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For accuracy and range together, the bow
and arrow held preeminence on the battlefield
for the entire ancient period, and continued
right down to relatively modem times.
Napoleon and his staff were attacked by a
swarm of arrow-shooting Cossacks in the
Russia of 1812, and the Sioux Dog Soldiers
opposed modem weaponry with bows as late
as 1908!

Until the advent of reliable light firearms,
true bows were preeminent—the crossbow
had too low a rate of fire to be a successful
open field competitor, and could never be
used in a running cavalry battle.

The bow is an ideal index to early culture
and technology. Its sprung form, as well as its
function, was universal. Limitations on classical
bows were the strengths of materials and
construction techniques used. A longer bow
provided only slightly more power. Only after
sinew and other materials were compounded
with springy wood could maximum bow
strength be reached and a superior recurved
bow produced. Tougher materials and recurving
allowed Mongol archers to shoot
through field plate armor worn by Europeans
in 1239.

Today, recurved hunting bows are made
of spring steel or laminated specialty materials,
and the limits of a bow’s range and
power depend on the strength of the huntsman
rather than on the materials and construction.
Before the present, though, tech-
nology limited bows, and the development of
the bow is as fascinating in its own right as the
more recent technological developments of
long-range missiles.

Bow developments are not mysterious,
though, and the mystery of the bow relates
primarily to miniatures today, since bows are
not used much anymore. The mystery derives
from the physical use of the bow itself.
You can shoot an arrow from either the right
side or from the left. It is painfully obvious to
anyone who thinks about it that any culture’s
individuals would fire from only one side, not
both. Children would be taught by their
fathers, and would never question the
method. Peer pressure and ridicule would
probably keep everyone from changing the
way they shot.

This obvious fact has not penetrated to
the sculptors of miniature figures. For example,
miniatures developed in England,
such as Minifigs fine 25mm Assyrian archers
(A), show the arrow being shot from the left. A
miniature from the U.S., such as in Imrie
Risley’s beautiful 54mm Mounted Assyrian
Archer (B), the arrow is being fired from the
right side of the bow. So either Minifigs or IR is
wrong.

This little squabble could be cleared up
merely by some research into existing ancient
sculptures and friezes or pictures of the same.
The full mystery is not whether Minifigs or IR
is wrong. It is WHY one culture shoots from
the left and another from the right. If you
could assemble left- and right-sided cultures
into some sort of a pattern, you’d have an
idea of the flow and predominance of cultures
in ancient and prehistoric times. If you can
find evidence that Incas fired from the left and
Mohicans from the right, you’d have evidence
of two distinct and possibly antagonistic
cultures. Why do we Americans shoot
right and the British left? Did we learn from
the Indians, or was it a symbolic break with
the Ring’s archers sometime after 1776? And
if the Incas shoot left, is their culture related to
the British? Yo Ho, the mystery of the bow
deepens! Off to the books, budding cultural
anthropologists and ancient historians. The
final answer awaits you alone, dear reader!