Mongolian nomads once conquered vast territories and even conquered China. The bow became the main weapon of the inhabitant of the Great Steppe. With his help, he not only fought, but also sought food for himself - he hunted. At the same time, many people have a fair question: where did the Mongols (and many other peoples) take wood to create bows and arrows in that very steppe and iron to make arrowheads?
So, the Mongolian bow is made not only from wood. A compound bow is a fairly complex device. To create it, you need a number of materials: wood or animal bone, horn, hair, animal skin, livestock tendons, natural glues. Much of the above is actually much more difficult to get than to get a tree in the middle of the steppe. For example, good flexible horns or tendons of cattle were “strategic material” at all, and not only in Mongolia, but also in many other countries where complex throwing weapons were made, both hand and siege.
Now, as for the tree. It will sound strange, but trees still grow in the steppe. It is also important to remember that in the north the Mongolian-Manchurian steppe gradually turns into Siberian forests. The contact zone is hundreds of kilometers. Nomads also lived there at one time, and most of these territories are forest-steppe. In other words, you can get a tree in the nature of Mongolia.
As for the metal. The situation with him was exactly the same as in the rest of the medieval world: where they could not get it, they bought it. The same, by the way, applied to the tree. Nomads are not only rampaging raiders and herders of livestock, but also merchants. Moreover, as the Mongol Empire grew, it developed its own iron mining and smelting centers. One of these, for example, was in Khamar-Daban, a mountain range south of Irkutsk.
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Under Genghis Khan, the Mongol Empire reached the peak of its power. There is no need to present the state of nomads as some kind of "wild field". It was a very peculiar, but still organized power with developed production and trade. The Mongols learned a lot in matters of state organization from the conquered Chinese, who knew such things as logistics and supply. The Mongolian tumens who went on a raid are an army in the full sense of the word, and not a gang of motley barbarians. Therefore, when a military enterprise was at least somehow large, arrows were harvested by nomads in advance and then carried in a wagon train on horses and camels in special baskets. By the way, the bow needs not only spare arrows, but also spare strings. The latter were also prepared for the troops in an organized manner.
If you want to know even more interesting things, then you should read about how the Mongols managed to create an empire in ancient timesif modern Mongolia is a small country.
A source: https://novate.ru/blogs/121121/61236/