Bronze Age Battlefield Video

@Sargon Do you know if that’s the same cave as the pictures that UncasualGames posted earlier? But yeah you are right, although I wouldn’t venture a guess at the maximum draw-weight, given the arrow issue I don’t imagine it would be worth it to make hugely powerful bows for the Neolithic.

As for not killing a deer outright. Quite possible even with a very high poundage bow. Being killed instantly with pre-gunpowder weapons is relatively rare, and quite difficult. Especially since something like an arrow will remain lodged in place and make it more difficult for something to bleed out. My cousin does some Bow and Arrow deer hunting over in America, and even with a modern composite bow and nasty hunting arrows (such as these) he finds it rather challenging to kill, rather than fatally wound, an animal.

@louis.mervoyer Ah a point on vocabulary (I should watch myself on this) when I said Warbow I meant the same bow that most people refer to as an English Longbow. The two words are basically interchangeable but can create confusion in different ways.

The several bows they have found so far in “La Draga” settlement in Spain, dating 5400-5200 BCE, are also made from yew ( Taxus baccata ). In our visit there the archaeologist tell us that even not having found too much hunting evidence - they were mainly farmers - they have found a consistent presence of still intact bows, including children bows ( because their size ). He told us he consider bow was probably not only a hunting tool, but a also a way to gain prestige, or even socialising, maybe the main defensive tool, who knows. Very much like if everyone have to know how to use one. For the sizes of the find bows, he told us, they were usually made the size of the holder.

In pictures still preserved in Spain from the Neolithic date, like the one @Sargon posted before, or the ones postes by myself, the bow is clearly the main tool using for hunting, fighting, executing… bows everywhere. That seems to be a fact for the period, at least in Spain. I don’t know if that can be extrapolated to the rest of Europe, but I would bet for it.

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this is the standard one-shot kill zone for deer. If you look at the cave painting (not sure if the devs used it, but I found it here THE NEOLITHIC BOW IN ACTION) then you can see that even though they hit that spot three times, the deer seams to still be standing. I would conjecture that with a powerful enough bow, one could down a reasonably sized doe in a single shot to that spot. However, I only have my huntsman of a father to ask as a reference and he said that it is possible but still hard to hit. But, if someone can correct me, I would be very appreciative.

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very interesting… but its only a little over 100 cm long… that’s pretty short compared to what I was expecting!

The impression I’ve been given is you need to basically use ambush tactics and shoot (as your picture indicates) from the side. You are right, it is possible to take a doe (I think my cousin also has taken a couple of bucks in a single shot) down with one shot. No debating that. I just meant that even with a high poundage bow you can still shoot a deer multiple times and not necessarily kill it outright, so we should be careful before saying that they shot the deer three times ergo it can’t be a high poundage bow. Again I’m quibbling though, as I said I imagine that neolithic arrows couldn’t handle a very high poundage bow anyway.

Makes sense, although I believe there is a video of Skallgrim shooting a flint tip arrow with a modern recurve bow… If I find it, I’ll post it.

My impression is that hunting is always ambush tactics. lol. Pretty sure the screaming guy running up to a deer with a club didn’t get any dinner that night lol.

I was merely pointing out evidence to support my assuption, although I may have phrased it as the opposite (I only did so as to not sound pretentious). To be frank, I think most Neolithic bows were likely low poundage because of the use they employed them for. Most of the time, these bows were for hunting game animals and as such didn’t need 100 lbs of draw weight. They only needed to be powerful enough to kill dinner. Such high poundage bows would likely be very tiring to use and (as you said) likely shatter flint arrowheads.

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I seem to recall a similar video, though I miss a lot of Skals content these days.

Hunting isn’t always ambush tactics, a lot of modern hunting is true, but there are a variety of ways to hunt. Running up at a deer with a club screaming can get you dinner, as long as you keep doing it over and over and over again. Essentially you take advantage of the fact that Humans are excellent long distance runners and can literally chase quarry to the point that they collapse from exhaustion (assuming you are in shape to do it of course!). Or there is the old “chase your prey off a cliff edge” that seems to have been popular at times.

You can also track rather than sit in a hide and wait (which to clarify is what I meant by ambush, I guess you could classify tracking and sneaking up on prey to be ambush as well).

I was less thinking of a flint tip shattering (although I suppose that is possible) and more of the shaft breaking because of the way the flint arrowhead means you have to have a tanged construction for the arrow rather than a socketed one (on impact the force of the arrow behind the head will make the arrow split apart, while with a socket it will compress and channel the kinetic energy in the arrow into the target. I don’t know what exactly the maximum limit is, probably depends on the piece of wood and the construction of the tang, but it must be there right?).

