Archery used to be required by law for English men.

In 1363, King Edward III, who was in the midst of the Hundred Years’ War and convinced that archery skills were “almost wholly disused,” declared that able-bodied men must practice archery on holidays. The Archery Law, enacted that same year, further demanded practice on Sundays. Edward also outlawed, on pain of imprisonment, watching or participating in “vain games of no value,” a wide net that included handball, football, hurling stones, and cockfighting. 

Humans have been using bows and arrows for more than 60,000 years.

Yew longbows were exciting new military technology in medieval England, but archery has likely existed in one form or another since the Stone Age. Bows and arrows are often made of organic materials that don’t stand the test of time, but the earliest surviving evidence of the weapon is around 64,000 years old, discovered in Sibudu Cave in South Africa. Stone arrowheads found at the site have remnants of blood and bone on them, glue residue that could have been used to attach them to wooden shafts, and damage patterns consistent with being used as projectiles (versus signs of thrust, like would be seen on spears). Archery made an early appearance all over the world. Archaeologists found 48,000-year-old bone arrowheads in Sri Lanka’s Fa-Hien Lena cave in 2020, and 54,000-year-old arrowheads in France’s Grotte Mandrin in 2023.