Arrowheads From 70,000 Years Ago
People have been shooting arrows for a very long time. The oldest known arrowheads, made of bone and stone, come from Sibudu Cave in South Africa. They date to roughly 72,000 to 60,000 years ago.
Complete bows and arrows show up later, in Northern Europe. Finds at Mannheim-Vogelstang in Germany are 17,500 to 18,000 years old. At Stellmoor, near Hamburg, archers used pine arrows with a separate front shaft tipped with flint. The oldest bows found so far come from the Holmegård swamp in Denmark.
The bow was a winner. It replaced the spear-thrower as the main way to launch shafts on every continent except Australasia. The word archery comes from the Latin arcus, meaning bow. And a person who practises it can be called an archer, a bowman, or by the grand old word toxophilite.
When Archery Was a Fancy Party
Once firearms took over, the bow faded from the battlefield. But it found a new life as a sport. The Royal Company of Archers, formed in 1676, is one of the oldest sporting bodies in the world.
In the late 18th century, archery became a fashion craze among Britain's upper class. The Toxophilite Society was formed in London in 1781. Clubs popped up across the country, each with strict entry rules and outlandish costumes. Meetings came with flags, music and 21-gun salutes, and winners got titles and laurel wreaths, like at a medieval tournament.
It was also hugely popular with women, who could compete in the contests. That made archery meetings a popular place to meet new people. After the Napoleonic Wars it spread to all classes, helped by Walter Scott's 1819 novel Ivanhoe, where a hero wins an archery contest.
Rules, Records and the Olympics
In the 1840s the parties gave way to proper rules. The first Grand National Archery Society meeting was held in York in 1844. It set the "York Round", a series of shots at 55 m, 73 m and 91 m. One archer, Horace A. Ford, won the Grand National 11 times in a row.
Then came a dip. Croquet and tennis lured players away, and by 1889 only 50 archery clubs were left in Britain. Even so, archery was part of the 1900 Paris Olympics. In the United States, a national archery association formed in 1879, and today it is known as USA Archery.
From the 1920s, engineers took over a craft once run by traditional bow makers. They developed the modern recurve bow and compound bow. Archery returned to the Olympics in 1972, and today Para archery is part of the Summer Paralympic Games.
Inside a Modern Bow
Every bow works the same basic way: a string attached to springy limbs that store the energy of your pull. The clever part comes in the compound bow, invented by Holless Wilbur Allen in the 1960s. Cams or oval wheels at its tips make it much easier to hold at full draw.
This effect is called let-off, usually 65% to 80%. A 60 lb bow with 80% let-off needs only 12 lb of force to hold fully drawn, giving the archer more time to aim. Up to 99% let-off is possible.
The small parts matter too. Arrows usually have three feathers or vanes, called fletching; two would make the arrow unstable. If real bird feathers are used, they must all come from the same side of the bird. And the arm guard archers wear, the bracer, does not brace anything. Its name comes from an old armour word for a sleeve.
Why a Bent Arrow Flies Straight
A bow is basically an energy bank. When you throw something by hand, your muscles have only a split second to push. With a bow, you pull slowly, so your muscles can do much more work. The bow stores it, then hands it to the arrow far faster than your arm ever could. Frogs use the same trick, with stretchy tendons that boost their jumps.
Here is the surprise. When the string is released, the arrow actually bends and wiggles side to side in flight. High-speed photos show it clearly. This bending lets the arrow flex around the bow instead of hitting it. It is called the archer's paradox, and it is why arrows are made to a set stiffness, known as spine.
One piece of advice: never shoot a bow without an arrow. With nothing to take the energy, almost all of it stays in the bow, and some warn this can crack it.
