideal due to its closely-mown grass? Where said bunkers were allowed to grow, and not immediately eradicated, because the land was worthless agriculturally?
In this scenario, rabbits and sheep did play monkeys at the typewriter. Slopes in the lee and hollows -- later "collection areas" -- would have been pockmarked with "bunkers." This word in quotes, though, as it was meaningless before golfers came along to create and name the concept.
What happened next: golfers embued those bunkers with strategic meaning by choosing tees and holes that brought those features into play. I assumed, certainly wrongly, a course whose location was fixed. But surely golfers chose an already-pockmarked land, and eventually, somehow, figured out the game was made more interesting when they relocated tees and holes to bring those sandy areas into play.
Thus, before golfers = meaningless sandy pits. After golfers = "bunkers."
So that's two theories:
1. Golfers chose land that already was heavily pockmarked with sandy waste pits and introduced the concept of strategic (or penal) bunkers through their choices of where to locate the tees and holes.
2. Golfers' repeated play. Through their play, they opened gashes / divots in the ground that grew into bunkers positioned exactly where their shots sometimes finished.
In both cases, you could say that man is the source of the strategic bunker, but this discovery was serendipitous; i.e., not the product of someone purposely building a bunker in a certain spot for "strategic" reasons. That idea must have developed out of the original discovery.
I'm sure everyone has already thought of this and that I was just misreading the posts because of my probably-wrong perspective.
Now, as to the Wethered & Simpson position...
Bob C.: why do you see the man and rabbit theories as competing?
Here's another possibility: golfers chose land that was heavily pockmarked with sandy waste areas. They located tees and holes to avoid as much of these as possible. The idea was that these areas should be out of play.
But then something unintentional happened: through repeated play, golfers created their own sandy waste areas. Because these areas fell within the boundaries of play, golfers could not avoid the conclusion: sandy waste areas can make the game more interesting.
Thus, the discovery of the strategic bunker...
Mark