In ancient China, there was a legend of "Houyi Shooting Sun", in ancient times, there were ten suns in the sky, and the huge heat emitted made all the creatures on the earth unable to survive, but there was nothing they could do. At this time, it was a warrior named Houyi, holding a strong bow, shooting down nine suns in the sky, defusing a catastrophe, which shows how powerful the bow and arrow is, in the era of cold weapons, it is the most powerful weapon, so when people face unsolvable natural disasters, the first thing that comes to mind is the bow and arrow.
The time of the appearance of the bow and arrow is very early, in the late Paleolithic period 30,000 years ago, the Chinese ancestors have begun to use the bow and arrow, but the bow and arrow at that time was still very simple, that is, a wooden stick or bamboo pole was used to sharpen one end, and the elastic items such as bamboo were catapulted out, that is, the most ancient bow and arrow, until the primitive society was equipped with sharp stone chips on the arrow shaft, so that the power of the bow and arrow gradually increased.
To the feudal period, the production process of bows and arrows has basically matured, mainly divided into bow arms, bow strings and arrows three parts, the initial bow arm and arrows are made of bamboo, such bows are very simple to make, can be used a lot of people, but the power is relatively weak, the range is relatively short, so later people have used other equipment to make bows, the most common is wood and animal horns.
"Yi Zhixia" said: "String wood for the arc, cutting wood for the arrow", which means the use of string wood as a bow arm, the wood as an arrow, it can be seen that as early as the pre-Qin period, people used wood to make bows and arrows The process has been very mature. However, due to the large number of bamboo growing in the southern region, people usually use local materials when making bows and arrows, so bamboo bows are popular in the south, and this was still the case until the Ming and Qing dynasties.
Because the latitude of the north is much higher than that of the south, it has been cold since ancient times, and bamboo usually only grows in tropical, subtropical and warm temperate regions, so there is no bamboo in the north to make bows and arrows, but the nomadic people from the north have been riding and shooting more powerful than the Central Plains since ancient times, and in history, they have posed a threat to the Central Plains regime many times, and the most important reason why Qin Shi Huang wanted to build the Great Wall was that the Xiongnu's riding and shooting threat was huge, and later manchu Qing was "riding to shoot the world".
Why are the riding and shooting of the northern nomads more ferocious than in the Central Plains? A very important factor is that there is no bamboo in the north, so the bows and arrows they can have are basically "hard bows" made of wood and animal horns.
According to the record of the "Record of The Examiner", when making the bow arm, the most superior material is garnet wood, and the inferior one is sassafras wood and oak wood, the material is very solid, can withstand huge force, naturally it can have a strong power, and bamboo is the most inferior bow making material, relatively easy to break. The south always uses bamboo bows, while the north usually uses hard wooden bows, which is an important reason why the northern riding archery is stronger than the south.
Reference: "Examination Of the Workers"