History of archery - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

The bow and arrow are known to have been invented by the end of the Upper Paleolithic

Upper Paleolithic

The Upper Paleolithic is the third and last subdivision of the Paleolithic or Old Stone Age as it is understood in Europe, Africa and Asia. Very broadly it dates to between 40,000 and 10,000 years ago, roughly coinciding with the appearance of behavioral modernity and before the advent of...

.

Projectile points (used on spear

Spear

A spear is a pole weapon consisting of a shaft, usually of wood, with a pointed head.The head may be simply the sharpened end of the shaft itself, as is the case with bamboo spears, or it may be made of a more durable material fastened to the shaft, such as flint, obsidian, iron, steel or...

s or atalatl darts) on are known from earlier prehistory, dating to the Middle Paleolithic

Middle Paleolithic

The Middle Paleolithic is the second subdivision of the Paleolithic or Old Stone Age as it is understood in Europe, Africa and Asia. The term Middle Stone Age is used as an equivalent or a synonym for the Middle Paleolithic in African archeology. The Middle Paleolithic and the Middle Stone Age...

. Bows eventually replaced spear-thrower

Spear-thrower

An Atlatl or spear thrower is a tool that uses leverage to achieve greater velocity in throwing light spears or darts, and includes a bearing surface which allows the user to temporarily store energy during the throw....

s as the predominant means for launching sharp projectiles on all continents except Australia

Australia

Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

.

Archery was an important military and hunting skill before the widespread and efficient use of firearms, throughout classical antiquity

Classical antiquity

Classical antiquity is a broad term for a long period of cultural history centered on the Mediterranean Sea, comprising the interlocking civilizations of ancient Greece and ancient Rome, collectively known as the Greco-Roman world...

and the medieval period

Middle Ages

The Middle Ages is a periodization of European history from the 5th century to the 15th century. The Middle Ages follows the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 and precedes the Early Modern Era. It is the middle period of a three-period division of Western history: Classic, Medieval and Modern...

. Arrows were especially destructive against unarmoured masses and the use of archers often proved decisive. Mounted archers

Mounted archery

A horse archer, horsed archer, or mounted archer is a cavalryman armed with a bow, able to shoot while riding from horseback. Archery has occasionally been used from the backs of other riding animals...

combined range with speed and mobility. Archery also figured prominently in the mythologies

Mythology

The term mythology can refer either to the study of myths, or to a body or collection of myths. As examples, comparative mythology is the study of connections between myths from different cultures, whereas Greek mythology is the body of myths from ancient Greece...

of many cultures.

Stone Age

The bow seems to have been invented by the late Paleolithic

Paleolithic

The Paleolithic Age, Era or Period, is a prehistoric period of human history distinguished by the development of the most primitive stone tools discovered , and covers roughly 99% of human technological prehistory...

or early Mesolithic

Mesolithic

The Mesolithic is an archaeological concept used to refer to certain groups of archaeological cultures defined as falling between the Paleolithic and the Neolithic....

. The oldest indication for archery in Europe comes from the Stellmoor in the Ahrensburg valley north of Hamburg

Hamburg

-History:The first historic name for the city was, according to Claudius Ptolemy's reports, Treva.But the city takes its modern name, Hamburg, from the first permanent building on the site, a castle whose construction was ordered by the Emperor Charlemagne in AD 808...

, Germany and date from the late Paleolithic

Paleolithic

about 9000-8000 BC. The arrows were made of pine

Pine

Pines are trees in the genus Pinus ,in the family Pinaceae. They make up the monotypic subfamily Pinoideae. There are about 115 species of pine, although different authorities accept between 105 and 125 species.-Etymology:...

and consisted of a mainshaft and a 15-20 centimetre (6-8 inches) long foreshaft with a flint

Flint

Flint is a hard, sedimentary cryptocrystalline form of the mineral quartz, categorized as a variety of chert. It occurs chiefly as nodules and masses in sedimentary rocks, such as chalks and limestones. Inside the nodule, flint is usually dark grey, black, green, white, or brown in colour, and...

point.

