Recurve Bow

Origin

The composite recurve bow is thought to have arisen among the nomads of the Central Asian steppe around the 3rd millennium BC. A straight bow was weak if short and had to be long to be strong, but once the limbs were curved back and horn, wood, and sinew were layered and glued, a short yet powerful bow became possible, and this became the foundation of mounted archery, shooting a bow from horseback. Steppe horse peoples such as the Scythians, Huns, Mongols, Turks, and Magyars ranged the battlefields for thousands of years with this bow at the fore. In Korea the bow culture descending from the Three Kingdoms period was perfected in the gakgung, made of water buffalo horn, bamboo, and ox sinew, and in the Joseon dynasty it became a core subject of the military examination.

Features

• Limbs, the bow tips, that curve away from the archer
• Stores more energy than a straight self bow of the same length
• A short size suited to mounted shooting (about 100 to 150 cm)
• A composite construction of horn, wood, and sinew glued together
• The Korean gakgung, among the finest composite recurve bows in the world
• The official equipment of modern Olympic archery

Stories

The heart of the recurve bow lay in packing great force into a short bow. As the string was drawn the limbs that had curved backward straightened, holding force to their very ends, and the moment of release poured that energy into the arrow for a power surpassing a straight bow of the same size. Above all, this short, strong bow could be handled freely on horseback, so the horse archer of the steppe poured arrows while riding at full gallop and toyed with the enemy by the Parthian shot, turning to shoot behind while feigning flight. On foot too, as in Korean traditional archery, it was used for both target and war, and today it is the official bow of target archery, including the Olympics.

Weakness

The weakness of the composite recurve bow lies in its making and its keeping. Gluing horn, wood, and sinew together and letting them cure usually takes many months, and at the longest a year or two, so a single bow demands much labor to finish. The animal glue and the sinew, moreover, absorb moisture and let the bonded layers lift or part, sapping the bow's power, so it is troublesome to handle in a rainy climate. For this reason the composite bow flourished on the dry steppe and in the Middle East, while in damp lands such as England the single-stave self bow, the longbow, was preferred. Compared with a self wood bow it takes considerably more care and upkeep.

Cultural Significance

The recurve composite bow is a weapon symbolic of the power of the steppe horse civilizations. It was because they had this short, strong bow that the horse peoples from the Scythians to the Mongol Empire could enjoy a military edge that threatened the agrarian empires. In Korea the bow was more than a weapon, a pillar of the culture: the gakgung and traditional archery (gukgung) were a required subject of the Joseon military examination and a discipline of self-cultivation for the scholar-gentleman, and that tradition carries on as the background to Korea's reign as a power in Olympic archery today. Among the Ottoman Turks archery was regarded as both a martial and a religious discipline, and long-distance shooting records were honored on stone steles at the Ok Meydani, the archery field of Istanbul.

In Popular Culture

The recurve bow is a weapon never missing from works dealing with horse peoples and ancient warfare. It appears as the main weapon of the horse archer in films depicting steppe empires like the Mongols and the Xiongnu and in strategy games such as Age of Empires and Total War, where the Parthian shot, fired backward in flight, is often depicted. In fantasy and action games it is commonly drawn as the bow of the nimble archer character. It is also widely known in the form of the modern recurve bow fitted with a sight and stabilizers, through real Olympic archery broadcasts and sports works.

Trivia

• The recurve shape lets a short bow hold the energy of a far longer straight bow, and it was precisely this that allowed a strong bow to be shot from horseback, so that mounted archery from the Scythians to the Mongols could dominate the battlefield.
• In the composite recurve bow made of glued horn, wood, and sinew, the animal glue and sinew absorb moisture and let the bonded layers part, so it flourished on the dry steppe and in the Middle East while damp lands such as England preferred the single-stave self wood bow, the longbow.
• The official bow of modern Olympic archery is of the recurve type, and Korea, heir to the tradition of the water-buffalo-horn gakgung, has long held the top of the world in Olympic archery.