Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name
Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb, and today we have another repeat for
Speaker 1: you because again we're off this week for Christmas. This
Speaker 1: is the Invention of the Crossbow, Part one. This is
Speaker 1: an Invention themed series of episodes. We did this one
Speaker 1: originally published eleven fourteen, twenty twenty three. Let's dive right in.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name
Speaker 1: is Robert.
Speaker 3: Lamb, and I am Joe McCormick. And on today's episode
Speaker 3: of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, we're going to be
Speaker 3: doing one of our invention episodes where we look at
Speaker 3: an invention from history, look at what came before, what
Speaker 3: this invention changed, how it works and Rob, the subject
Speaker 3: you have picked for today's series is the Crossbow. Now
Speaker 3: I have to ask, is there a Dungeons and Dragons
Speaker 3: related origin story to you wanting to cover this?
Speaker 1: I mean pretty much, yeah, I think.
Speaker 3: There often is. With you, I feel like I can
Speaker 3: I can tell when it's coming.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because the Crossbow, of course is all over Dungeons
Speaker 1: and Dragons. I have definitely role played characters that had crossbows.
Speaker 1: But the thing that's always fascinated me about crossbows and
Speaker 1: role playing games is that is how that is the
Speaker 1: way they're depict it, because a lot of times they
Speaker 1: do end up just becoming guns. You know, they're like
Speaker 1: blasters that shoot crossbow bolts, And in a lot of games,
Speaker 1: you don't put a lot of emphasis on on the
Speaker 1: device itself and how it's working and any kind of
Speaker 1: like realistic idea about how it's loaded and reloaded and
Speaker 1: that In Dungeons and Dragons, that's the way it tends
Speaker 1: to go, like you can just fire your crossbow every turn,
Speaker 1: it's no big deal. But years back, my gaming group
Speaker 1: did another role playing game, and this one was one
Speaker 1: that was tied in with Dragon Age, I believe, and
Speaker 1: I may my memory may be crossed in some of
Speaker 1: these things here and there, because it was like a
Speaker 1: good ten years ago at this point. But if memory serves,
Speaker 1: the crossbow mechanics in that game were perhaps a little
Speaker 1: more accurate to a lot of crossbow technology and some
Speaker 1: of the examples we'll discuss here. But it was also
Speaker 1: decidedly unfun because there's one of these situations where I
Speaker 1: often go into gaming, role playing gaming sort of like
Speaker 1: imagination first rule second, like, I'll make choices that may
Speaker 1: come back to bite me in the butt because I
Speaker 1: didn't think about how the rules would impact my choices.
Speaker 1: And this was definitely a case like that, because I
Speaker 1: had decided I was going to be a dwarf. I
Speaker 1: was going to have this cool crossbow, but said crossbow,
Speaker 1: as it turns out, had to be reloaded for an
Speaker 1: entire turn after use. So we get into a battle
Speaker 1: and my dwarf would wire this crossbow, you know, probably
Speaker 1: miss and then the next turn he's just cranking this
Speaker 1: sucker or you know, he has it on the ground
Speaker 1: like redrawing the bow of the crossbow and then gets
Speaker 1: to fire and miss on the following turn.
Speaker 3: Now, that might not be more fun, but that is
Speaker 3: more accurate because one of the big changes you see
Speaker 3: across the history of crossbows is not so much changes
Speaker 3: to the basic design of the crossbow itself, but spanning mechanisms,
Speaker 3: mechanisms for how you load and draw the string and
Speaker 3: lock it into place. So, yeah, I can imagine D
Speaker 3: and D would be a lot more cumbersome if you
Speaker 3: know your rogue had to get out of cranic quin
Speaker 3: every single time to crank the crossbow back and sitting
Speaker 3: there like trying to wind it up.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it could get it can get tedious, which is
Speaker 1: I think is why in Dungeons and Dragons you tend
Speaker 1: to find the crossbow just fires each turn and you
Speaker 1: just assumed that you are you have enough skill to
Speaker 1: make it happen. I don't know, there's probably some sort
Speaker 1: of way you could make make the mechanics bit more engaging,
Speaker 1: but I think probably just firing at each churn is
Speaker 1: the best.
