Bow and arrow

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  The bow and arrow is one of the oldest hunting and combat technologies in human history, with roots stretching back at least 72,000 years to sites like Sibudu Cave in South Africa. That number is worth sitting with. Before the pyramids, before writing, before the wheel, people were already crafting arrowheads and launching projectiles through the air with elastic force. What drove that invention? How did a device so simple come to shape the fates of empires? And why, after tens of thousands of years of dominance, did it eventually give way to something louder and more destructive? Those are the questions this documentary will trace.

• 2. Deep Origins

  ›

  Sibudu Cave in South Africa preserves what are currently the oldest probable arrowheads ever found, dated to approximately 72,000-60,000 years ago. That pushes archery deep into a period when modern humans were still largely confined to the African continent. The story does not stop there. In 2020, bone points found at Fa Hien Cave in Sri Lanka were dated to 48,000 years ago, making them the earliest probable arrowheads discovered outside Africa. Researchers noted that bow-and-arrow hunting at that Sri Lankan site likely targeted monkeys and smaller creatures such as squirrels, whose remains were found in the same sediment layer as the points.

  Small stone points from Grotte Mandrin in Southern France complicate the picture further. Used some 54,000 years ago, several are less than 10 millimeters across at the base, too small for any practical purpose other than as arrowheads. Their presence is associated with possibly the first groups of modern humans to leave Africa. Separately, analyses of stone and bone projectile points from early Upper Paleolithic contexts suggest some European Homo sapiens may have used bow-propelled arrows as early as 40,000-35,000 years ago, earlier than researchers had previously assumed.

  After the last glacial period ended around 12,000 years ago, the bow appears to have spread to every inhabited region except Australasia and most of Oceania. The absence of locally made bow technology from the Australian continent has long puzzled researchers. A recent hypothesis proposes that the mechanical and physical properties of common Australian woods make them unsuitable for selfbows, meaning the raw material itself may have been the barrier.

• 3. Ancient Warfare

  ›

  At Nataruk in Turkana County, Kenya, obsidian bladelets found embedded in a skull and within the thoracic cavity of a skeleton suggest stone-tipped arrows were used as weapons around 10,000 years ago. That site offers one of the earliest direct physical records of the bow as an instrument of conflict rather than hunting. The distinction between the two uses was not always clean, but warfare made its own demands.

  Nubian archers were so highly regarded in ancient Egypt that their homeland earned the name Ta-Seti, meaning "Land of the Bow" in Ancient Egyptian. Persian kings made the bow their national weapon, and images of them carrying one appear on Persian coins. Not every ancient culture embraced the bow with equal enthusiasm. The Greek poet Archilochus expressed open scorn for fighting with bows and slings, a reminder that archery carried class and cultural associations as well as military utility.

  Beginning with the reign of William the Conqueror, the English longbow became England's principal ranged weapon and held that position until the end of the Middle Ages. Genghis Khan and his Mongol forces conquered much of the Eurasian steppe relying on short bows, demonstrating that a lighter, compact design could serve cavalry warfare just as effectively. Native Americans used archery both to hunt and to defend themselves during the European colonization of the Americas.

• 4. Decline and Survival

  ›

  Organised warfare using bows ended in the early to mid-17th century in Western Europe, pushed aside by firearms that were more powerful and more accurate. In Eastern cultures and in the New World, however, the bow persisted into the 19th century for both hunting and fighting. In the Canadian Arctic, bows were made until the end of the 20th century specifically for hunting caribou, with Igloolik documented as one such location.

  The bow has not entirely vanished as a weapon even in recent memory. A conflict in 2009 in Kenya between the Kisii people and the Kalenjin people resulted in four deaths and included the use of bows, a recorded example of the bow still appearing in tribal warfare within Sub-Saharan Africa. Modern special forces have also used bows for survival and clandestine operations, where silence matters more than firepower.

  The British upper class launched a different kind of survival for archery when they took it up as a sport in the late 18th century. Sir Ashton Lever, an antiquarian and collector, formed the Toxophilite Society in London in 1781, under the patronage of George IV, who was then Prince of Wales. That organisation helped shift archery from battlefield necessity to leisure pursuit, a transition that eventually led to its place in modern competitive sport.

• 5. How the Bow Works

  ›

  A bow stores and releases energy through two curved elastic limbs joined by a high-tensile string. When an archer pulls the string back, both limbs flex rearward, behaving as a pair of cantilever springs. Releasing that draw converts stored elastic energy into kinetic energy, which travels through the bowstring into the arrow and propels it forward. The force required to hold the string stationary at full draw is called the draw weight, and a higher draw weight generally means a more powerful bow capable of driving heavier or faster arrows.

  Composite bows take the engineering further by combining multiple materials. The classic composite design uses wood at the core for lightness and dimensional stability, horn to store compression energy on the belly of the limb, and sinew on the back of the limb for its ability to store tension energy. These bows, typically Asian in origin, often incorporate a stiff extension at each limb tip called the siyah, an Arabic term, which functions similarly to a recurve to add arrow speed at release.

  For safety, a bow must never be shot without an arrow fitted to the string. Without a projectile to absorb the energy, the force redirects back into the bow's own limbs and causes damage. Bows are also typically kept unstrung when not in active use, which removes residual tension and helps preserve the limbs' strength and elasticity over time. A dry fire and a neglected string tension are two ways an archer can shorten the life of their equipment.

• 6. Arrows and Arrowheads

  ›

  Arrow sizes vary enormously across cultures. Arrows used in the Amazon River jungles reach 8.5 feet in length, while some designs are so short that special equipment is required to shoot them at all. Most modern arrows fall between 22 and 30 inches. Shafts are now commonly made from carbon fibre, aluminum, fiberglass, or wood, each with trade-offs: carbon shafts resist bending but can be too light for some bows and cost more; aluminum bends with heavy use; wood is cheapest but variable in weight and more prone to breaking.

  Arrowhead types reflect centuries of specialised purpose. Bodkin heads are simple metal spikes of various shapes, designed specifically to pierce armour. Broadheads are triangular or leaf-shaped with sharpened edges and are the standard choice for hunting. Pile heads are plain metal cones used in target shooting, fitting directly over the tip of the shaft. Blunt heads are flat-ended and used for small game or birds, engineered not to pierce targets or embed in trees, which makes recovering the arrow simpler. Barbed heads appear in both warfare and hunting contexts.

  Historical arrowhead materials include flint, bone, horn, and metal. Most modern arrowheads are steel. The person who manufactures metal arrowheads carries a specific occupational title: arrowsmith, just as a bowyer makes bows and a fletcher makes arrows, each role reflecting how much specialisation the craft historically demanded. The oldest complete surviving bows are the elm Holmegaard bows from Denmark, dated to 9,000 BCE, and high-performance wooden bows are still made today following that same design.