African bows and archery

[fearn]

Originally Posted by Timo Nieminen

It keeps the undrawn string tension low (even zero, if you want). This means you can keep the bow strung forever without worrying about the bow losing its spring (i.e., developing string follow). Gives you more freedom with what materials will be OK for the bow and the string.

You sacrifice power. This gives you a force-draw curve that starts with a gentle slope, which means you get a concave force-draw curve.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bow_shape#Decurve_bow

As pointed out in that article and in the <I>Traditional Bowyer's Bible I</i>, aside from ease of use and relative silence, a decurved shape can be forced by dependence on weak wood. Decurved bows are known from the US southwest (when they were stuck using willow wood for bows) and from Egypt (where they had to use acacia). In both cases, the shape allowed them to maximize the power they got from the weak and inelastic woods they had to use. These wouldn't be the equivalent of yew bows, but were the best they could do with local materials. Note that the Indian bows, at least, were often large (relative to their power) to compensate for the weak wood.

Best,

F

[bluelake]

Interesting thread. One of my main areas of interest is Korean traditional archery (I've been a practitioner for 20 years), so anything dealing with a country's traditional archery catches my attention.

[Iain]

Thanks guys for the very interesting posts.

I think a theme that's been identified here is the lack of particularly strong woods for bow making.

Are there cases of horn bows in African cultures? I don't recall seeing any. But there are certainly a lot of wildlife candidates with the appropriate materials available...

[fearn]

Originally Posted by Iain

Thanks guys for the very interesting posts.

I think a theme that's been identified here is the lack of particularly strong woods for bow making.

Are there cases of horn bows in African cultures? I don't recall seeing any. But there are certainly a lot of wildlife candidates with the appropriate materials available...

The ancient Egyptians had compound bows, although I don't recall offhand how they were made.

Not all African bows were junk, either. There's a story of a Brit on safari back in the days of empire who brought a bow with him to East Africa. One of the natives he employed brought along his own competition archery kit for fun. When they had a friendly shoot-off, the native's bow was better. Granted this was probably in the 1930s, but some tribes had decent bows.

In the tropics, moisture is a huge issue. This keeps archers from using horn for compound bows (since it messes up the glue and promotes rot of all materials). Even drying the bow wood to get maximum performance is impossible. There are two ways around this: making huge wood bows (as in South America and Papua New Guinea), and using smaller, weaker bows but poisoning the arrows. I know the latter was used by the pygmies and others, and from the pictures above, I'll bet the former was used as well.

With the pygmy bows, AFAIK, the idea was to make something close to a throw-away bow. They didn't go in for bows that would last 100 years (as with a Turkish compound bow), because the bows (like all wood) would rot in the tropics. Instead, they went in for simple designs that were easy to build and easy to replace. Even if the result isn't spectacular by our standards, they make sense, given the environment in which they were made and used.

In any case, were I looking for compound bows, I'd look in North Africa. Compound bows are dryland weapons, and you need a good source of horn as well as wood to make one. Unfortunately, most of them were replaced long ago by firearms.

One grim thought: if the war in north Mali brings more western soldiers into the region, I suspect we'll get an efflux of weapons from that area in the coming decade. At that point, we'll probably learn more about Sahelian archery. War seems to have a way of promoting this kind of study.

My 0.02 cents,

F

[Wodimi]

I just noticed this interesting topic and think I also should add something.
The first quiver is from the Borana in Somalia and south Ethiopia. The other a nice example of a Haussa quiver from West Africa.

[aiontay]

Looking at the featherless arrows made out reed, a thought occurs to me. Was the much bow fishing in sub-Saharan Africa, and given the damp conditions, even if you weren't bow fishing, would fletching on an arrow accomplish much?

[Wodimi]

to show the beauty of African arrow heads, here two excamples.

[Timo Nieminen]

Originally Posted by fearn

The ancient Egyptians had compound bows, although I don't recall offhand how they were made.

A whole bunch of composite bows (i.e., horn bows) were found in Tutankhamun's tomb. AFAIK, that's the single biggest find, but there may be others. Some of Tutankhamum's bows appear to be imports, being wrapped in birch bark, which is not common in Egypt.

I don't have details of Tut's bows, but there are books with the details. But this is Egypt as part of the Near/Middle East, rather than Egypt as part of Africa. We also have North African composite bows in the context North Africa as part of the Arab/Turkish world, rather than North Africa as "African".

I don't know of any African non-Near/Middle Eastern/Arab/Turkish influences composite bows. Rawhide backed or cabled bows are quite plausible, but I don't know of examples.

There are West African crossbows. A couple of examples can be seen in Grayson's "Traditional archery from six continents". Otherwise, African bows are self bows, often circular cross-section, sometimes with rawhide or other wrapping for reinforcement (e.g.f of nocks, but sometimes elsewhere).

