Bow (archery)

The bow and arrow is a projectile weapon system (a bow with arrows) that predates recorded history and is common to most cultures. Archery is the art, practice, or skill of applying it.

A bow is a flexible arc that shoots aerodynamic projectiles called arrows. A string joins the two ends of the bow and when the string is drawn back, the ends of the bow are flexed. When the string is released, the potential energy of the flexed stick is transformed into the kinetic energy of the arrow.Archery is the art or sport of shooting arrows from bows.

Today, bows and arrows are used primarily for hunting and for the sport of archery. Although they are still occasionally used as weapons of war, the development of gunpowder and muskets, and the growing size of armies, led to their replacement in warfare several centuries ago in much of the world.

Someone who makes bows is known as a bowyer, and one who makes arrows is a fletcher —or in the case of the manufacture of metal arrow heads, an arrowsmith.

The bow and arrow appears around the transition from the Upper Paleolithic to the Mesolithic. At the site of Nataruk in Turkana County, Kenya, obsidian bladelets found embedded in a skull and within the thoracic cavity of another skeleton, suggest the use of stone-tipped arrows as weapons. After the end of the last glacial period, use of the bow seems to have spread to every inhabited continent, including the New World, except for Australia.

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