FReeper Canteen ~ Part V of the Mongols ~ December 7, 2004

ANCIENT WARFARE

Part V of The Mongols

Mongolian Bow

Because the Old Mongols lived in an environment where survival skills were always of the utmost importance, it was a matter of course that they should develop excellent tools, both civilian and military. One piece of equipment that was of great significance in war as well as in the daily life of the Mongols was their composite bow. Perhaps this bow is not quite as well-known in the West as the English longbow, which was the best bow ever to emerge in Europe.

Yet the Old Mongolian bow was incomparably superior to everything seen in the West. Not until the advent of breach-loading firearms in the 1800's was the Mongolian bow decisively surpassed as a long-range shooting tool. Still the original Mongolian bow remains a formidable tool for targeting, war or hunting, and the people around the Bajkal sea regularly used these bows for hunting at least up to the twentieth century.

Military Use

When we are talking about Mongolian bows, the first thoughts go the their military use, although hunting and target practice certainly were more prominent activities. Every day was not filled with war, but hunting and the training of skills were part of the daily routine. However, we will start with the military aspect.

In the military, each soldier carried two bows on horseback. One bow was for long-range shooting, another for shooting at close distances. Also, each soldier had two quivers with arrows for different purposes. To mention but a few of these, there were armor-piercing arrows with a particularly heavy arrowhead of tempered steel, there were incendiary arrows for setting buildings afire and spreading fear in the enemy ranks, as well as whistling arrows for signalling. Of course, the most arrows they carried were ordinary arrows where the arrowhead and length of the shaft were adjusted to the normal range at which the particular type arrow was to be used. The standard, according to James Chambers, was that each soldier should have at least sixty arrows with him or her. Yes; it merits mention once more that the strongest and most courageous Mongolian females rode along with the men and fought bravely. Also, the women who did not ordinarily participate in military activity nevertheless had to learn how to wield the bow, a necessary skill for self-defence as well as hunting.

The Construction

We are now going into the details of the Mongolian bow. As already mentioned, it was the best bow in the world, and probably still is. Even though the modern high-tech compound bows are in some ways more convenient to use and can be made equally powerful, the sheer simplicity of the Mongol composite bow with its complete indepencence of foreign equipment and complicated parts that the archer cannot easily repair or replace makes the Mongol bow on balance a superior solution. In order to show the Mongols and their extraordinary bow the proper respect, the story is mostly told in the present tense, which also serves to emphasize the salient point that these things can be done today as well.

The Mongol bow is not as large and long as the English one, but it is vastly more powerful. The draw weight of an English longbow averages around 70-80 pounds, whereas the Old Mongol bow had a pull that, according to George Vernadsky, averaged at around 166 pounds. Chambers states that the pull varied from 100 to 160 pounds. This seeming discrepancy certainly reflects the fact that draw weight varied with the strength of the user, and with what use the bow had been made for. As could be expected, there was a considerable difference in shooting range. Whereas the English longbow could shoot at distances up to 250 yards or around 228 meters, the Mongol counterpart can hit its target at 350 yards or 320 meters and, if the archer is well trained for the task, even beyond that.

There are people who claim that the Old Mongols could shoot and hit their target over truly astonishing distances. Gongor Lhagvasuren, Deputy Director at the Mongolian National Institute of Physical Education, has written an article called "The stele of Chinggis Khan." There, Lhagvasuren refers to an ancient inscription on a stone found in the basin of the river Kharkiraa, a left tributary of Urlengui river which flows into the trans-Bajkal river Erdene. The text of the inscription, supposedly dated from 1226, may be interpreted as follows: "While Chinggis Khan was holding an assembly of Mongolian dignitaries, after his conquest of Sartaul (East Turkestan), Esungge shot a target at 335 alds" (536m). Lhagvasuren draws the conclusion in his article that such feats were rather common for Mongolian archers during the 1200's, and writes: "This case illustrates the strength, accuracy and sharpness, physical prowess of the Mongolians who lived more than 700 years ago." Whether or not we find it likely that Mongolian archers could regularly hit their targets at the distances Lhagvasuren claims they could, there is no question that they and their and bows are outstanding in all of archery's history.

When we take a closer look at the Mongolian bow, we see that it is an intriguing construction indeed. The backbone of the bow is a wooden frame, which will typically be birch, because that wood is resilient and is also readily available. The total length of the frame is 150-160 cm. When the bow is unstrung, it looks like a semi-circle with a beautifully curvaceous shape, but when a string is attached the whole thing is stretched out so that its limbs are bent inward. Even so, these limbs with string attachments are bent slighly away from the archer, forming a double curve. It is this double curve that delivers explosive acceleration and awesome velocity to the arrow. From these limbs or bends of the bow behind the string attachments where the impact is greatest, the frame is covered with elongated and flattened pieces of mountain sheep's (or other wild or domesticated ungulate's) horn or/and bone which adds snapping power to the resilient wood in the frame. These hard parts form a layer that covers the whole area of the so-called belly, which is the part between the grip and the limbs. Chambers describes how the back parts of the bow, nearest the archer, were those covered with horn and/or bone while the sinew layer was applied to the outer side.

