<P> The bow and arrow appears around the transition from the Upper Paleolithic to the Mesolithic . At the site of Nataruk in Turkana County, Kenya, obsidian bladelets found embedded in a skull and within the thoracic cavity of another skeleton, suggest the use of stone - tipped arrows as weapons . After the end of the last glacial period, use of the bow seems to have spread to every inhabited continent, including the Western Hemisphere, except for Australia . </P> <P> The oldest extant bows in one piece are the elm Holmegaard bows from Denmark which were dated to 9,000 BCE . High - performance wooden bows are currently made following the Holmegaard design . The Stellmoor bow fragments from northern Germany were dated to about 8,000 BCE, but they were destroyed in Hamburg during the Second World War, before carbon 14 dating was available; their age is attributed by archaeological association . Microliths discovered on the south coast of Africa suggest that arrows may be at least 71,000 years old . </P> <P> The bow was an important weapon for both hunting and warfare from prehistoric times until the widespread use of gunpowder in the 16th century . Organised warfare with bows ended in the mid 17th century in Europe, but it persisted into the early 19th century in Eastern cultures and in hunting and tribal warfare in the New World . In the Canadian Arctic bows were made until the end of the 20th century for hunting caribou, for instance at Igloolik . The bow has more recently been used as a weapon of tribal warfare in some parts of Sub-Saharan Africa; an example was documented in 2009 in Kenya when Kisii people and Kalenjin people clashed, resulting in four deaths . </P> <P> The British upper class led a revival of archery from the late 18th century . Sir Ashton Lever, an antiquarian and collector, formed the Toxophilite Society in London in 1781, under the patronage of George, the Prince of Wales . </P>

Where was the first bow and arrow made