Bows and Arrows

Are you near Aachen, Boss?

2 1/4 hours drive - if the motorway is free. (Have passed it recently on my way to and from Paris; took Mrs and Mr Steve there for a day trip last year, have lived their some time with a former partner ...)

If that is the border-land between Saxon and Frank, is it the area in which Charlemagne would have campaigned against the Saxons, as described by Anselm?

Well, yes.

(I'm trying to find a map online.)

This map shows the directions Charlemagne took against the Saxons (where I live - at the Lippe river - is on the map close to the "a" of "Westfalen").

And this map shows the places of the "Saxonian wars" (I'm living at the 778 left of 'Paderborn')

[The green is the date of baptims, red 'wars', blue "empire meetings" and violet "embassadors meeting".]

Excellent, Walter, thank you . . .

Heard an interview about this ... click on the CBC last night.

Made this thread come to mind.

<snip>



Tiny bows in use 9000 years ago. Very cool.

That is interesting. I have long thought that hunting bows might well have been derived from smaller, drilling bows, such as is used in a fire drill, a device independently invented thousands of years ago in several widely separated cultures.

Articles to those "bows" here and there (via Canada) :wink:

[size=7]<psst Walter - your second link is the same one I used! >[/size]

[size=7]I can't change it now - and their weren't any others [/size]

Two words: "Beubonic Plague..."

"But a season"????

I mean, historians generally refer to the 13'th - 15'th centuries as the "Mongol Centuries"; how many centuries have been named after YOU? I mean, so far at least?

The Washington Post ran a thing for the six months or so leading up to the change of the millenium regarding the question of who a "Man of the Millenium" ought to be, i.e. what single person had the greatest and most profound effect on the entire thousand year period from 1000 - 2000 AD, and the ultimate answer was Chengis Khan. Whoever was in second place was way the hell back in second place.

Mongols invented getting around. They were fighting wars across degrees of longitude and lattitude while most Europeans never saw anything more than 50 miles from their places of birth. The modern age of exploration started with Europeans building ships after Tamerlane closed off the trade routes which Mongols had opened (and which had been closed for a thousand years prior to then).

The most major items in a Mongol army were several kinds of intangible things, the most major being mobility in previously unheard of quantities, including the ability to move entire armies at something like the maximum possible speed at which a herd of wild horses could migrate, i.e. something like 200 miles a day.

Mongol cavalry tactics were similar to US marine close support tactics during WW-II, archers keeping enemy heads down while heavy cavalry broke through some weak spot. In particular, every account I've ever read about Liegnitz indicated a total massacre of the Europeans, while the following battle at Mohi was difficult, but against the best army in Europe at the time. Had that army been resupplied and reenforced rather than recalled after the death of Oktai Khan, we could all easily be speaking Mongolian now.

English archery contests often featured a contest to see who could shoot an arrow the furthest and, at one of those, a Turkish ambassador shot an arrow a couple of hundred yards further than any of the English could with their longbows. Henry (VIII'th) walked up to the guy and said something like "What the ****, you're not any sort of an athlete, you're just a fat old man like I am..." and the ambassador replied "It's just the bow".

The whole frame of a longbow moves, and absorbs stored energy. With a Turko/Mongol bow, it's mainly just those two outer "ears" which move, making the whole thing a lot more efficient. More stored energy is imparted to the arrow rather than to the frame of the bow in the form of vibration.

they're really all kinda the same ... so I'm glad you went Canajun!

Google search gave 13 results for "Mongol Centuries" (in 0.82 seconds).

A search on various specialised history site came out with none.

Just out of curiosity: could you kindly name a handful of known historians who use this term?

Aren't the 13th - 15th centuries usually referred to as the Late Middle Ages?


Results 1 - 10 of about 1,190,000 for "late middle ages". (0.25 seconds)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_Ages

Please note that absolutely none of Gunga's response serves to establish a contention that the Mongols' influence lasted more that "a season" historically. Temujin died in 1227. His successor, Ogedei, was dead by 1241. The "empire" of the Mongols was never unitary in the sense that either the Chinese or the Roman empires were, and was divided into Khanates even in the lifetime of Temujin. It can be more accurately compared to the middle and late periods of the Osmanli empire--a series of loosely united satrapies which might or might not, and usually did not, pay tribute to the alleged central authority.

Even in China, which was actually not conquered completely until after the death of Temujin, the Yuan dynasty did not last for even one century.



The Mongol "empire" was never a unitary empire in the sense that the Roman empire was a unitary empire, and the Roman empire enjoyed that status for many consecutive centuries. Several of the Chinese dynasties have survived for centuries, ruling over a unitary empire. Looking at the career of Temujin and Ogedei, one can, at a stretch, allege a Mongol "empire" that lasts from 1206 to 1241--thirty-five years. Leaving aside the rather vague nature of the reference to The Washington Post, i would simply point out that daily newspapers are not a source which i despise, but neither are they a primary source which i consult on the subject of world history.

What was the influence of Temujin on the subcontinent? On Macronesia and Micronesia? On Africa? On North and South America? The so-called Mongol "empire" was a non-event for a significant portion of the world. Given that billions of men and women lived and died in the period 1000-2000 CE, and at the least, millions of them had a significant influence on history--being chosen by an unidentified authority at The Washington Post as man of the millenium does not alter my thesis with reference to the topic of this thread, which was:

Superiority of military technology does not guarantee conquest, and is never either universal nor perpetual.

Furthermore, i see nothing offered in refutation of my contention that, absent effective leadership, the technological superiority of the compound short bow used by the Turks and Mongols was meaningless. In more than 2000 years of its use, they were able effectively to impinge on the outside world exactly twice--Attila and Temujin.

These constitute my major and minor theses with reference to the overblown estimation of the significance of that bow.

Set, my lambkin, that statement doesn't claim that I am an authority: I wished to establish that my professor was (can't you tell the difference?) and that what he called his specialism was a valid thing to call it. And no, "my old professor" would not have served just as well, since that could denote any old codger from any discipline, and you could have dismissed anything he said as irrelevant - I suspect you're just peeved that you can't.



if you bother to read what I said, you'll find that I specifically didn't say that it existed when they arrived.



Red herring again, Set my dear. Why "point out that I had not provided any evidence of long bows found in Saxon burials" when I had previously said that no Saxon longbows have been found anywhere? Nor did I "refer to Viking burials". The subject of bows in burials was entirely confected by you.

And if that was all you could google on the subject of angons, I can only suspect you didn't want to find any information that would confirm that you were wrong? You don't give a source for whoever was dumb enough to compare the angon to the halberd, so I can't comment.



The pot calling the kettle black arse… Let me remind you that this whole argument arose from your original silly statement that



- and that all your posts since have been an attempt to create enough noise and smoke to divert attention from your original mistake. Didn't work, I'm afraid.

I note that you are sinking further into the morass of snide ridicule of me, which is just patent evidence of your failure to make your point. Have fun.

There's no fun to be had in debating with someone who consistently refuses to argue logically and honestly. There's also no point; I see now that it was futile to try.