Speaker 3: Way to go well. And some of the loading or
Speaker 3: spanning mechanisms do appear to have been faster than others
Speaker 3: in history, so not all of them had like a
Speaker 3: like a windlass or a cranic when one of these
Speaker 3: big cranking mechanisms. There were also mechanisms where you just
Speaker 3: have like a stirrup that you put your foot in,
Speaker 3: then you pull it back and that works pretty quick.
Speaker 1: Yeah, assuming you have firm ground underfoot. I ran across
Speaker 1: mention of an ancient Chinese text that was warning against
Speaker 1: using crossbows if you were on like damp ground, and
Speaker 1: which makes sense, like suddenly you have your crossbowman out there.
Speaker 1: They need the fire, they need a reload. But uh, oh,
Speaker 1: you have trouble either getting your foot down into it,
Speaker 1: or it may be a situation where you need to
Speaker 1: lie on your back and then stretch it against your feet,
Speaker 1: and that could also might or might not work, depending
Speaker 1: on how muddy the terrain is.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you could imagine that, and I guess you would
Speaker 3: probably need stable footing, even though, like so the stirrup
Speaker 3: method you're pulling against yourself, you might have like a
Speaker 3: hook on your belt or something to pull the mechanism
Speaker 3: back while you push in the stirrup with your foot,
Speaker 3: but then you'd probably need to have the other foot
Speaker 3: on stable ground.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but you know, I think all this is kind
Speaker 1: of the appeal of the crossbow is as like an
Speaker 1: idea we were talking before we came in to record here.
Speaker 1: How Like, for my own part, growing up in Tennacy,
Speaker 1: being in boy scouts, you had the opportunity to fire
Speaker 1: rifles on shooting ranges, you got the opportunity to fire
Speaker 1: to use bow and arrow on archery ranges, But I
Speaker 1: never had the chance to try out a crossbow, And
Speaker 1: so the crossbow was always this kind of like mysterious
Speaker 1: thing in between. And yet unlike a gun, you could
Speaker 1: still look at it and even as a kid, you know,
Speaker 1: understand like the basic principles of how it worked.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, because with a crossbow, I mean, just like
Speaker 3: with a bow, there can be a lot of different
Speaker 3: design elements that could imp improve features of how it works,
Speaker 3: improve usability, improve the energy delivered, or the draw length
Speaker 3: or whatever the speed of the projectile. But still at core,
Speaker 3: a crossbow operates on the same principle as a bow.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And of course, yeah, to discuss the crossbow, we're
Speaker 1: going to have to talk a little bit about the
Speaker 1: bow at least. And it's not just a situation where well,
Speaker 1: we had the bow and then we created the crossbow
Speaker 1: and just threw out those bows away. It's not nearly
Speaker 1: as simple as that. And we'll discuss some of the
Speaker 1: famous examples of crossbows going up against bows and how
Speaker 1: that played out. But the oldest evidence for the bow
Speaker 1: and arrow, as cited by Brian Imfagan and Peter Rowley
Speaker 1: Conley in the seventy Great Inventions of the Ancient World,
Speaker 1: goes back ten thousand years to the early Mesolithic period
Speaker 1: in Denmark. This is a thousand years later than the
Speaker 1: earliest evidence of the arrows twelve thousand years ago and
Speaker 1: what is now Germany in Stone era, head state eighteen
Speaker 1: tho to twenty thousand years ago in Spain, and possibly
Speaker 1: have arrow points from sixty to seventy thousand years ago
Speaker 1: in South Africa. The problem with ancient bows, of course,
Speaker 1: is that they were almost always made of organic materials
Speaker 1: that just do not survive the test of time, with
Speaker 1: the actual arrowheads being the most long lasting part of
Speaker 1: the combined weapon technology.
Speaker 3: Right, So you'll find evidence of arrowheads going back longer
Speaker 3: than clear evidence of the bows themselves. And yeah, I
Speaker 3: think that example you mentioned from South Africa, like the
Speaker 3: Subudu Cave, is one of the earliest I've read about.
Speaker 3: But that's arrowhead evidence.
