Bows have a long and widespread history in human culture, having existed in prehistoric times on every inhabited continent except Australia.  The oldest almost complete bow found dates back to 9,200 years ago, found preserved in a Danish bog near Holmegaard.  Several prehistoric bows that have been discovered have been made of elm, and found in bogs, or even in the sea.  As elm is known for its resistance to decay while under water, it's reasonable to assume that many other woods were used in these times too, but they have not survived the rigours of time as well.  Some pieces of compression pine found near Stellmoor in Germany, are believed to be the thick tips of a bow, the rest having rotted away in the intervening 11,500 years.  That puts them well within the last years of the last ice age, during which any archeological evidence was scrubbed from the land by kilometers of ice moving about on top.  Well, in some parts of the world, at least: archaeologists suspect that they have found bone arrowheads in the Sibudu Cave in South Africa, which date back to around 61,000 years ago.  Modern, high performance, high draw weight bows have been successfully produced in the style of several prehistoric bows.

One can easily imagine that such a vital tool would have been considered sacred to such prehistoric people, just as it was to the Native American tribes and to the Mongol Horsemasters, who both famously used it widely.  The Ancient Greeks in Europe, the Ancient Egyptians in Africa and the Ancient Hindus on the Indian subcontinent, cultures that stretch back for many thousands of years, all depicted gods of hunting or warfare with bows in hand.  An essential companion in both fields, right up to the present day, the simple wooden bow appeals to a deeper part of the human psyche.