The reader will have noticed that I use the term horn and/or bone. This is because the precise details of how the bows were built could vary over the Siberian area, although the main features are clear. The bone elements, when added, are no more than a small part at the center of the bow, and may originally have served mainly ornamental and possibly magical purposes.

source: http://www.coldsiberia.org/monbow.htm

Next Tuesday Part VI of The Mongols

On this Day In History

Birthdates which occurred on December 07:
0967 Abu Sa'id ibn Aboa al-Chair Persian mystic
1542 Mary Stuart Queen of Scots (1560-1587)
1598 Giovanni Bernini, Italy, baroque sculptor (St Teresa in Ecstasy)
1761 Madame [Marie Grosholtz] Tussaud, created wax museum
1810 Theodor Schwann, German co-originator of cell theory
1823 Leopold Kronecker, German mathematician (Tensor of Kronecker)
1876 Willa Cather (author: O Pioneers!, My Antonia)
1905 Gerard Kuiper, Dutch/US astronomer (moons of Uranus, Neptune)
1912 Louis Prima (musician, singer: Just a Gigolo; Las Vegas act [w/wife Keely Smith]
1915 Eli Wallach (actor: Emmy Award-winning Best Supporting Actor/ Drama: The Poppy is Also a Flower [1966-'67])
1925 Ted Knight (Tadeus Konopka) (Emmy Award-winning Actor: Mary Tyler Moore Show [1972-73, 1975-76])
1926 Victor Kermit Kiam II CEO (Remington shavers)/NFL owner (Patriots)
1928 Noam Chomsky (linguist, educator, activist, moral midget)
1931 Bobby Osborne (singer: duo: Osborne Brothers: Rocky Top)
1932 Ellen Burstyn (Edna Rae Gilhooley) (Academy Award-winning actress: Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore [1974])
1935 Don Cardwell (baseball)
1940 Gerry Cheevers (hockey: Boston Bruins goalie: longest undefeated streak [32 games])
1942 Harry Chapin (songwriter, singer: Taxi, Cat's in the Cradle
1945 Al Woodall (football)
1947 Gary Unger (hockey)
1947 Johnny Bench (Baseball Hall of Famer: Cincinnati Reds catcher, 1968 Rookie of the Year
1947 Leo Brooks (football)
1948 Yoko Morishita, prima ballerina (Baterina No Habataki)
1949 Brian Goodman (football)
1949 Tom Waits, Calif, rocker/song writer (Blue Valentine)
1956 Larry Bird hoop star (Boston Celtics)

Deaths which occurred on December 07:
0983 Otto II the Red German king/emperor (973-83), dies at about 28
1254 Innocent IV [Sinibaldo dei Fieschi] Pope (1243-54), dies
1817 William Bligh, British naval officer of "Bounty" fame, dies at 63
1862 Sylvester Churchill US Union Brigadier-General, dies
1970 Rube Goldberg, US cartoonist (Mike & Ike, Pulitzer 1948), dies at 87
1975 Thornton N Wilder US writer (Bridge of San Luis Rey), dies at 78
1982 Charlie Brooks Jr, convicted murderer became 1st US prisoner to be executed by lethal injection, at a prison in Huntsville, Texas
1983 Edgar Graham, member of N Ireland Assembly, shot dead by IRA
1985 Retired Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart died in Hanover, N.H., at age 70.
1990 Joan Bennett US actress (House Across the Bay), dies at 80

Reported: MISSING in ACTION

1965 DUNN JOHN HOWARD---GLENDIVE MT.
[02/12/73 RELEASED BY DRV DIED 01/14/98]
1965 FREDERICK JOHN WILLIAM JR---MANITO IL.
[03/13/74 REMAINS RETURNED]
1966 CARLSON JOHN WERNER---CHICAGO IL.

POW / MIA Data & Bios supplied by
the P.O.W. NETWORK. Skidmore, MO. USA.