Speaker 1: Right right. So no, absolutely nobody that I've come across
Speaker 1: as making any argument that that crossbows go back nearly
Speaker 1: that far. I think it's it's clear, there's clear indication
Speaker 1: that the bow came first, of course, but it is
Speaker 1: also you know, worth noting that even with things like
Speaker 1: the crossbow, the crossbows still made out of mostly organic material,
Speaker 1: with the main differences being Okay, you have, of course
Speaker 1: the head of the bolt, which may be made out
Speaker 1: of a metal of some sort, and then, as we'll
Speaker 1: discuss later on, you also have the lock of a crossbow.
Speaker 1: This is the implement that holds back the drawn string,
Speaker 1: and so when this is made out of metal, we
Speaker 1: may find evidence of it, such as bronze crossbow locks
Speaker 1: from China. Now on the show before, we've talked a
Speaker 1: bit about the history of projectile weapons, particularly, I think
Speaker 1: most recently, we did a series of episodes on animals
Speaker 1: throwing things, and then we did one on humans throwing things,
Speaker 1: and that was really interesting because you got into a
Speaker 1: lot of situations where you're not just throwing any rock,
Speaker 1: you're throwing specially prepared rocks, or you're throwing things like
Speaker 1: hunting sticks at animals that sort of thing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you can have modifications of the projectiles themselves, but
Speaker 3: in terms of launching technology, we actually did a whole
Speaker 3: other episode back when we had a separate Invention podcast
Speaker 3: on the Oddoladel, which was a piece of launching technology
Speaker 3: that was essentially a lever arm to get increased leverage
Speaker 3: on a spear.
Speaker 1: So these various non bow and pre bow missile weapon technologies,
Speaker 1: these had a huge impact on the world of hunter gatherers.
Speaker 1: You know, extended the range of human violence beyond physical
Speaker 1: human reach, and by the time the bow comes along
Speaker 1: and starts spreading, this just extends the range even farther.
Speaker 1: And of course it all served to extend human dominance
Speaker 1: over animals and other hominids, as well as transforming conflict
Speaker 1: between humans. Now, one of the basics about the bow,
Speaker 1: the bow and arrow, and this is something that you
Speaker 1: know is obvious I think by watching it in action,
Speaker 1: is that, as Fagan and Raley Conway point out, the
Speaker 1: bow is essentially a spring that stores energy when the
Speaker 1: bow string is drawn. Then when the string is released,
Speaker 1: that energy is transferred into the propulsion of the arrow.
Speaker 1: Different types of wood provided different advantages, and eventually compound
Speaker 1: bows made use of multiple parts to provide maximized performance.
Speaker 3: Yes, it is worth noting that despite the different form
Speaker 3: and the different way you hold these weapons, a bow
Speaker 3: and a crossbow both typically work on the same mechanical principle,
Speaker 3: which is the principle of the spring, by storing energy
Speaker 3: in the form of elastic potential and then releasing that
Speaker 3: potential suddenly to propel an arrow in the case of
Speaker 3: a bow, or a bolt in the case of a
Speaker 3: crossbow at high speed. Now, when you shoot a bow,
Speaker 3: there's actually a common misconception that the energy comes from
Speaker 3: stretching the bow string. Even though I know better, I
Speaker 3: think sometimes my brain still wants to think this way.
Speaker 3: But the string of a bow really doesn't stretch you
Speaker 3: very much at all. So that's not where the energy
Speaker 3: has come from coming from. The energy comes from bending
Speaker 3: the bow itself, bending the limbs of the bow, and
Speaker 3: when you pull the string, it bends the bow. When
Speaker 3: you release the string, the bow returns to its original shape,
Speaker 3: and it propels the arrow as it does so because
Speaker 3: it is pulling the string taut. So the string is
Speaker 3: sort of a medium. It's how you pull the bow
Speaker 3: back and how the snapping back energy of the bow
Speaker 3: is delivered to the arrow.
Speaker 1: This is why Leglas says, and my bow and not
Speaker 1: and my string.
