Short answers, pulled from the story.
The oldest known evidence of the bow and arrow comes from South African sites such as Sibudu Cave, where likely arrowheads have been found, dating from approximately 72,000 to 60,000 years ago. This discovery pushes the timeline of human ranged warfare back to a time when early humans were still navigating the complex social and environmental challenges of the Middle Stone Age.
The technology spread to every inhabited region except for Australasia and most of Oceania after the end of the last glacial period some 12,000 years ago, though the reason for the absence of locally made bow and arrow technology from the Australian continent remains a subject of debate. Some hypotheses suggest that the mechanical and physical properties of common Australian woods make them unsuitable for selfbows, preventing the technology from taking root in that region.
The Nubian archers of ancient Egypt achieved a level of mastery that defined their civilization's identity. Their skill was so renowned that their land earned the name Ta-Seti, which translates to Land of the Bow.
A number of different types of arrowheads are known, with the most common being bodkins, broadheads, and piles. Bodkin heads are simple spikes made of metal of various shapes, designed to pierce armour, while a broadhead arrowhead is usually triangular or leaf-shaped and has a sharpened edge or edges, commonly used for hunting, and a pile arrowhead is a simple metal cone used mainly for target shooting.
Organised warfare with bows ended in the early to mid-17th century in Western Europe, but it persisted into the 19th century in Eastern cultures, including hunting and warfare in the New World. In the Canadian Arctic, bows were made until the end of the 20th century for hunting caribou, for instance at Igloolik.
The oldest extant bows in one piece are the elm Holmegaard bows from Denmark, which were dated to 9,000 BCE. Several bows from Holmegaard, Denmark, date 8,000 years ago, and high-performance wooden bows are currently made following the Holmegaard design.