The oldest bows known so far come from the Holmegård

Holmegaard

Until January 1, 2007, Holmegaard was a municipality in Storstrøm County in the southern part of the island of Zealand in south Denmark. The municipality covered an area of 66 km², and had a total population of 7,442 . Its last mayor was Søren Dysted, a member of the Social Democrats ...

swamp in Denmark. In the 1940s, two bows were found there. The Holmegaard bow

Holmegaard bow

The Holmegaard bows are a series of self bows found in the bogs of Northern Europe dating from the Mesolithic period. They are named after the Holmegaard area of Denmark in which the first and oldest specimens were found.-Description:...

s are made of elm

Elm

Elms are deciduous and semi-deciduous trees comprising the genus Ulmus in the plant family Ulmaceae. The dozens of species are found in temperate and tropical-montane regions of North America and Eurasia, ranging southward into Indonesia. Elms are components of many kinds of natural forests...

and have flat arms and a D-shaped midsection. The center section is biconvex. The complete bow is (5 ft) long. Bows of Holmegaard-type were in use until the Bronze Age

Bronze Age

The Bronze Age is a period characterized by the use of copper and its alloy bronze as the chief hard materials in the manufacture of some implements and weapons. Chronologically, it stands between the Stone Age and Iron Age...

; the convexity of the midsection has decreased with time.

Mesolithic

Mesolithic

The Mesolithic is an archaeological concept used to refer to certain groups of archaeological cultures defined as falling between the Paleolithic and the Neolithic....

pointed shafts have been found in England, Germany, Denmark, and Sweden. They were often rather long, up to (4 ft) and made of European hazel (Corylus avellana
Corylus avellana
Corylus avellana, the Common Hazel, is a species of hazel native to Europe and western Asia, from the British Isles south to Iberia, Greece, Turkey and Cyprus, north to central Scandinavia, and east to the central Ural Mountains, the Caucasus, and northwestern Iran. It is an important component of...

), wayfaring tree (Viburnum lantana
Viburnum lantana
Viburnum lantana is a species of Viburnum, native to central, southern and western Europe , northwest Africa, and southwestern Asia. The vigorous deciduous european treelike shrub is common along waysides. It is a deciduous shrub or small tree growing to 4-5 m tall...

) 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

Fletching

Fletching is the aerodynamic stabilization of arrows or darts with materials such as feathers, each piece of which is referred to as a fletch. The word is related to the French word flèche, meaning "arrow," via Old French; the ultimate root is Frankish fliukka...

, which was fastened on with birch-tar

Birch-tar

Birch-tar or birch-pitch is a substance derived from the dry distillation of the wood of the birch.- Compounds :It is compounded of guaiacol, phenols, cresol, xylenol, and creosol.- Uses :...

.

Bows and arrows have been present in Egypt

Egypt

Egypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic: , is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world...

ian 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

Levant

The Levant or ) is the geographic region and culture zone of the "eastern Mediterranean littoral between Anatolia and Egypt" . The Levant includes most of modern Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Israel, the Palestinian territories, and sometimes parts of Turkey and Iraq, and corresponds roughly to the...

, artifacts which may be arrow-shaft straighteners are known from the Natufian culture

Natufian culture

The Natufian culture was a Mesolithic culture that existed from 12,500 to 9,500 BC in the Levant, a region in the Eastern Mediterranean. It was unusual in that it was sedentary, or semi-sedentary, before the introduction of agriculture...

, (ca. 12,800-10,300 BP) onwards. The Khiamian

Khiamian

The Khiamian is a period of the Near-Eastern Neolithic, marking the transition between the Natufian and the Pre-Pottery Neolithic A...

and PPN A

Pre-Pottery Neolithic A

Pre-Pottery Neolithic A denotes the first stage in early Levantine Neolithic culture, dating around 9500 to 8500 BC. Archaeological remains are located in the Levantine and upper Mesopotamian region of the Fertile Crescent...

shouldered Khiam-points may well be arrowheads.

Stone points which may have been arrowhead

Arrowhead

An arrowhead is a tip, usually sharpened, added to an arrow to make it more deadly or to fulfill some special purpose. Historically arrowheads were made of stone and of organic materials; as human civilization progressed other materials were used...

s were made in Africa by about 64,000 years ago.

North America

Archery seems to have arrived in the Americas with the Arctic small tool tradition

Arctic small tool tradition

The Arctic Small Tool tradition is a broad cultural entity that developed along the Alaska Peninsula, round Bristol Bay, and on the eastern shores of the Bering Strait around 2500 BC...