Speaker 3: That's right now. If you've never actually shot a bow
Speaker 3: at a target, you might be shocked how much strength
Speaker 3: it takes to draw back a bow. You know, I've
Speaker 3: done this at various points in my life. Most recently
Speaker 3: several years back, I did a goofy little archery range
Speaker 3: at a Renaissance festival, and even in that setting, I
Speaker 3: remember being shocked at how difficult it was to pull
Speaker 3: back the bow and surprised at how aiming the bow
Speaker 3: was made so much more difficult than it looks because
Speaker 3: of the tension when you're holding a drawn bow, so
Speaker 3: you're flexing, you know, maybe as hard as you can
Speaker 3: when you pull a bow string back, and that intense
Speaker 3: exertion makes it harder to aim your shot. Your arm
Speaker 3: might want to tremble. You're straining with your whole body.
Speaker 3: You're also putting a lot of strain on your hand
Speaker 3: and your fingers that are holding the bow string back.
Speaker 3: So imagine trying to aim something precisely while you're in
Speaker 3: the middle of a bench press or some other weight lift.
Speaker 3: And so it's easy to see how a crossbow really
Speaker 3: changes the game there. A crossbow allows the tension of
Speaker 3: the bow to be locked in place and then released
Speaker 3: by an external mechanism instead of being drawn, held and
Speaker 3: released purely by the strength of your muscles and bones.
Speaker 1: That's right, And this is where the genius of the
Speaker 1: crossbow comes in because the crossbow, I mean you can
Speaker 1: almost think of the crossbow as like a robotic technological
Speaker 1: replacement for the arm or the arms in this scenario,
Speaker 1: because once the bow is drawn back, this trigger or
Speaker 1: lock holds everything in place, holds all of that potential
Speaker 1: power in place, and then it can be released by
Speaker 1: pulling a trigger.
Speaker 3: And this is a point I actually saw emphasized by
Speaker 3: the author of a book I'm gonna mention at some
Speaker 3: point in this series that a big difference between say,
Speaker 3: somebody who was a skilled archer with a long bow
Speaker 3: versus somebody who was a skilled crossbow operator in the
Speaker 3: medieval period. Say, a big difference would be the level
Speaker 3: of fitness required in order to be a long bow operator.
Speaker 3: There is just like way more requirement of real upper
Speaker 3: body strength and training, of physical training, not just skill training.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's a lot of skill involved the use of
Speaker 1: a bow, and I should highlight they're going to differences
Speaker 1: depending on where and how a bow is utilized for
Speaker 1: what specific hunting or military uses and so forth. I mean,
Speaker 1: for example, there's a difference between the skill of a
Speaker 1: bowman on foot and a mounted archer out there in
Speaker 1: a battle scenario. But one of the primary examples of
Speaker 1: archery expertise that I'm gonna mention here and also pops
Speaker 1: up in a lot of the literature, is, of course
Speaker 1: the archers who used the English long bow. This was
Speaker 1: a powerful bow that required a considerable amount of upper
Speaker 1: body strength, and you had to work for years to
Speaker 1: build up the strength to use these weapons, and generally
Speaker 1: had to start at a very early age. More on
Speaker 1: the English long bow in a minute here, But one
Speaker 1: of the key factors to consider in all this is drawweight.
Speaker 1: None of this will come as a shock to any
Speaker 1: bow hunters out there for sure, and maybe you can
Speaker 1: write in and tell us few things about all of this.
Speaker 1: But the idea is that pulling back on I say,
Speaker 1: sixty pound drawweight bow would be like lifting a sixty
Speaker 1: pound weight off the ground. But then, of course, as
Speaker 1: we've been discussing, it's not just lifting that sixty pound weight,
Speaker 1: it's holding it, aiming it, perhaps with your life on
Speaker 1: the line in a military scenario, and then releasing it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, trying to finally control both aim and timing while
Speaker 3: you are holding back this extremely heavy weight. Now regarding
Speaker 3: the basic physics of a bow draw I was looking
Speaker 3: around on this and one great source I came across
Speaker 3: was actually an old school house stuff works article takes
Speaker 3: me back.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, who wrote this one?