On this day...
0036 BC Earliest known Mayan inscription, Stela 2 at Chiapa de Corzo
0043 BC Marcus Tullius Cicero, Roman writer, gets his head & right hand chopped off by Mark Antony's soldiers
0185 Emperor Lo-Yang, China sees supernova (MSH15-52?)
0283 St Eutychian ends his reign as Catholic Pope
1646 Princess Louise Henriette (19) marries monarch Frederik Henry
1741 Elisabeth Petrovna becomes tsarina of Russia
1783 Theatre Royal opens in Covent Garden, London
1783 William Pitt Jr (24) becomes British premier
1787 Delaware becomes 1st state to ratify constitution
1836 Martin Van Buren elected 8th President
1842 New York Philharmonic's 1st concert
1861 USS Santiago de Cuba, under Commander Daniel B. Ridgely, halts the British schooner Eugenia Smith and captures J.W. Zacharie, a New Orleans merchant and Confederate purchasing agent.
1862 Battle of Hartsville TN
1862 Battle of Prairie Grove AR
1864 Skirmish at Ebenezer Creek/Cypress Swamp, Georgia
1868 Jesse James gang robs bank in Gallatin MO, kills 1
1872 HMS Challenger sets sail on 3½-year world oceanographic cruise
1875 Natives Sons of the West organized
1876 New York Mutuals & Philadelphia A's expelled from National League for not completing schedule
1877 Thomas A Edison demonstrates the gramophone
1885 49th Congress (1885-87) convenes
1891 52nd Congress (1st to appropriate $1 billion) holds 1st session
1895 Battle at Amba Alagi: Abyssinians beat Italian armies
1907 Eugene Corri becomes 1st referee in a boxing ring
1909 Leo Baekeland, Yonkers NY, patents 1st thermosetting plastic (Bakelite)
1912 Bust of Queen Nefertete found in El-Amarna, Egypt
1916 David Lloyd George replaces resigning H H Asquith as British PM
1916 British government of David Lloyd George forms
1917 US becomes 13th country to declare war on Austria during World War I
1920 USPD-KPD parties merge into Vereinigte Communist Party of Germany
1924 German election (Social Democrats win/Nazis & Communists lose)
1925 Biltmore Theater opens at 261 W 47th St NYC
1925 Noel Coward's "Easy Virtue" premieres in New York NY
1926 Gas refrigerator patented
1932 1st gyro-stabilized vessel to cross the Atlantic arrives in New York
1934 Wiley Post discovers the jet stream
1937 Dutch Minister Romme proclaims married women are forbidden to work
1937 Red Sox acquire the contract of 19-year-old Ted Williams
1937 Russian chess player Aljechin recaptures world title from Max Euwe
1938 W9XZY broadcasts facsimile of the St Louis Post-Dispatch by radio
1939 Lou Gehrig, 36, is elected to Baseball's Hall of Fame
1939 William Walton's violinist concert premieres in Cleveland
1940 28th CFL Grey Cup (Game 2): Toronto Balmy Beach defeats Ottawa, 12-5
1940 North Africa: British counter offensive under General O'Connor

1941 Japanese attack Pearl Harbor (a date that will live in infamy)

1941 1st Japanese submarine sunk by a US ship (USS Ward)

1941 Australian bombers land on Timor/Ambon
1941 Futshida's air fleet passes coastline of Oahu
1941 German siege of Tobruk after 8 months ends
1941 Nacht & Nebel Erlass, resistance fighter sent to concentration camps
1944 Convention on International Civil Aviation drawn up in Chicago
1944 General Radescu forms Romanian government
1945 Microwave oven patented
1946 Fire at Winecoff Hotel in Atlanta, kills 119
1949 15th Heisman Trophy Award: Leon Hart, Notre Dame (E)
1949 Chiang Kai-shek flees to Taiwan
1952 KKTV TV channel 11 in Colorado Springs-Pueblo CO (CBS) 1st broadcast
1953 Israel's PM Ben-Gureon retires
1955 Clement Attlee resigns as chairman of England's Labour Party
1956 Helen O'Connell joins the Today Show panel
1957 Tony Kubek of the Yankees selected as American League Rookie of the Year
1958 Rómulo Bétancourt elected President of Venezuela
1959 "Saratoga" opens at Winter Garden Theater NYC for 80 performances
1960 Ivory Coast claims independence from France
1962 Great Britain performs nuclear test at Nevada Test Site
1965 Pope Paul VI & Orthodox Patriarch Athenagoras I simultaneously lift mutual excommunications that led to split of the 2 churches in 1054
1967 Otis Redding records "Sittin' on the Dock of the Bay"
1968 Orbiting Astronomical Observatory 2 launched into Earth orbit
1968 Richard Dodd returns a library book his great grandfather borrowed in 1823 to the University of Cincinatti; the $22,646 fine went unpaid
1970 West Germany & Poland normalize relations
1971 Wings release their 1st album "Wild Life"
1971 "Wild & Wonderful" opens/closes at Lyceum Theater NYC
1972 Philippine 1st lady Imelda Marcos stabbed & wounded by an assailant

