The Book of Archery: Being the Complete History and Practice of the Art, Ancient and Modern...

In the Paleolithic era, over 250,000 years ago, archery was invented. With bows and arrows made from wood (mostly pine), archery was presumably used only for hunting. As technology advanced, stone arrowheads were fashioned on the ends of arrows, making them more effective. Archery arrived in the Americas around 2,500 BC. While archery was mostly used for hunting, the tribes of the Southern United States created a game that involved shooting arrows into a moving hoop. The Indian tribes of the Great Plains were the first to become adept at archery on horseback. During the Iron Age, Babylonians and Assyrians used archery in warfare. Just as Native American tribes learned to perfect archery on horses, these peoples became skilled in archery on moving war chariots. Into the Middle Ages, European warfare relied heavily on both skilled and unskilled archers. Implementing mass archery tactics during the Crusades, the English invented their own bow, the English long bow, one of the most popular styles to this day. Today, archery is an Olympic sporting event, a skill used in recreational hunting, and somewhat of a lost art. Recently, archery has become a bit of a fad in America and the United Kingdom because of the rise in popular culture of archers like Robin Hood, Green Arrow and The Hunger Games'Katniss Everdeen.