How far could ancient bows shoot their arrows?

Question

IF you have lots of details, I'm all ears. You could not tell me too much about this. I wanna know from the first ones made up to the end of their use in combat what they were capable of. But if you just have a little information, that's great too. Anything will help.

Answer 1

There have been reports of bows lobbing arrows as far as 250yards.  However, I doubt that at that distance the arrows would have any effect on armored targets.

In fact, unless you're talking about the bows used by cavemen, most ancient bows are more powerful than it's modern day counterpart.  That is if you're comparing like design bows.  Take the English longbow, bows recovered from the Mary Rose have been estimated to weigh in at about 160lbs.  People making English longbows nowadays still make them out of the same material and design, but the draw weight is much less.  There aren't too many 160lbs+ longbows around any more nowadays.

Answer 2

see the link...looks like 180 - 200 yards or so.

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found a better link...with distances. Look at the 'footbow'.

Answer 3

Unbelivable Ranges a English long bow could_can- shoot 7 or 8 hundred yards

a recurve bow from china has shot 300 yards

even some of the real ancient bows could shoot vollies hundreds of yards

im not so sure how accurate they were because of the quality of the arrows but the range was awsome