Turkish archery the last bowyer and famous calligrapher, Neçmeddin Okyay; it has since been revived. For many years the excellence of Turkish bows could be seen from historical records. In 1910 an archery contest was held on the beach at Le Touquet, France, where Ingo Simon was able to shoot an arrow 434 m using an old Turkish composite bow requiring a force of 440N or 99 lb. The Turkish bow is a recurved composite bow used in the Ottoman Empire. The construction is similar to that of other classic Asiatic composite bows, with a wooden core (maple was most desirable), animal
History of archery may well be arrowheads. The oldest indication for archery in Europe comes from Stellmoor in the Ahrensburg valley north of Hamburg, Germany. They were associated with artifacts of the late Paleolithic (11,000-9,000BP). The arrows were made of pine and consisted of a mainshaft and a 15-20 centimetre (6-8 inches) long foreshaft with a flint point. They had shallow grooves on the base, indicating that they were shot from a bow. The oldest definite bows known so far come from the Holmegård swamp in Denmark. In the 1940s, two bows were found there, dated to about 8,000 BP. The Holmegaard bows