['Compound" vs "composite" - in the early days, these were synonyms, but these days "compound" usually means the multi-string-pulley-cam things that only a physicist or an archer seeking efficiency would love. Perhaps 'twould have been better if those things had been called "ugly physics bows" or such. (I think they're "compound", due to "compound pulley".)]

[fearn]

Originally Posted by Timo Nieminen

There are West African crossbows. A couple of examples can be seen in Grayson's "Traditional archery from six continents". Otherwise, African bows are self bows, often circular cross-section, sometimes with rawhide or other wrapping for reinforcement (e.g.f of nocks, but sometimes elsewhere).

['Compound" vs "composite" - in the early days, these were synonyms, but these days "compound" usually means the multi-string-pulley-cam things that only a physicist or an archer seeking efficiency would love. Perhaps 'twould have been better if those things had been called "ugly physics bows" or such. (I think they're "compound", due to "compound pulley".)]

On a side note, copies of the three volumes of the Traditional Bowyer's Bible are available cheap on a certain BigMuddyRiver online bookseller, and volume three has a chapter on African bows.

Thanks for the reminder: I'd forgotten about the crossbows. There's a nicely mounted one in the American Museum of Natural History in New York. Reportedly it's based on old Portuguese models of centuries ago, but made out of indigenous materials, of course.

As for modern compound bows, I've heard traditional archers call those things "four-wheel bows." While I agree with your assessment, I can't complain, really. They're simply America's contribution to the history of archery. Probably in centuries to come, people will collect the surviving examples and make all sorts of cooing noises over them. Similarly, the chair leg and car spring bows showing up in east Africa are another novel design, albeit a less powerful one. Despite the ubiquity of guns, people are still coming up with new bow designs even now.

F

[Iain]

Fascinating to read the discussion as it progresses guys.

My understanding of the West African crossbows was also that they were based on designs encountered form the Portuguese.

This is an interesting link to a photo story of the Fulani protecting their herds in the modern day. It shows many interesting photos with bows.

http://www.teddyseguin.com/dotclear/...ng-kalachnikov

[fernando]

Originally Posted by fearn

... Thanks for the reminder: I'd forgotten about the crossbows. There's a nicely mounted one in the American Museum of Natural History in New York. Reportedly it's based on old Portuguese models of centuries ago, but made out of indigenous materials, of course....

This is an appealing issue for me. I am trying to spot some info about this topic, but it reveals hard to happen.
But at searching the theme i have read a lecture from qualified sources that bows and crossbows were used by both sides in the take over of Lisbon, Silves and Santarem from the Moors, in the XII century... Moors having invaded the peninsula in the VII century, coming from North Africa.
The lecturer inferred that there is not much material written on this theme in the period, due an ideologic despise against weapons that killed at distance, in favour of swords and lances, used in singular combat; hence the bow being called the forgotten weapon of the Reconquest.
It is also known that crossbows and bows were the vital weapon in battles fought by Portuguese low nobility, supported by populars, against Spaniards top royalty in the XIV century, to reassure Portugal independence; having the Portuguese been helped by allied British archers with their long bows. We may conclude that Portuguese bows were shorter, but i could find no evidence in my (rather simple) search.
Drawings of Portuguese archers or crossbow men are rare; and even the ones that show up are symbolic or alegoric.
On the other hand we can read chronicles of the discoveries period (XV-XVI century), where the crossbow is often mentioned. Perhaps at this stage the bow was abandoned.

[KuKulzA28]

Great points fearn!

Just something I'd like to add, if it means anything

Originally Posted by fearn

In the tropics, moisture is a huge issue. This keeps archers from using horn for compound bows (since it messes up the glue and promotes rot of all materials). Even drying the bow wood to get maximum performance is impossible. There are two ways around this: making huge wood bows (as in South America and Papua New Guinea), and using smaller, weaker bows but poisoning the arrows. I know the latter was used by the pygmies and others, and from the pictures above, I'll bet the former was used as well.

Moisture is a problem... Most Amazonian natives replace their longbows every year, and the bowstrings frequently. Daily use combined with moisture make it necessary.

One exception to the moisture negating horn is Java. I believe the Javanese had horn bows made with water buffalo horn. However modern Javanese competition archery uses wooden recurve bows. Here's an article from ATARN (an excellent Asian traditional archery site). However it wasn't like a composite bow, it was two horn slats joined at the grip with a wooden(?) grip strapped on, I think...


Only other culture I know of who made horn bows (not like Asiatic composites) were the Shoshone and maybe some related tribes... using mountain sheep's horn. Very powerful compact bows.