1972 Apollo 17 (US), final manned lunar landing mission (last of Apollo Moon series), launched

1973 Phillies sell infielder-outfielder Cesar Tovar to the Texas Rangers
1975 10th Islander shut-out opponent-Glenn Resch 3-0 vs Sabres
1975 Archbishop Makarios returns Cyprus
1975 Indonesian army occupies East Timor
1976 UN Security Council endorses Kurt Waldheim, Secretary-General for 2nd 5 year term
1981 Spain becomes a member of the NATO
1982 Suriname army under Desi Bouterse fires on radio station building
1983 2 jets collided at Madrid Airport killing 93
1983 France performs nuclear test at Muruora Island
1985 Atlantis returns to Kennedy Space Center via Kelly AFB
1985 51st Heisman Trophy Award: Bo Jackson, Auburn (RB)
1986 President Jean-Claude Duvalier flees Haïti
1987 43 die in Pacific Southwest Airline crash in California (man shot pilots)
1987 Palestinian uprising against Israel in West Bank
1987 Mikhail Gorbachev arrives in the US for a summit meeting(Gorbasims occur across the nation)
1988 Yasser Arafat recognizes existence of Israel (riiiight)
1988 Earthquake in Armenia - 6.9 on the Richter scale (100,000 killed, 5,000,000 homeless)
1988 Rangers sign free-agent pitcher Nolan Ryan to a one-year contract
1989 C Coleman & D Zippel's musical "City of Angels" premieres in New York NY
1990 Iraqi parliament endorses Saddam's decision to free hostages (or else)
1990 Ted Turner & Jane Fonda announce their engagement
1991 A J Kitt, US, wins World Skiing Cup
1992 Galileo spacecraft passes North Pole of Moon (Peary Crater)
1993 South African transitional executive council set up
1993 Henri Konan Bédié names himself President of Ivory coast
1993 A gunman opened fire on a crowded Long Island, N.Y., commuter train, killing several persons.
1994 Radio personality Howard Stern talks a man out of attempting suicide
1995 NBA settles strike of referees, referees to return on December 12
1995 US space probe Galileo begins orbiting Jupiter
1996 Space Shuttle STS 80 (Columbia 21), lands
1996 A British jogger left London on a jog-around-the-world that will end when he returned to the United Kingdom in the year 2000.
1997 Singer/songwriter Bob Dylan, actress Lauren Bacall and actor Charlton Heston were among those receiving awards from the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C.
2000 Al Gore's lawyer, David Boies, pleaded with the Florida Supreme Court to order vote recounts and revive his presidential campaign. Republican attorneys called George W. Bush the certified, rightful victor.

2002 SAMWolf begins FReeper Foxhole!
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-vetscor/802408/posts

Holidays
Note: Some Holidays are only applicable on a given "day of the week"

Cuba : Day of National Mourning
Delaware : Ratification Day (1787)
Ivory Coast : National Day (1960)
US : Pearl Harbor Day (1941)
US : Candlelight Vigil of Remembrance and Hope
US : Autism Week (day 2)
National Indigestion Season-Jewish Book Month

Religious Observances
Roman Catholic, Anglican, Lutheran : Memorial of St Ambrose, governor/bishop of Milan
Roman Catholic : Commemoration of St Mary Josepha Rossello, foundress
Second Sunday of Advent

Religious History
0374 Early Church Father, Ambrose, 34, was consecrated Bishop of Milan, Italy. His influential works on theology and ethics made Ambrose (along with Jerome, Augustine, and Gregory the Great) one of the "four doctors" of the Western (Latin) Church.
0430 At the Synod of Rome, Cyril of Alexandria, 54, formally condemned the doctrine of the Antiochene monk Nestorius, who had claimed that there were two separate Persons in the Incarnate Christ (one Divine, the other Human).
1661 Under pressure from the British Parliament, the American Colony of Massachusetts suspended its Corporal Punishment Act of 1656, which had imposed harsh penalties on Quakers and other religious Nonconformists.
1965 The Roman Catholic and Greek Orthodox churches formally reconciled themselves by reversing a mutual excommunication of each other, dating back (over 900 years!) to July 1054.
1973 In Atlanta, the Presbyterian Church in America formally instituted its missionary organization, PCA Mission to the World. It was an outgrowth of the newly established denomination.

Source: William D. Blake. ALMANAC OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. Minneapolis: Bethany House, 1987.

Thought for the day :
"There has been only one Christmas - the rest are anniversaries."

Albums We Will Never Buy...
Bob Dylan - Mumble Mumble Mumble Say What?

You Just Might Be A Scrooge...
If you get your Christmas Tree
at a rest stop at night
-- you just might be a Scrooge

Dictionary of the Absurd...
Washington
2000 pounds of dirty laundry

Famous Last Words...
Why is the rest of the Star Trek landing party wearing a different color?

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