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Archery is the practice of using a bow to shoot arrows. Archery has historically been used in hunting and combat and has become a precision sport. A person practicing archery is called an archer, and one who is fond of or an expert at archery is sometimes called a toxophilite.
The bow seems to have been invented in the late Paleolithic or early Mesolithic. The oldest indication for its use in Europe comes from the Stellmoor in the Ahrensburg valley north of Hamburg, Germany and date from the late Paleolithic Hamburgian culture (9000-8000 BC). The arrows were made of pine and consisted of a mainshaft and a 15-20 centimetre (6-8 inches) long foreshaft with a flint point. There are no known definite earlier bows; previous pointed shafts are known, but may have been launched by atlatls rather than bows.
The oldest bows known so far come from the Holmegård swamp in Denmark. In the 1940s, two bows were found there. They are made of elm and have flat arms and a D-shaped midsection. The center section is biconvex. The complete bow is 1.50 m (5 ft) long. Bows of Holmegaard-type were in use until the Bronze Age; the convexity of the midsection has decreased with time.
Mesolithic pointed shafts have been found in England, Germany, Denmark, and Sweden. They were often rather long (up to 120 cm [4 ft]) and made of hazel (Corylus avellana), wayfaring tree (Viburnum lantana) 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, which was fastened on with birch-tar.
Bows and arrows have been present in Egyptian 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, artifacts which may be arrow-shaft straighteners are known from the Natufian culture, (ca. 12.800-10.300 BP) onwards. The Khiamian and PPN A shouldered Khiam-points may well be arrowheads.
The bow was one of the earliest forms of artillery. Bows eventually replaced the atlatl as the predominant means for launching projectiles.
Classical civilizations, notably the Persians, Macedonians, Nubians, Greeks, Koreans, Parthians, Indians, Japanese, and Chinese fielded large numbers of archers in their armies. Arrows proved exceptionally 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.
During the 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 soldiers 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 with good armour and a sword. Professional archers required a lifetime of training and expensive bows to be effective, and were thus rare in Europe (see English longbow).
Archery was highly developed in Asia and in the Islamic world. In East Asia the ancient Korean civilizations were well-known for their archery skills, and South Korea remains a particularly strong performer at Olympic archery competitions even to this day. Horse archers were the main military force of most of the Equestrian Nomads. Central Asian and American Plains tribesmen were extremely adept at archery on horseback.