, about 2,500 BC, spreading south into the temperate zones as early as 2,000 BC, and was widely known among the indigenous peoples of North America from about 700 AD. An archery game was widely practiced among the tribes of the Southern US

Southeastern Ceremonial Complex

The Southeastern Ceremonial Complex is the name given to the regional stylistic similarity of artifacts, iconography, ceremonies, and mythology of the Mississippian culture that coincided with their adoption of maize agriculture and chiefdom-level complex social organization from...

which involved shooting at a hoop rolled with a forked stick. Points were scored based on how the arrow landed. The competition was popularly related to notions of fertility. Tribesmen of the Great Plains

Great Plains

The Great Plains are a broad expanse of flat land, much of it covered in prairie, steppe and grassland, which lies west of the Mississippi River and east of the Rocky Mountains in the United States and Canada. This area covers parts of the U.S...

became extremely adept at archery on horseback

Mounted archery

Bronze Age

The ancient Egypt

Ancient Egypt

Ancient Egypt was an ancient civilization of Northeastern Africa, concentrated along the lower reaches of the Nile River in what is now the modern country of Egypt. Egyptian civilization coalesced around 3150 BC with the political unification of Upper and Lower Egypt under the first pharaoh...

ian people took to archery as early as 5000 years ago. Archery was widespread by the time of the earliest pharaoh

Pharaoh

Pharaoh is a title used in many modern discussions of the ancient Egyptian rulers of all periods. The title originates in the term "pr-aa" which means "great house" and describes the royal palace...

s and was practiced both for hunting and use in warfare.

Legendary figures from the tombs of Thebes

Thebes, Egypt

Thebes is the Greek name for a city in Ancient Egypt located about 800 km south of the Mediterranean, on the east bank of the river Nile within the modern city of Luxor. The Theban Necropolis is situated nearby on the west bank of the Nile.-History:...

are depicted giving "lessons in archery"; Some Egyptian deities are also connected to archery.

Iron Age

The Assyria

Assyria

Assyria was a Semitic Akkadian kingdom, extant as a nation state from the mid–23rd century BC to 608 BC centred on the Upper Tigris river, in northern Mesopotamia , that came to rule regional empires a number of times through history. It was named for its original capital, the ancient city of Assur...

ns and Babylon

Babylon

Babylon was an Akkadian city-state of ancient Mesopotamia, the remains of which are found in present-day Al Hillah, Babil Province, Iraq, about 85 kilometers south of Baghdad...

ians extensively used the bow and arrow; the Old Testament

Old Testament

The Old Testament, of which Christians hold different views, is a Christian term for the religious writings of ancient Israel held sacred and inspired by Christians which overlaps with the 24-book canon of the Masoretic Text of Judaism...

has multiple references to archery as a skill identified with the ancient Hebrews

Hebrews

Hebrews is an ethnonym used in the Hebrew Bible...

. Xenophon

Xenophon

Xenophon , son of Gryllus, of the deme Erchia of Athens, also known as Xenophon of Athens, was a Greek historian, soldier, mercenary, philosopher and a contemporary and admirer of Socrates...

describes long bows used to great effect in Corduene

Corduene

Corduene was an ancient region located in northern Mesopotamia and modern day Kurdish inhabited south east Turkey. It was a province of the Greater Armenia. It was referred to by the Greeks as Karduchia and by both the Greeks and Romans as Corduene...

.
The Chariot

Chariot

The chariot is a type of horse carriage used in both peace and war as the chief vehicle of many ancient peoples. Ox carts, proto-chariots, were built by the Proto-Indo-Europeans and also built in Mesopotamia as early as 3000 BC. The original horse chariot was a fast, light, open, two wheeled...

warriors of the Kassites

Kassites

The Kassites were an ancient Near Eastern people who gained control of Babylonia after the fall of the Old Babylonian Empire after ca. 1531 BC to ca. 1155 BC...

relied heavily on the bow. The Nuzi

Nuzi

Nuzi was an ancient Mesopotamian city southwest of Kirkuk in modern Al Ta'amim Governorate of Iraq, located near the Tigris river...

texts detail the bows and the number of arrows assigned to the chariot crew. Archery was essential to the role of the light horse drawn chariot as a vehicle of warfare.

The bow and arrow constituted the classical Indian weapon of warfare, from the Vedic period

Vedic period

The Vedic period was a period in history during which the Vedas, the oldest scriptures of Hinduism, were composed. The time span of the period is uncertain. Philological and linguistic evidence indicates that the Rigveda, the oldest of the Vedas, was composed roughly between 1700–1100 BCE, also...

, until the advent of Islam

Islam

Islam . The most common are and . : Arabic pronunciation varies regionally. The first vowel ranges from ~~. The second vowel ranges from ~~~...

. Some Rigvedic

Rigveda

The Rigveda is an ancient Indian sacred collection of Vedic Sanskrit hymns...

hymns lay emphasis on the use
of the bow and arrow.

