What is the development process of the bow and arrow?

Bow and arrow, a tool and weapon commonly used by the ancient people in China. There is no doubt that the earliest inventor of the bow and arrow was in China.

But who is the inventor, when was the bow and arrow, the ancient books say different things, some say it is Fuxi created the bow and arrow, some say the bow and arrow is invented by the Yellow Emperor, and there are also ancient books that say Houyi invented the bow and arrow, and so on.

In fact, according to archaeologists, these claims are inaccurate, because from the excavated artifacts, scientists believe that the bow and arrow came into being much earlier than these legendary characters, in China can be traced back to 20,000 to 30,000 years ago in the Paleolithic period.

From various ancient books and unearthed artifacts, it can be seen that the earliest bows and arrows invented by mankind were very simple, made from a tree branch or a bamboo, which was bent up to be the body of the bow and arrow, and the strings were made from the vines of plants or the sinews of animals.

This primitive, half-moon shaped bow and arrow was fired with very little power because the bow body was already bent to a great extent.

Later, the people constantly summed up their experience and changed the bow into a "bow" shape, so that the middle part of the bow and arrow was concave, and the bow would not change a lot when it was not being strung, so that it could reserve more and more power and increase the killing power of the bow and arrow.

Scientists have speculated that the character for "bow" in jinwen and oracle-bone inscriptions originated from the shape of the recurve bow, which can be seen to have been invented and used even earlier than the appearance of its characters.

Special mention should be made of the fact that archaeologists have found stone arrowheads made during the late Paleolithic period at sites in Shanxi Province, so you can imagine how long the history of making bows and arrows in China has been!

By the Eastern Zhou period, the manufacture of bows and arrows in China had improved greatly. For a long time, bows and arrows were important weapons in the hands of soldiers and hunters.

Bows and arrows needed to be used with one hand holding the bow and arrow and one hand pulling the string, thus affecting the accuracy of archery.

In order to overcome these shortcomings, our ancient people drew on the primitive bow clip used to kill prey, which gave rise to the original idea of manufacturing crossbows, i.e., placing a directional device and a mechanical launching system on the arm of the bow, with a much higher hitting rate and launching power. In this way, more than the performance of the bow crossbow was born.

So it seems, the crossbow is equipped with the arm of the bow. As a kind of conventional weapon in our ancient times, it is obviously evolved and developed from the bow.

The use of bows and arrows in our country has been at least 20,000 to 30,000 years of history, the crossbow as a conventional weapon of our army has a history of more than 2,000 years. From the detailed descriptions of crossbows that have been preserved, the earliest crossbow was a bronze pistol style with a top design that belonged to the early Zhou Dynasty.