Speaker 3: One buyer, our friend Tracy Wilson now host of stuff
Speaker 3: you missed in history class. Nice, But Tracy's article on
Speaker 3: how the crossbow works goes into several of the main
Speaker 3: variables that determine the energy of a bow shot. So,
Speaker 3: as you were just saying, there is what's called a
Speaker 3: bow's draw weight, and this is the force it takes
Speaker 3: to draw the bow, and this depends on multiple things
Speaker 3: like the material properties of the bow, material on the
Speaker 3: size of the bow, its shape and design, and so forth.
Speaker 3: There is also the draw length, which is the distance
Speaker 3: between the bow strings resting position and the point that
Speaker 3: you draw it back to. And of course draw length
Speaker 3: is not an intrinsic property of the bow, but changes
Speaker 3: with each draw, like you could draw it back to
Speaker 3: different lengths, and so it would be a characteristic of
Speaker 3: a bow shot. Also, generally the draw weight increases along
Speaker 3: with the draw length, so the farther you pull the
Speaker 3: bow string back, the more force it takes. So you
Speaker 3: might say that there a bow has a certain draw
Speaker 3: weight at a certain draw length.
Speaker 1: Because even with say an English long bow, a child
Speaker 1: will be able to pick it up and pull back
Speaker 1: that pull the bow back a little bit, but not
Speaker 1: enough to actually get to the full the full draw
Speaker 1: and the full potential of the boat.
Speaker 3: Yes, And this actually comes back to questions medieval history.
Speaker 3: Nerds like to ask, like, you know, how exactly how
Speaker 3: much strength does it take to shoot an English long
Speaker 3: bow of the thirteenth century or something, And you could say, well,
Speaker 3: you know, if the bow is made like this, it
Speaker 3: would take this much strength to shoot it at its
Speaker 3: full potential, you know, with this amount of draw length.
Speaker 3: But probably anybody could underdraw the bow. So it's just
Speaker 3: a question of like how effective you are at using it.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: But regarding these variables draw weight and draw length, they
Speaker 3: can affect the shot in various ways. For example, the
Speaker 3: longer the draw length in terms of distance, the longer
Speaker 3: in terms of time, the string will be pushing the
Speaker 3: arrow before it is released. Does that make sense, so
Speaker 3: that imparts more energy you pull it actually farther back
Speaker 3: the is pushing the arrow and giving it force longer,
Speaker 3: And so the energy stored for a bow shot can
Speaker 3: be calculated as roughly draw weight times draw length divided
Speaker 3: by two, and then the energy of the shot would
Speaker 3: be measured in units like foot pounds. You know, the
Speaker 3: energy required to lift one pound by one foot or jewels,
Speaker 3: So the design of a bow can make a big
Speaker 3: difference in the energy it can deliver. A long bow
Speaker 3: with a longer draw length and a heavier draw weight
Speaker 3: tends to impart more energy to the arrow and thus
Speaker 3: increase its range, and a long bow can shoot over
Speaker 3: longer distances and tend to shoot heavier arrows. But materials matter. Traditionally,
Speaker 3: bows were made out of strong and elastic woods you know,
Speaker 3: for in the case of the English longbow, the wood
Speaker 3: of the yew tree is often mentioned, but modern bows
Speaker 3: are often made of different materials and parts designed to
Speaker 3: flex and store energy in different ways. Is often not
Speaker 3: just one piece of wood anymore, but different kinds of materials.
Speaker 3: And there is also a difference that's important to remember
Speaker 3: between compound bows and composite bows. You can mix them
Speaker 3: up because they both start with com but composite bows
Speaker 3: are regular bows made out of a combination of different materials,
Speaker 3: often laminated together so traditionally by combining wood with different
Speaker 3: types of animal parts like horn and sinew, Whereas compound
Speaker 3: bows are bows that use different parts such as pulleys
Speaker 3: or other levering machines to give the archer mechanical advantage
Speaker 3: in drawing back to allow maybe for more rigid bow
Speaker 3: material to be used.
Speaker 1: So it's composite materials and then compounded force.
Speaker 3: Right, Compound bows have machines in them, like pulleys or levers.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, and I think I think everyone's probably seen,
Speaker 1: especially like it's kind of like an almost iconic of
Speaker 1: modern say bow hunters. You'll see those various pulleys on
Speaker 1: the bow.
