African bows and archery

[Timo Nieminen]

Originally Posted by kronckew

? - why do they string the bows backwards (string is on the wrong side of the recurve)?

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

The reflex-recurve Asian bow does the opposite - the reflex is designed to keep the undrawn string tension high, giving a steep beginning to the force-draw curve, and a convex force-draw curve.

[kronckew]

thanx, makes sense i guess.

[Martin Lubojacky]

Hi Iain,
cannot find the bow now (which is very ordinary, BTW), so at the very least - small bunch of flowers from the North Caameroon...

[KuKulzA28]

Ian, I think it's good you try to bring up African bows. I have a thread on a Brazilian indian bow, but it hasn't garnered as much interest (if I remember right only you commented on it ). But that's okay, I think like you said, a lot has to do with the fact they aren't as easily preserved so antique bows are harder to come by...

Ian, the bow in the post#6 resembles somewhat the "gullwing" horse-bows of the Plains Indians in North America.

The D shape of the bow in Colin Henshaw's post is a good design in some ways. I'm glad Timo Nieminen cleared up its pros (has obvious cons). I'd like to add that some ancient Egyptian bows were shaped like this too. I think it is before they adopted the reflex(?)

I have noticed many African bows having a circular cross-sections. This is good for solving both arrow-paradox and stability in your bow-hand but there's some issues with it. Flat bows, and semi-circular bows like the English longbow, have their own set of pros and cons.

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Some things off the top of my head...

Ethiopian/Nubian archers were extremely infamous for their skill in archery, and it was this martial tradition that kept all sorts of invaders out, from the Romans to the Muslims. The Ethiopian archer's were also known for being able to snipe the eyes of opponents wearing armor and helmets. Even in the time of the ancient Egyptians, Nubians were considered some of their best archers. I think that's one area to look if you are looking for powerful African bows.

The Hadza are known for their strong longbows. They loose with the "mediterranean" release and have an interesting forward leaning shooting form. Some of their bows have up to 100 pounds of pull. Their way of life, culture, and they themselves are endangered.

Many have observed African archers stringing their bows by stepping down on the belly of the bow (side that faces you as you shoot) while one end is on the ground, pulling the top end towards yourself and stringing it. Apparently they do this in Papua New Guinea as well.

Kenyans were using bows in political-tribal conflicts pretty recently. Not sure if you can get a-hold of those but they might be the most recent form of African martial archery.

Another good place to look is, as mentioned before, West Africa. Here's a photo of 2 Congolese warriors (not sure which ethnic group). Both bear bows. As I understand it, large hosts of warriors used to be mustered by leaders, and they mostly used a combination of spear-and-shield and bows, as well as blades and throwing knives secondarily. I have heard that in the Congo region, it is known that some will use leaves to make the fletchings out of... and that in some areas, they do not use fletchings. Fletch-less arrows are also found in Papua New Guinea and Taiwan. Fletch-less arrows are fine at closer range, and in Papua New Guinea their loooong fletch-less arrows have long heavy heads to keep the forward tilt and prevent the arrow from going nose up mid-flight.

[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?

[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

[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.