Lightly armoured, but highly mobile archers were excellently suited to warfare in the Central Asian steppes, and they formed a large part of armies that repeatedly conquered large areas of Eurasia. Tribesmen of Central Asia (after the domestication of the horse) and American Plains Indians (after gaining access to horses by Europeans) became extremely adept at archery on horseback. The favourite hobby of Prince Maximilian, engraved by Dürer Main article: Mounted archery Hunting for flying birds from the back of a galloping horse was considered the top category of archery. Significant victories attributable to the longbow, such as the Battle of Crecy and Battle of Agincourt resulted in the English longbow becoming part of military lore.
However its lack of accuracy at long ranges made it a mass weapon rather than an individual one. The longbow had a range of up to 270 m (890 ft). Like their predecessors archers were more likely to be peasants or yeomen than men-at-arms. The French army relied more on the crossbow. ĭuring the late medieval period the English army famously relied on massed archers armed with the longbow.
Crossbows were used in the early Crusades, with models having a range of 270 cm (110 in) and being able to penetrate armour or kill a horse. Crossbows generally had a longer range, greater accuracy and more penetration than the shortbow, but suffered from a much slower rate of fire. Around the tenth century the crossbow was introduced in Europe. It was the primary ranged weapon of the battlefield through the early medieval period. The medieval shortbow was technically identical with the classical era bows, having a range of approximately 91 m (299 ft). In East Asia, Goguryeo, one of the Three Kingdoms of Korea was well known for its regiments of exceptionally skilled archers. The Sanskrit term for archery, dhanurvidya, came to refer to martial arts in general. In the Americas archery was widespread at European contact. The Welsh longbow proved its worth for the first time in Continental warfare at the Battle of Crécy. The Bronze Age Aegean Cultures were able to deploy a number of state-owned specialized bow makers for warfare and hunting purposes already from the 15th century BC. Egyptians referred to Nubia as "Ta-Seti," or "The Land of the Bow," since the Nubians were known to be expert archers, and by the 16th Century BC Egyptians were using the composite bow in warfare. Akkadians were the first to use composite bows in war according to the victory stele of Naram-Sin of Akkad. The Khiamian and PPN A shouldered Khiam-points may well be arrowheads.Ĭlassical civilizations, notably the Assyrians, Greeks, Armenians, Persians, Parthians, Romans, Indians, Koreans, Chinese, and Japanese fielded large numbers of archers in their armies. In the Levant, artifacts that could be arrow-shaft straighteners are known from the Natufian culture, (c. īows eventually replaced the spear-thrower as the predominant means for launching shafted projectiles, on every continent except Australasia, though spear-throwers persisted alongside the bow in parts of the Americas, notably Mexico and among the Inuit.īows and arrows have been present in Egyptian and neighbouring Nubian culture since its respective predynastic and Pre-Kerma origins. The oldest bows known so far comes from the Holmegård swamp in Denmark.Īt the site of Nataruk in Turkana County, Kenya, obsidian bladelets found embedded in a skull and within the thoracic cavity of another skeleton, suggest the use of stone-tipped arrows as weapons about 10,000 years ago. There are no definite earlier bows previous pointed shafts are known, but may have been launched by spear-throwers rather than bows. The arrows were made of pine and consisted of a main shaft and a 15–20 cm (5.9–7.9 in) fore shaft with a flint point. Other signs of its use in Europe come from the Stellmoor in the Ahrensburg valley north of Hamburg, Germany and dates from the late Paleolithic, about 10,000–9000 BC. Azilian points found in Grotte du Bichon, Switzerland, alongside the remains of both a bear and a hunter, with flint fragments found in the bear's third vertebra, suggest the use of arrows at 13,500 years ago. The earliest definite remains of bow and arrow from Europe are possible fragments from Germany found at Mannheim-Vogelstang dated 17,500 to 18,000 years ago, and at Stellmoor dated 11,000 years ago.
īased on indirect evidence, the bow also seems to have appeared or reappeared later in Eurasia, near the transition from the Upper Paleolithic to the Mesolithic. The oldest known evidence of the bow and arrow comes from South African sites such as Sibudu Cave, where the remains of bone and stone arrowheads have been found dating approximately 72,000 to 60,000 years ago. Main article: History of archery Origins and ancient archery
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