Ancient history

Classical

Classical antiquity

civilizations, notably the Persians, Parthia

Parthia

Parthia is a region of north-eastern Iran, best known for having been the political and cultural base of the Arsacid dynasty, rulers of the Parthian Empire....

ns, Indians

History of India

The history of India begins with evidence of human activity of Homo sapiens as long as 75,000 years ago, or with earlier hominids including Homo erectus from about 500,000 years ago. The Indus Valley Civilization, which spread and flourished in the northwestern part of the Indian subcontinent from...

, Koreans

History of Korea

The Korean Peninsula was inhabited from the Lower Paleolithic about 400,000-500,000 years ago. Archeological evidence indicates that the presence of modern humans in northeast Asia dates to 39,000 years ago. The earliest known Korean pottery dates to around 8000 BC, and the Neolithic period began...

, Chinese

History of China

Chinese civilization originated in various regional centers along both the Yellow River and the Yangtze River valleys in the Neolithic era, but the Yellow River is said to be the Cradle of Chinese Civilization. With thousands of years of continuous history, China is one of the world's oldest...

, and Japanese

History of Japan

The history of Japan encompasses the history of the islands of Japan and the Japanese people, spanning the ancient history of the region to the modern history of Japan as a nation state. Following the last ice age, around 12,000 BC, the rich ecosystem of the Japanese Archipelago fostered human...

fielded large numbers of archers in their armies. Arrows were 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.

Mounted archers were the main military force of most of the equestrian nomads from the Cimmerians

Cimmerians

The Cimmerians or Kimmerians were ancient equestrian nomads of Indo-European origin.According to the Greek historian Herodotus, of the 5th century BC, the Cimmerians inhabited the region north of the Caucasus and the Black Sea during the 8th and 7th centuries BC, in what is now Ukraine and Russia...

to the Mongols

Mongols

Mongols ) are a Central-East Asian ethnic group that lives mainly in the countries of Mongolia, China, and Russia. In China, ethnic Mongols can be found mainly in the central north region of China such as Inner Mongolia...

Greco-Roman antiquity

The people of Crete

Crete

Crete is the largest and most populous of the Greek islands, the fifth largest island in the Mediterranean Sea, and one of the thirteen administrative regions of Greece. It forms a significant part of the economy and cultural heritage of Greece while retaining its own local cultural traits...

practiced archery and Cretan mercenary archers were in great demand. Crete was known for its unbroken tradition of archery.

The Greek

Greek mythology

Greek mythology is the body of myths and legends belonging to the ancient Greeks, concerning their gods and heroes, the nature of the world, and the origins and significance of their own cult and ritual practices. They were a part of religion in ancient Greece...

god Apollo

Apollo

Apollo is one of the most important and complex of the Olympian deities in Greek and Roman mythology...

is the god of archery, also of plague and the sun, metaphorically perceived as shooting invisible arrows, Artemis

Artemis

Artemis was one of the most widely venerated of the Ancient Greek deities. Her Roman equivalent is Diana. Some scholars believe that the name and indeed the goddess herself was originally pre-Greek. Homer refers to her as Artemis Agrotera, Potnia Theron: "Artemis of the wildland, Mistress of Animals"...

the goddess of wild places and hunting. Odysseus

Odysseus

Odysseus or Ulysses was a legendary Greek king of Ithaca and the hero of Homer's epic poem the Odyssey. Odysseus also plays a key role in Homer's Iliad and other works in the Epic Cycle....

and other mythological figures are often depicted with a bow.

During the invasion of India, Alexander the Great personally took command of the shield-bearing guards, foot-companions, archers, Agrianians and horse-javelin-men and led them against the Kamboj

Kamboj

The Kambojs , also Kamboh, are an ethnic community of the Punjab region. They may relate to the Kambojas, an Iranian tribe known to the people of Iron Age India and mentioned in ancient Sanskrit texts and epigraphy. Kamboj is frequently used as a surname in lieu of the sub-caste or the gotra name...

a clan

Clan

A clan is a group of people united by actual or perceived kinship and descent. Even if lineage details are unknown, clan members may be organized around a founding member or apical ancestor. The kinship-based bonds may be symbolical, whereby the clan shares a "stipulated" common ancestor that is a...

s—the Aspasios of Kunar

Kunar Valley

Kunar Valley or Chitral Valley is a valley in Afghanistan and Pakistan. In Afghanistan the length of the valley is almost entirely narrow with steep and rugged mountains on both sides. The center of the valley is occupied by the Kunar River flowing south where it joins the Kabul River...

