Sydney Bowmen

• The earliest known bow was found at Stellmoor in northern Germany in the 1930's. It is thought to be about 10,000 years old. It was made of Scotch pine. Unfortunately it was destroyed by fire in Hamburg in WW2. The Stellmoor bow was from the Mesolithic or Middle Stone Age.

• The next oldest bows were found at Holmgaard in Sweden and are thought to be about 8,000 years old. There are two Holmgaard bows - one is 64 inches long and about 2.4 inches wide. The second is 60 inches long and 1.75 inches wide. The Holmgaard bows were made of elm and are from the Neolithic or New Stone Age.

• The earliest bows found in Britain are the Rotten Bottom bow from SW Scotland (6,000 years old), the Aschcott Heath bow from Surrey (4660 years old) and the Meare Heath Bow (4690 years old). The Meare Heath bow is 74 inches long and 2.5 inches wide.

• Several bows found in the Lena Valley in Siberia are 2,000-3,000 years old.

• The Oschenmoor bows found near Diepholz in Germany were dated from 2,400 to 1,800 BC.

• An Iron Age hunter uncovered in a melting glacier in the Swiss Alps in 1991 carried a longbow with arrows as well as a copper axe.

• Some Iron Age bows had double nocks - this may have been because the gut strings stretched in wet weather so the bow could be restrung on the outer nocks to maintain brace height.

• Bows were made from elm, hickory, oak, osage and yew, with yew being the best wood to use.

• The bow placed a decisive role in many battles, some of which turned the course of history:

• In 512 BC, the 700,000 strong army of King Darius of Persia - who ruled an empire stretching from Egypt to India - was defeated by Scythian horse archers who lured the Persians into an ambush on the steppes north of the Sea of Azor in southern Russia.

• Germanic tribes used longbows to defeat Roman legions.

• The Vikings used long bows. In 870, the Danes defeated King Edmund of England, captured him, tied him to a tree and shot him dead with arrows.

• At the battle of Crecy in 1346, five thousand English long bowmen defeated a French army of 100,000.

• During the Hundred Years War, English bowmen prevailed against French armoured knights in the battles of Crecy (1346), Poitiers (1356) and Agincourt (1415). At Agincourt the archers under King Henry V killed many hundreds of French knights in armour with a blizzard of 1,000 arrows per second - so thick that their white feathers looked like snow on the ground.

• If the French captured an English bowman, they would cut off his first two fingers so he could not draw a bow. The V for Victory sign is said to have originated with English archers "giving the finger" to the French before battle to show they still had their fingers and could still shoot. Also, English archers would cross their fingers before battle in the hope they would survive and still be able to draw a bow.

• In medieval England, all able-bodied men were required to practice archery once a week. They shot at a wooden wand 4 inches wide at 100 yards. The wand represented the central 'killing zone' on a human.

• An English longbow could wound at 400 yards, kill at 200 yards and penetrate armour at 100 yards.

• An English archer could fire up to 12 arrows per minute.

• If an archer shot a person while at practice, he could not be charged with murder.

• There were two types of bows - war bows or artillery bows drawing 150-180 lbs and hunting or recreational bows drawing about 50-60 lbs. These tended to be used by the upper classes.

• Henry VIII's ship Mary Rose sunk off Portsmouth was carrying in her cargo many war bows of 150 lb draw weight.

• In 1544, Roger Ascham wrote "Toxophilus", the first book on archery.

• The long bow was used in Europe and by the Indians of North America. In Asia, composite bows were used. These were short, recurve bows made of different materials - wood, hide, bone etc. In performance, they were similar to the modern compound bow, having a degree of "let-off" at full draw.

• Composite bows were used by the Scythians, Sarmatians, Pathians, Massagetae, Hsuing-nu, Avars, Huns, Bulgars, Mongols and Turks.

• They were the main weapon of horse archers who roamed across central Asia (e.g. Genghis Khan).

• Composite bows could fire long distances - ancient stone markers at a distance shooting field at Ok Meidan in Istanbul indicates arrows could be shot 900 yards from these bows.

• Use of the composite bow began to wane in Asia 500 years ago.