History

Main article: History of archery

The bow seems to have been invented in the late Paleolithic or early Mesolithic. The oldest indication for its use in Europe comes from the Stellmoor in the Ahrensburg valley north of Hamburg, Germany and date from the late Paleolithic Hamburgian culture (9000-8000 BC). The arrows were made of pine and consisted of a mainshaft and a 15-20 centimetre (6-8 inches) long foreshaft with a flint point. There are no known definite earlier bows; previous pointed shafts are known, but may have been launched by atlatls rather than bows.

The oldest bows known so far come from the Holmegård swamp in Denmark. In the 1940s, two bows were found there. They are made of elm and have flat arms and a D-shaped midsection. The center section is biconvex. The complete bow is 1.50 m (5 ft) long. Bows of Holmegaard-type were in use until the Bronze Age; the convexity of the midsection has decreased with time.

Mesolithic pointed shafts have been found in England, Germany, Denmark, and Sweden. They were often rather long (up to 120 cm [4 ft]) and made of hazel (Corylus avellana), wayfaring tree (Viburnum lantana) and other small woody shoots. Some still have flint arrow-heads preserved; others have blunt wooden ends for hunting birds and small game. The ends show traces of fletching, which was fastened on with birch-tar.

Bows and arrows have been present in Egyptian culture since its predynastic origins. The nine bows symbolize the various peoples that had been ruled over by the pharaoh since Egypt was united.

In the Levant, artifacts which may be arrow-shaft straighteners are known from the Natufian culture, ca. 12.800-10.300 BP) onwards. The Khiamian and PPN A shouldered Khiam-points may well be arrowheads.

The bow was one of the earliest forms of artillery. Bows eventually replaced the atlatl as the predominant means for launching projectiles.

Classical civilizations, notably the Persians, Macedonians, Nubians, Greeks, Koreans, Parthians, Indians, Japanese, and Chinese fielded large numbers of archers in their armies. Arrows proved exceptionally destructive against massed formations, and the use of archers often proved decisive. The Sanskrit term for archery, dhanurveda, came to refer to martial arts in general.

During the Middle Ages, archery in warfare was not as prevalent and dominant in Western Europe as popular myth sometimes dictates. Archers were quite often the lowest-paid soldiers in an army or were conscripted from the peasantry. This was due to the cheap nature of the bow and arrow, as compared to the expense needed to equip a professional man-at-arms with good armour and a sword. Professional archers required a lifetime of training and expensive bows to be effective, and were thus rare in Europe (see English longbow).

Archery was highly developed in Asia and in the Islamic world. In East Asia the ancient Korean civilizations were well-known for their archery skills^[1][2], and South Korea remains a particularly strong performer at Olympic archery competitions even to this day^[3][4][5]. Horse archers were the main military force of most of the Equestrian Nomads. Central Asian and American Plains tribesmen were extremely adept at archery on horseback.

[edit] Decline and revival of archery

The advent of firearms rendered bows obsolete in warfare. Despite the high social status, ongoing utility, and widespread pleasure of archery in England, Japan, Korea, China, Turkey, America, Egypt, and elsewhere, every culture that gained access to even early firearms used them widely, to the relative neglect of archery. Early firearms were vastly inferior in rate-of-fire, and were very susceptible to wet weather. But they had longer effective range ^[6] and were tactically superior in the common situation of soldiers shooting at each other from behind obstructions. They also required significantly less training to use properly, in particular penetrating steel armour without any need to develop special musculature. Armies equipped with guns could thus provide superior firepower by sheer weight of numbers, and highly-trained archers became obsolete on the battlefield. "Have them bring as many guns as possible, for no other equipment is needed. Give strict orders that all men, even the samurai, carry guns." ^[7] The last recorded use of bows, in an English battle, seems to have been a skirmish at Bridgnorth, in October 1642, during the English Civil War^[8]. Archery continued in some areas that were subject to limitations on the ownership of arms, such as the Scottish Highlands during the repression that followed the decline of the Jacobite cause, and the Cherokees after the Trail of Tears. Archery remained an important part of the military examinations until 1894 (in Korea) and 1904 (in China).

Traditional archery remained in minority use for sport and for hunting in many areas long after its military disuse. In Turkey, its last revival for this purpose took place with the encouragement of Mahmud II in the 1820s, but the art, and that of constructing composite bows, fell out of use in the later 1800s. The rest of the Middle East also lost the continuity of its archery tradition at this time. In Korea, the transformation from military training to healthy pastime was led by Emperor Gojong, and is the basis of a popular modern sport. Japanese continue to make and use their unique traditional equipment. Among the Cherokees and the British, popular use of longbows never entirely died out. In China, the revival of archery continued until the Cultural Revolution, when it was suppressed; the last of the traditional Chinese bowmakers is now working again.^[9] In modern times, horse archery continues to be practiced in some Asian countries but is not used in international competition. Modern Hungarians have revived horsed archery as a competitive sport.^[10] Archery is the national sport of the Kingdom of Bhutan.^[11]

Modern primitive archery

After the American Civil War, two Confederate veterans, Maurice and Will Thompson, revived archery in America. The two brothers and a former slave lived in the wild in the Okefenokee Swamp in Georgia. As ex-Confederate soldiers they were not allowed to own guns, so they needed other ways to hunt for food. For some reason, the former slave (Thomas Williams) knew something about English-style Archery (using a longbow) and showed Maurice and Will. Later, Maurice wrote a book, "The Witchery of Archery," which became a best seller and enthused people about the sport of archery. In 1879 the National Archery Association was formed. However, public interest in archery soon subsided.

That all changed when Ishi came out of hiding in California in 1911. Ishi was the last of the Yahi Indian tribe. Once he came out of hiding, he was extensively studied and then lived at the University of California at Berkeley Anthropology Museum.^[12] His medical caretaker, Dr. Saxton Pope, was an instructor of surgery at the school. Dr. Pope was very interested in Ishi and his culture, especially archery. Ishi willingly taught Dr. Pope about his culture, how to make tools the way the Yahi did, and how to hunt using a bow and arrow. Soon, Dr. Pope was joined by archery-enthusiast Arthur Young.

Ishi's time was short however, and he died in 1916 of tuberculosis. Dr. Pope and Mr. Young did not lose interest in archery, and set about proving that archery could be used to bag large game.^[13] They hunted in Alaska and Africa and took several large game animals.^[14]

Because Dr. Pope and Mr. Young demonstrated to Western society that archery was effective on not only small game, but large game as well, archery did not lose public interest so easily. Many methods that Ishi taught Dr. Pope are still used today by primitive archers. From the 1920s, professional engineers took an interest in archery, previously the exclusive field of traditional craft experts. ^[15] They led the commercial development of new forms of bow including the modern recurve and compound bow. These modern forms are now dominant in modern Western archery; traditional bows are in a minority. In the 1980s, the skills of traditional archery were revived by American enthusiasts, and combined with the new scientific understanding. Much of this expertise is available in the "Traditional Bowyer's Bible" (see bibliography).

Mythology

Archers and archery play a role in several mythologies, including Greek Apollo, Germanic Agilaz, continued in legends like those of William Tell, Palnetoke, or Robin Hood. Armenian Hayk and Babylonian Marduk, Indian Arjuna and Persian Arash, were all archers. Earlier Greek representations of Heracles normally depict him as an archer. Yi the archer features in several early Chinese myths.^[16]