valley

Valley

In geology, a valley or dale is a depression with predominant extent in one direction. A very deep river valley may be called a canyon or gorge.The terms U-shaped and V-shaped are descriptive terms of geography to characterize the form of valleys...

s, the Guraeans of the Guraeus (Panjkora) valley, and the Assakenois of the Swat

Swat (Pakistan)

Swat is a valley and an administrative district in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province, located close to the Afghan-Pakistan border. It is the upper valley of the Swat River, which rises in the Hindu Kush range. The capital of Swat is Saidu Sharif, but the main town in the Swat valley is Mingora...

and Buner

Buner

Chinglai Buner may refer to:* Buner Valley in Pakistan.* Buner District in Pakistan....

valleys.

The early Romans had very few archers, if any. As their empire grew, they recruited auxiliary archers from other nations. Julius Caesar

Julius Caesar

Gaius Julius Caesar was a Roman general and statesman and a distinguished writer of Latin prose. He played a critical role in the gradual transformation of the Roman Republic into the Roman Empire....

's armies in Gaul included Cretan archers, and Vercingetorix

Vercingetorix

Vercingetorix was the chieftain of the Arverni tribe, who united the Gauls in an ultimately unsuccessful revolt against Roman forces during the last phase of Julius Caesar's Gallic Wars....

his enemy ordered "all the archers, of whom there was a very great number in Gaul, to be collected". By the 4th century, archers with powerful composite bows were a regular part of Roman armies throughout the empire. After the fall of the western empire, the Romans came under severe pressure from the highly skilled mounted archers

Mounted archery

belonging to the Hun invaders, and later Eastern Roman armies relied heavily on mounted archery.

East Asia

For millennia, archery has played a pivotal role in Chinese history. In particular, archery featured prominently in ancient Chinese culture and
philosophy: archery was one of the Six Noble Arts of the Zhou dynasty

Zhou Dynasty

The Zhou Dynasty was a Chinese dynasty that followed the Shang Dynasty and preceded the Qin Dynasty. Although the Zhou Dynasty lasted longer than any other dynasty in Chinese history, the actual political and military control of China by the Ji family lasted only until 771 BC, a period known as...

(1146–256 BCE); archery skill was a virtue for Chinese emperors; Confucius

Confucius

Confucius , literally "Master Kong", was a Chinese thinker and social philosopher of the Spring and Autumn Period....

himself was an archery teacher; and Lie Zi

Lie Yukou

Lie Yukou is considered the author of the Daoist book Liezi, which uses his honorific name Liezi . The second Chinese character in Yukou is written kou 寇 "bandit; enemy"; the first is written yu 圄 "imprison", yu 禦 "resist; ward off", or occasionally yu 御 "drive ; ride ; control" Lie Yukou is...

(a Daoist philosopher) was an avid archer. Because the cultures associated with Chinese society spanned a wide geography and time range, the techniques and equipment associated with Chinese archery are
diverse.

In East Asia the ancient Korean civilizations

History of Korea

were well-known for their archery skills, and South Korea remains a particularly strong performer at Olympic archery competitions even to this day.

South Asia

Detailed accounts of training methodologies in early India concern archery, considered to be an essential martial skill in early India. Legendary figures like Drona

Drona

In the epic Mahābhārata, Drona or Dronacharya was the royal guru to Kauravas and Pandavas. He was a master of advanced military arts, including the Devastras. Arjuna was his favorite student. Dronas love for Arjuna was second only to his love for his son Ashwatthama...

, are depicted as masters in the art of archery. Mythological figures such as Arjuna

Arjuna

Arjuna in Indian mythology is the greatest warrior on earth and is one of the Pandavas, the heroes of the Hindu epic Mahābhārata. Arjuna, whose name means 'bright', 'shining', 'white' or 'silver' Arjuna (Devanagari: अर्जुन, Thai: อรชุน, Orachun, Tamil: Arjunan, Indonesian and Javanese: Harjuna,...

, Eklavya, Karna

Karna

Karna or Radheya is one of the central characters in the epic Mahābhārata, from ancient India. He was the King of Anga...

, Rama

Rama

Rama or full name Ramachandra is considered to be the seventh avatar of Vishnu in Hinduism, and a king of Ayodhya in ancient Indian...

, Lakshmana

Lakshmana

Lakshmana was the brother and close companion of Rama, and himself a hero in the famous epic Ramayana...

