Why pointer (*) and array ([]) symbols are bound to variable name and not to type in variable declaration?

Question

There\'re a lot of questions on SO about details of pointer and array declarations in C (and C subset of C++).
I\'m more interested in why.
Why

Answer 1

Why do we have to put *, [] in front of every variable when we declare several pointers/arrays in a row?

The answer would be: explicit is better than implicit. In such a case we can even declare different types on the same row, int *a, *b, c; and so on, in another case it would be too messy. The same true for the second question.