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archery -500 years

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2K views 19 replies 6 participants last post by  Bjorn 
#1 ·
#7 ·
The muskets that superseded the English longbow in the mid 1500's were terribly bad weapons-short range, unreliable and inaccurate. English archers in formation would shoot at targets 350 yards away, and the second arrow could follow the first seven seconds later, and the third arrow seven seconds after that-repeat. Muskets of the day had difficulty hitting a barn door at 80 yards-reloading an early musket probably took a fair bit of time too. But they won out because they required comparably little training and they were terrifying to the enemy because they were so loud.
Google 'Battle of Agincourt' if you want an idea of just how formidable English archers were in the day.
 
#11 ·
think about this: The average longbowman could put between 6 and 10 arrows in flight in a minute. The Black Prince had 7500 archers in his contingent at Agincourt (we know how many thanks to his payroll sheets). lop off 500 for illness and "whatever" and you get 7000 times 6 arrows/minute-being conservative-that's 42,000 arrows a minute....into which the French knights rode...have fun stormin` the castle, boys.....
 
#14 ·
Watching a NOVA presentation last night on Neandertal habitations in northern Europe, one of the featured archeologists who's also a skilled flint knapper, had found a bunch of flakes that could only be small game arrowheads. He recreated them, tested them on a goat, and compared the fractures he got with his points to those his team had found, and concluded that the points were indeed arrowheads for relatively small game, as opposed to the large game of the time. Archeologically speaking, we have remains of bows and arrows that are pushing 5 thousand years old, but these points-based on strata artifacts and such, are 45-50 THOUSAND years old!!!!! and definitely NOT atlatl points, but arrows points. I had no idea that the practice of archery was that old. Amazing!!
 
#15 ·
The cave art at Lascaux sp? shows guys using bows 20,000 yrs ago and the Smithsonian ran an article suggesting killing with bows maybe 70,000 yrs ago. I have seen references suggesting 80,000 years ago too....................it is hard to find really old compelling evidence of anything complex, cave art only goes back so far and flint napping can be inconclusive too. Archeologists (and scientists) are also limited by their egos and having to conform to accepted ideas-Right?
The earliest arrow heads must have been fire hardened pointy sticks and who knows what they might have killed, or wounded-or when?
 
#16 ·
we do know what kind of game they took based on the marks on the bone left by flint knives and such-YUUUUGGGE critters:D. Pleistocene megafauna which, truth be told, I kinda wish there were a few examples still around. Megaloceros-the Irish elk comes to mind pretty quick. There's also extant examples of Clovis points embedded in mammoth bones. Must have taken some serious balls to hunt something like that!!!
 
#17 ·
There's also extant examples of Clovis points embedded in mammoth bones. Must have taken some serious balls to hunt something like that!!!
No sh!t! The technique supposedly involved running up underneath the monster and thrusting a spear between the ribs for a heart or lung shot. Presumably followed by a super hasty retreat from taking said shot.
 
#20 ·
As a scientist, and strictly in the interest of furthering the science of Paleoanthropology, one should ask....after spearing the mammoth, does one exit forward, to the sides, or out the back? And as a scientist, i'd postulate that the front would most likely have the highest risk. The sides would be second in risk factor, leaving the stern of the beast as the most viable. But in the rear, one has the risk of encountering "other" beastly defensive mechanisms. For example, what if, with your spear, you succeeded in scaring the living shit out of this ponderous plant-eating pachyderm. I must assume it takes a second or two to generate said shit response---just about the time our intrepid Neanderthal is "exiting, stage rear".......and as we all know, the rear of any beast is fraught with danger......
Spoken like a true scientist, Alex! And not always did the giant flapjack land on it's top or bottom, sometimes when the mammoth was running fast the giant cow pie would land on it's side and then start rolling along standing up on end and this would make the Neanderthals scratch their heads and they'd go 'holy shit is that for real'? And pretty soon they were calling it 'wheel' and the rest is history-Yeah OK I did have a drink-maybe two.
 
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