Prehistoric India to 1000 B.C. c14.105

c14.105

The distribution of bow-types among modern primitives and what we know of its early history suggest that there are two main families - simple bows of wood with a mainly African centre of distribution and perhaps origin, and composite bows in which horn and sinew are used to build up a shorter, stiffer bow, which is known on the steppes and Siberia, in Turkey, Persia, and India, and among the North American Eskimo. There is a Danish example dating from the Mesolithic period. The evidence from Crete suggests the adoption of the composite horn-bow by the Minoans at the same time as they acquired the use of the war-chariot, and composite bows in ancient Egypt are confined to one in the Nineteenth Dynasty (the time of the wars with Syria and the adoption of the chariot) and the other as late as the sixth or seventh century B.C. and presumably of Scythian origin.