Bow

The composite bow of mounted archers

The Mongol bow is the composite recurve bow developed by the nomads of Central Asia, the key weapon that upheld the Mongol Empire's conquest of the world. At about 100 to 120 cm it is fairly small, but thanks to its composite build, horn and sinew layered over a wooden core, it delivers a power rivaling the Western longbow. With a maximum range of over 300 m and an effective range of about 150 to 200 m, what was decisive above all was that it could be shot in any direction, front, back, left, or right, from horseback. With the Mongol draw, drawing the string with a ring on the thumb, the rider loosed quickly in succession at the gallop, and with the Parthian shot, turning to shoot behind while feigning flight, he broke a pursuing enemy.

The iconic weapon of the English archer

The longbow is the representative great bow of medieval England, a large bow about 180 cm carved whole from a single stave of yew. It looses arrows with the strong force of an 80 to 150 pound draw (about 36 to 68 kg), and a skilled archer boasts the astonishing speed of 10 to 12 shots a minute. Its effective range reaches about 200 m and its maximum about 350 m, and with the bodkin head it pierced mail. The true power of this bow lay not in one man but in hundreds shooting at once to darken the sky with an arrow storm. In the Hundred Years War the English longbowmen broke the numerically superior French knightly armies again and again with this massed fire.

A heavy-draw longbow built for battlefield use

The war bow is a heavy military longbow of medieval England with an especially high draw weight, of 150 pounds, about 68 kg, or more. It is a self bow, the whole bow carved from a single stave of yew, and made thicker and stronger than an ordinary longbow. With the narrow, pointed bodkin arrowhead made to pierce armor, it could punch through mail and, at close range, even relatively thin plate. To handle this tremendous draw weight an archer had to train for years from childhood, and as a result of that lifetime of training the skeletons of archers bear clear marks: curvature of the spine, enlarged bones in the left arm, and deformation of the shoulder and finger joints.

A bow with outward-curving limb tips for greater power

The recurve bow is a bow whose tips, the limbs, curve away from the archer when it is unstrung. This reverse curve makes the limbs hold force out to their very ends as the string is drawn, storing more energy than a straight self bow of the same length and shooting a more powerful arrow. This lets the bow be made short while keeping its power, so at about 100 to 150 cm long it suits handling from horseback. Historically the finest recurve bows were composite bows, made of horn, wood, and sinew glued together, of which the Korean gakgung is a prime example. The bow used in Olympic archery today is of this very recurve type.