, Bharata

Bharata (Ramayana)

In the Hindu epic Ramayana, Bharata was the second brother of the main protagonist Rama, and the son of Dasaratha and Kaikeyi. Dasaratha was the Emperor of Ayodhya and belonged to the Suryavansha or Solar Dynasty...

and Shatrughan are also associated with archery.

Middle Ages

Europe

During the Middle Ages

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 soldier

Soldier

A soldier is a member of the land component of national armed forces; whereas a soldier hired for service in a foreign army would be termed a mercenary...

s 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

Man-at-arms

Man-at-arms was a term used from the High Medieval to Renaissance periods to describe a soldier, almost always a professional warrior in the sense of being well-trained in the use of arms, who served as a fully armoured heavy cavalryman...

with good armour

Armour

Armour or armor is protective covering used to prevent damage from being inflicted to an object, individual or a vehicle through use of direct contact weapons or projectiles, usually during combat, or from damage caused by a potentially dangerous environment or action...

and a sword

Sword

A sword is a bladed weapon used primarily for cutting or thrusting. The precise definition of the term varies with the historical epoch or the geographical region under consideration...

. Professional archers required a lifetime of training and expensive bows to be effective, and were thus generally rare in Europe (see English longbow

English longbow

The English longbow, also called the Welsh longbow, is a powerful type of medieval longbow about 6 ft long used by the English and Welsh for hunting and as a weapon in medieval warfare...

). The bow was seldom used to decide battles and often viewed as a "lower class weapon" or as a toy, by the nobility. However, among the Vikings, even royalty such as Magnus Barelegs used archery effectively, and the Muslims used archery, presumably also in their numerous raiding expeditions all over the Western European seaboard, in the 9th and 10th centuries.

By the time of the Hundred Years' War

Hundred Years' War

The Hundred Years' War was a series of separate wars waged from 1337 to 1453 by the House of Valois and the House of Plantagenet, also known as the House of Anjou, for the French throne, which had become vacant upon the extinction of the senior Capetian line of French kings...

, the English had learned how to employ massed archery as an instrument of tactical dominance, with their English longbow

English longbow

The English longbow, also called the Welsh longbow, is a powerful type of medieval longbow about 6 ft long used by the English and Welsh for hunting and as a weapon in medieval warfare...

s. Tournaments were sponsored, with prizes for winners, among other ways of encouraging archery. There was therefore much motivation and incentive to become an expert with the longbow and the various English kings were able to recruit thousands of archers per year.

The crossbow

Crossbow

A crossbow is a weapon consisting of a bow mounted on a stock that shoots projectiles, often called bolts or quarrels. The medieval crossbow was called by many names, most of which derived from the word ballista, a torsion engine resembling a crossbow in appearance.Historically, crossbows played a...

became quite popular during the Middle Ages. Crossbows, while expensive and difficult to construct, have a relatively flat trajectory and are easier to learn to fire than the traditional bow. This made them ideal for tasks such as castle defense, where a high rate of fire was less important than armor penetration and simplicity of use.

Decline, last uses, and survival of archery

The advent of firearms

Gunpowder warfare

Early modern warfare is associated with the start of the widespread use of gunpowder and the development of suitable weapons to use the explosive, including artillery and handguns such as the arquebus and later the musket, and for this reason the era is also summarized as the age of gunpowder...

eventually rendered bows obsolete in warfare. Despite the high social status, ongoing utility, and widespread pleasure of archery in England, Korea, China, Japan, Turkey, Armenia, America

Indigenous peoples of the Americas

The indigenous peoples of the Americas are the pre-Columbian inhabitants of North and South America, their descendants and other ethnic groups who are identified with those peoples. Indigenous peoples are known in Canada as Aboriginal peoples, and in the United States as Native Americans...

, Egypt, and elsewhere, almost 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. However, they had longer effective range 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.
In Europe the last regular unit armed with bows was also a part of the oldest regular unit armed with gunpowder weapons, the Archers’ Company of the Honourable Artillery Company

Honourable Artillery Company

The Honourable Artillery Company was incorporated by Royal Charter in 1537 by King Henry VIII. Today it is a Registered Charity whose purpose is to attend to the “better defence of the realm"...

.

In Eastern Europe and the Asian Steppe however archery continued to play an important part in warfare, although now restricted to mounted archery. The Ottoman Empire still fielded auxiliary cavalry which was noted for its use of bows from horseback. This practice was continued by the Ottoman subject nations, despite the Empire itself being a proponent of early firearms. The practice declined after the Crimean Khanate was finally absorbed by Russia, however mounted archers remained in the Ottoman order of battle until the post 1826 reforms to the Ottoman Army.