The “Rotten bottom bow” is now in the Moffat museum in scotland : http://www.moffatmuseum.co.uk/news/the-rotten-bottom-bow. The estimate range is 50m (they build a replicate and test it, video on their website). I found the information about the yew shortage on a french monthly history magazine (“Guerre & Histoire n°10”). However the wiki page say it too : Taxus baccata - Wikipedia.

Interesting. I would have thought flint shattering or at lead breaking would have been more common than the shaft breaking. Though I guess both are reasonably possible.

I’m not sure if you think you’re clever, but a dude running up to a deer with a club has about as much of a chance at catching the deer off guard as he would have trying to throw stones at it and killing it without a sling. Sure, he may get one deer for every 100 or 500 deer a guy with a bow would get, but why the hell would he. Also, hunting by driving animals off of a cliff likely began by stalking then surprising the animal at the opportune moment - which I’d count as an ambush.

Persistence hunting isn’t about catching an animal off guard. It’s about chasing it, and continuing to chase it, until it collapses because it doesn’t have the same endurance as a human being. And it is still used by a few people to this day.

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i guess that’s an option… though if you have a bow and arrow, why would you bother?

I concede though, forgot about the more primitive “expend as much energy as I’ll get from eating this deer” philosophy of hunting lol.

@Dernwine :slight_smile: Indeed some vocabulary difference, for me warbow mean all bows used for only/mostly military purpose like the mongol composite bow or the english longbow. The longbow is so well know that the two words nearly merge :wink:. However the performance of the mongol bow was very good. Unfortunatily mongols did not leave reccord of the conquest…:pensive:. Hence it is not clear if their bows was worse/equal/better than the english bows.

@Sargon Don’t know the reason, but they did, and a few still do. And they wouldn’t if there wasn’t a good reason to do so (also you get a lot of energy from an whole deer if you’re going to eat it on your own). Clearly using a hide or stalking with a ranged weapon is easier, and requires a lot less stamina which is why it’s much more popular today. Personally I suspect if you look at human history and hunting you’ll see a long and slow gradual change from persistence hunting to ambush hunting as our tools got better.

@louis.mervoyer Yeah, the only issue I have with it is it’s open to confusion between the English Longbow and the Victorian Longbow (which is a bit different) and the fact that Warbow might be slightly less anachronistic (debatable).

I would like to point out that I was joking… Obviously, a whole deer to yourself is a lot of energy. Sorry for trying to lighten the mood.

Ah sorry, didn’t get that it was a joke XD

@Dernwine I have to mention that I am not a native english speaker (if the severals mistakes present in my comments did not show it enough :sweat_smile:). Hence you are a lot more qualify for english vocabulary debate that me. It is just my opignion that a foreigner with less english longbow domination ( expect for crecy, poitier, azincourt and few more… man we lost so much battle how we manage to win in the end ?:sweat_smile:)

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Ce’st bon, votre englais est mieux que mon francais. … and that’s the end of my French. XD Longbow is correct btw, don’t stop using it, just be aware that sometimes when people say “Warbow” it means the same thing.

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In more advanced societies you don’t need a military caste, as you point out Greeks and Romans didn’t need it, as they came way later the bronze age era. Military caste was a peculiar creation of late neolithic/early bronze age, as soon the people rised in numbers and food was abundant for everybody the military caste ceased to exist as more people was enlisted in case of war.

In europe we choose to develop gun powder weapons after the XVI century, not only because firearms are more powerful but because you need less training to use an arquebus or a musket. In less than one month a recruit with arquebus was trained and ready to fight, with a bow you need years of training and a constant use of it to maintain your phisical shape in order to effectively use it. The loss of archers was a tremendous blow to medieval european armies, especially for the english army that relied on longbows, other medieval kingdoms/duckies adopted the crossbow as it required less training to use in battle, genoese crossbowmen come to mind.

Yes, aim for the heart and death will be quick. True. Not only for deer, but just about all living creatures. With exception for those who have a protective shell I’d guess.

This understanding of anatomy, the heart being such an essential organ, is however not a neolithic one.

And whereas one arrow through the heart in modern times, or gun shot wound to be a bit more anno 2017, would give cause to rapid exsanguation, multiple gun shot wounds to the adjacent lungs would not have to.

And going by a cave painting there’s really no way to tell that even if the arrows penetrated deeply enough, it was not the lungs that were hit. On top of that, we also know little about how accurate these drawings are.