It should be noted that the composite bow is not a new invention, even if the knowledge about how to make them appears to have been lost in many places.

In the Homeric poems, Iliad and Odyssey, composite bows are described, e.g. used by the very skilled archer Odysseus.

Moreover, even older descriptions (from the second half of the second millennium BC) of composite bows can be found in the myths preserved on the tablets from Ugarit.