Main Discussion Area > English Warbow
Evidence OTHER than MR Bows of 120+ bows?
Josh B:
--- Quote from: Archeress on November 11, 2013, 05:51:07 pm ---I should imagine that one reason the nth american indigenous peoples used lighter bow than european medievalists is because thier enemies did not have body armour..just clothing/uniforms. shirts/bare torsos. even my 40 pound ash bow with a 5/16th arrow and a sharp point would do damage.
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You are undoubtedly correct. I would imagine that a good blacksmith to make armor would have been hard to find in pre-contact America! Lol! I shouldn't have even brought it up as it has absolutely no bearing on the OP. I'm easily sidetracked I guess. My bad! Josh
Atlatlista:
--- Quote from: Benjamin H. Abbott on November 11, 2013, 02:03:49 am ---
--- Quote from: Atlatlista on November 08, 2013, 09:20:26 pm ---50-60 pounds though is not wholly unrepresentative of military bows from many cultures other than England though, so I may content myself with that.
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Which cultures would those be? Records, estimates, and reconstructions from Turkey to China suggest 120-180lbs for infantry bows and 80-120+lbs for cavalry bows. While 50-60lb bows surely saw action from time to time, I don't know of any source that considers them acceptable for military use. To me, such composite bow draw weights offer strong supporting evidence that English archers commonly used 150+lb bows.
Regarding long-distance shooting, both Fourquevaux and Smythe - two sixteenth-century military writers - indicated the advantages of engaging at closer than maximum range.
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That's the problem though - most of the data you're referencing is from estimates based on non-functional examples. Most extant ethnographic bows from Persia, Mongolia, China, Korea, and Japan fall in the 50-60 pound range. And Native American bows of the eastern woodlands, plains, Pacific Northwest and so on fall into this range as well. Inuit war bows may well have been lighter.
Atlatlista:
Just went back to the data for these things, as I wanted to look at the ethnographic examples I could find, and I actually managed a little free time this week (which I didn't think would happen).
You're right in that early Chinese exams required a 168 pound draw from an infantry archer and 90 pounds or so from a mounted archer. However, according to Stephen Selby, that was a test probably using a special bow to test the archer's strength, not as a standard draw weight for a bow in battle. In battle, as the archer would be expected to shoot many arrows, draw weights varied considerably. Ming and Qing accounts list draw weights from 36-96 pounds. So, the low end of Ming war bows would have been as low as 36#.
Mongolian ethnographic bows tend to run up to 80 or so pounds, but not more than that. Turkish war bows have been measured at draw weights around 70-80 pounds.
So, I think there is a great deal of variability. 50-60 may be a bit on the low side for a warbow, depending on the culture, I'll grant, but it's very representative of bows from cultures that didn't differentiate between war and hunting bows.
WillS:
Is there any way of finding out whether different types of archery were used within these results? By that I mean - 36# as a drawweight is not going to do a whole heap of damage to somebody, especially if the arrow has any kind of heavy, forged point with enough mass to penetrate flesh/armour/leather etc. Would these very light bows be used as "harrassing" bows, dropping arrows from a very long way away to provoke, annoy and confuse approaching armies/enemies?
It's why I think it's vital to always consider arrows when discussing war bows - the arrow is what does all the damage, and the bow has only one job - get it to where it's needed with enough grunt to do it's job when it arrives. An arrow suitable for a 36# bow is going to have to be tiny, thin and light to go anywhere at all, and with no mass it can't do much damage.
Unless it's for insanely close range...
I think 36# is too light to even be legal for hunting in the states isn't it? Not sure what good it's going to do against a human wearing either armour or just leather/layered linen for example!
Heffalump:
"Ming and Qing accounts list draw weights from 36-96 pounds"! :o
36# for a warbow, seriously? ::)......I'll make a point of doing a bit of research on this when I'm back in Shanghai next Spring. I can only assume these would have been for indoor Winter practise with suction-cup tipped arrows to encourage the servants to move a bit faster! >:D
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