The sole exceptions may be the Comanche

Comanche

The Comanche are a Native American ethnic group whose historic range consisted of present-day eastern New Mexico, southern Colorado, northeastern Arizona, southern Kansas, all of Oklahoma, and most of northwest Texas. Historically, the Comanches were hunter-gatherers, with a typical Plains Indian...

s of North America, whose mounted archery

Mounted archery

was more effective than muzzle-loading guns. (Other Plains Indians fought mostly on foot, and usually found guns to be superior weapons when they did so.) "After... about 1800, most Comanches began to discard muskets and pistols and to rely on their older weapons." Repeating firearms, however, were superior in turn, and the Comanches adopted them when they could. Bows remained effective hunting weapons for skilled horse archers, used to some extent by all Native Americans on the Great Plains to hunt buffalo

American Bison

The American bison , also commonly known as the American buffalo, is a North American species of bison that once roamed the grasslands of North America in massive herds...

as long as there were buffalo to hunt. The last Comanche hunt was in 1878, and it failed for lack of buffalo.

The last recorded use of bows, in an English battle, seems to have been a skirmish at Bridgnorth

Bridgnorth

Bridgnorth is a town in Shropshire, England, along the Severn Valley. It is split into Low Town and High Town, named on account of their elevations relative to the River Severn, which separates the upper town on the right bank from the lower on the left...

, in October 1642, during the English Civil War

English Civil War

The English Civil War was a series of armed conflicts and political machinations between Parliamentarians and Royalists...

. The most recent death in war from British archery was probably in 1940, on the retreat to Dunkirk, when Jack Churchill

Jack Churchill

Lieutenant Colonel John Malcolm Thorpe Fleming "Jack" Churchill, DSO & Bar, MC & Bar , nicknamed "Fighting Jack Churchill" and "Mad Jack", was a British soldier who fought throughout World War II armed with a longbow, arrows and a claymore...

who had brought his bows on active service "was delighted to see his arrow strike the centre German in the left of the chest and penetrate his body". In Ireland, Geoffrey Keating

Geoffrey Keating

Seathrún Céitinn, known in English as Geoffrey Keating, was a 17th century Irish Roman Catholic priest, poet and historian. He was born in County Tipperary c. 1569, and died c. 1644...

(c. 1569 - c. 1644) mentions archery as having been practiced "down to a recent period within our own memory" 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

Jacobitism

Jacobitism was the political movement in Britain dedicated to the restoration of the Stuart kings to the thrones of England, Scotland, later the Kingdom of Great Britain, and the Kingdom of Ireland...

cause, and the Cherokee

Cherokee

The Cherokee are a Native American people historically settled in the Southeastern United States . Linguistically, they are part of the Iroquoian language family...

s after the Trail of Tears. The Tokugawa shogunate

Tokugawa shogunate

The Tokugawa shogunate, also known as the and the , was a feudal regime of Japan established by Tokugawa Ieyasu and ruled by the shoguns of the Tokugawa family. This period is known as the Edo period and gets its name from the capital city, Edo, which is now called Tokyo, after the name was...

severely limited the import and manufacture of guns, and encouraged traditional martial skills among the samurai; towards the end of the Satsuma Rebellion

Satsuma Rebellion

The was a revolt of Satsuma ex-samurai against the Meiji government from January 29 to September 24, 1877, 9 years into the Meiji Era. It was the last, and the most serious, of a series of armed uprisings against the new government.-Background:...

in 1877, some rebels fell back on the use of bows and arrows. Archery remained an important part of the military examinations until 1894 in Korea and 1904 in China. Ongoing use of bows and arrows in some African conflicts has been reported in the 21st century, and the Sentinelese

Sentinelese

The Sentinelese are one of the Andamanese indigenous peoples of the Andaman Islands, located in the Bay of Bengal. They inhabit North Sentinel Island which lies westward off the southern tip of the Great Andaman archipelago...

still use bows as part of a lifestyle scarcely touched by outside contact. A remote group in Brazil, recently photographed from the air, aimed bows at the aeroplane. Bows and arrows saw considerable use in the 2007–2008 Kenyan crisis

2007–2008 Kenyan crisis

The 2007–2008 Kenyan crisis refers to a political, economic, and humanitarian crisis that erupted in Kenya after incumbent President Mwai Kibaki was declared the winner of the presidential election held on December 27, 2007. Supporters of Kibaki's opponent, Raila Odinga of the Orange Democratic...

.

