Blonde Girl With The Longbow

Traditional longbows are self bows, made from a single natural piece of wood. They have been used for thousands of years, for hunting and warfare by, among others, Nubians, Persians, Arabs, Native American tribes such as the Cherokee, South American tribes like the Barí, Indians at the time of Alexander, African tribes such as the Bassa, and Europeans since Mesolithic times. As a hunting weapon, longbows are simple, reliable and capable of taking game as large as African elephants. As a weapon of war the longbow has been instrumental to several cultures. Worldwide the average power for bows of all designs is about 220 newtons (50 pounds) at 70 cm (28 inches) of draw which is suitable for most hunting applications. Bows for warfare tend to be much more powerful, with the most powerful bows being the English longbow and the African elephant bow, both of which topped the 900 N (200-pound) at 80 cm (32 inches) mark. Many men in later medieval England were capable of shooting bows from 670–900 N (150–200 pounds)–skeletons of archers have been studied, revealing spur like projections on the bones where their over-developed muscles pulled. However, these men did train daily from a very young age and their lives depended on being able to use such powerful bows. There are modern day examples of men who can draw such powerful bows. Mark Stretton currently holds the world record for shooting a 900 N (200 pound) longbow.
In Japan, long bamboo and wood laminated bows (yumi) became important to mounted samurai warfare (Yabusame). Modern Japanese archery (called kyūdō or kyujutsu) still uses this style of bow. Modern yumi can be made of fibreglass or carbon-fibre, as well as of the traditional wood/bamboo laminate. Yumi are recurved bows, and have the unusual characteristic of being off-center. That is, the lower arm of the bow is shorter than the upper arm; this is useful when the bow is used from horseback, so that the archer can turn without the bottom of the bow hitting the horse. But this grip position was not set on this reason. It emerged before bowing on a horse got to be widespread.
In the Middle Ages the Welsh and the English were famous for their very powerful English longbows, used to great effect in the civil wars of the period and against the French in the Hundred Years' War (with notable success at the battles of Crécy (1346), Poitiers (1356) and Agincourt (1415).
The first book in English about longbow archery was Toxophilus by Roger Ascham, first published in London in 1545 and dedicated to King Henry VIII.