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

Mahmud II

Mahmud II was the 30th Sultan of the Ottoman Empire from 1808 until his death in 1839. He was born in the Topkapi Palace, Istanbul, the son of Sultan Abdulhamid I...

in the 1820s, but the art, and that of constructing composite bows, fell out of use with the death of the last bowyer in the 1930s. 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

Yumi

is the Japanese term for bows, and includes the longer and the shorter used in the practice of kyūdō, or Japanese archery. The yumi was an important weapon of the samurai warrior during the feudal period of Japan.-History of the yumi:...

. Among the Cherokees, popular use of longbows never entirely died out. The British have maintained a continuous tradition of longbow use, with a major revival as an upper-class pursuit from about 1780-1840. In China, the improvement of firearms and other circumstances of 20th century China led to the demise of archery as a military and ritual practice, and for much of the 20th century only one traditional bow and arrow workshop remained. However, in the beginning of the 21st century, there has been revival in interest among craftsmen looking to construct bows and arrows, as well as in practicing technique in the traditional Chinese style. In modern times, mounted archery continues to be practiced in some Asian countries but is not used in international competition. Modern Hungarians have revived mounted archery as a competitive sport. Archery is the national sport of the Kingdom of Bhutan.

Modern archery in small-scale societies

After the American Civil War, two Confederate veterans, Will and Maurice Thompson

Maurice Thompson

James Maurice Thompson was an American novelist.-Biography:Raised on a Georgia plantation, Thompson first pursued a career as a lawyer. In 1871 he opened a law practice with his brother, William Henry Thompson...

, revived archery in America. The two brothers and Thomas Williams (a former slave) lived in the wild in the Okefenokee Swamp

Okefenokee Swamp

The Okefenokee Swamp is a shallow, 438,000 acre , peat-filled wetland straddling the Georgia–Florida border in the United States. A majority of the swamp is in Georgia and protected by the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge and the Okefenokee Wilderness. The Okefenokee Swamp is considered to be...

in Georgia

Georgia (U.S. state)

Georgia is a state located in the southeastern United States. It was established in 1732, the last of the original Thirteen Colonies. The state is named after King George II of Great Britain. Georgia was the fourth state to ratify the United States Constitution, on January 2, 1788...

. As ex-Confederate

Confederate States Army

The Confederate States Army was the army of the Confederate States of America while the Confederacy existed during the American Civil War. On February 8, 1861, delegates from the seven Deep South states which had already declared their secession from the United States of America adopted the...

soldiers they were not allowed to own guns, so they needed other ways to hunt for food. Thomas Williams knew something about English-style Archery (using a longbow, though it is unclear where he gained this knowledge) and showed Maurice and Will. Later, Maurice wrote a book,The Witchery of Archery
The Witchery of Archery
The Witchery of Archery, written by Maurice Thompson in 1878, was the first book in English about hunting with a bow ever published. Its full title is The Witchery of Archery: A Complete Manual of Archery. With Many Chapters of Adventures by Field and Flood, and an Appendix Containing Practical...

, 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

Ishi

Ishi was the last member of the Yahi, the last surviving group of the Yana people of the U.S. state of California. Ishi is believed to have been the last Native American in Northern California to have lived most of his life completely outside the European American culture...

came out of hiding in California in 1911. Ishi was the last of the Yahi Indian tribe. He lived for his last five years at the University of California at Berkeley Anthropology Museum. His doctor, Saxton Pope, was an instructor of surgery at the medical 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 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. They hunted in Alaska and Africa and took several large game animals.

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 archers in small-scale societies. From the 1920s, professional engineers took an interest in archery, previously the exclusive field of traditional craft experts. They led the commercial development of new forms of bow including the modern recurve

Recurve bow

In archery, the shape of the bow is usually taken to be the view from the side. It is the product of the complex relationship of material stresses, designed by a bowyer...

and compound bow

Compound bow

A compound bow is a modern bow that uses a levering system, usually of cables and pulleys, to bend the limbs.The limbs of a compound bow are much stiffer than those of a recurve bow or longbow. This limb stiffness makes the compound bow more energy-efficient than other bows, in conjunction with the...

. 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 Bibles" (see Further Reading).

External links

Society of Archer-Antiquaries
Archery Library Online Archery Books with historical content
Asian Traditional Archery Research Network

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.

Stone Age

North America

Bronze Age

Iron Age

Ancient history

Greco-Roman antiquity

East Asia

South Asia

Middle Ages

Europe

Decline, last uses, and survival of archery

Modern archery in small-scale societies

See also

Further reading

External links