Speaker 3: And so all of these mechanical principles basically apply to
Speaker 3: crossbows as well, though there are some common design differences
Speaker 3: that you would observe with crossbows, even though they're not necessarily.
Speaker 3: They're not necessary to the principle of a crossbow. For example,
Speaker 3: crossbows typically have shorter limbs than long bows, and also
Speaker 3: shorter bolts, so a shorter draw length. Though that's not
Speaker 3: fundamental to what a crossbow is. It just happens to
Speaker 3: be that crossbows are usually like that.
Speaker 1: Now. One source I was looking at for different stats
Speaker 1: on draw strength was a website called bowhunting dot com,
Speaker 1: which points out that modern compound bows are pretty excellent.
Speaker 1: They say you can comfortably hunt with a forty pound
Speaker 1: draw bow, and that's perfectly reasonable for most hunting scenarios
Speaker 1: with big game, I'm assuming they're mostly talking about something
Speaker 1: like a deer. In this case, they specify sixty to
Speaker 1: sixty five for something like a moose or an elk.
Speaker 1: And they point out that some shooters today can handle
Speaker 1: seventy eighty or ninety pound bows. So this brings us
Speaker 1: to the question, all right, well, we talked about the
Speaker 1: English long bow is sort of the bow part excellence.
Speaker 1: Well what kind of draw are we talking about on
Speaker 1: those Well, it turns out it's a matter of some debate,
Speaker 1: but the best you English long bows may have required
Speaker 1: and a mistress may it depends on who's crunching the
Speaker 1: figures here, but it may have required between one hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty and one hundred and eighty pound draws. That's
Speaker 1: eighty one point six kilograms on the upper end.
Speaker 3: And even if it's not that high, I mean a
Speaker 3: over one hundred pound draw, which I think is widely
Speaker 3: agreed upon. Is that's still incredibly Yeah, that is It's
Speaker 3: hard to imagine, and.
Speaker 1: Like I've been saying, it would not only be you know,
Speaker 1: a test of strength to draw that bow to aim
Speaker 1: and then release it just a single time you have
Speaker 1: to remember that, especially in a warfare situation, the arch
Speaker 1: sure would be firing over and over again. Repetition is
Speaker 1: key even in a hunting scenario. According to bowhunting dot Com,
Speaker 1: the rule of thumb is that whatever weight you're using
Speaker 1: on your bow, you need to be able to do
Speaker 1: it thirty times in a row without feeling fatigued.
Speaker 3: That's a lot of reps.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I don't think that means that you're necessarily firing
Speaker 1: thirty arrows at a single deer, but I think that's
Speaker 1: the general idea is if you can't do that, then
Speaker 1: you need to cut back on your draw strength.
Speaker 3: I hesitate to speculate because I know nothing about bow hunting,
Speaker 3: but I imagine that would be about trying to aim
Speaker 3: and time the correct shots. So you might be drawing
Speaker 3: in cases where you wouldn't actually be releasing the arrow.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a good point. Yeah, not every time you
Speaker 1: draw back or you're actually going to fire that in
Speaker 1: that arrow. So the English longbow was the ultimate missile
Speaker 1: weapon during the one hundred Years of War and saw
Speaker 1: use into the sixteenth century. I played an important role
Speaker 1: in multiple battles. We'll get to one in a minute,
Speaker 1: but another one is the Battle of Agincourt from fourteen fifteen,
Speaker 1: in which the English forces famously focused I think eighty
Speaker 1: percent of their battle force unarranged weapons to secure victory.
Speaker 1: In this and other examples, we should point out like
Speaker 1: it's not as important as the weaponry choice is. It's
Speaker 1: not the only factor. Of course, there are other factors
Speaker 1: involved in any given warfare scenario. The bows may not
Speaker 1: survive all that well, as we've discussed, but skeletons do.
Speaker 1: And while this is apparently also not a one hundred
Speaker 1: percent agreed upon issue, you do have this situation where
Speaker 1: in nineteen eighty two the wreck of the Mary Rose
Speaker 1: was raised. This is a ship that sank English ship
Speaker 1: that's thank in fifteen fifty four, and the skeletons on
Speaker 1: board displayed a disproportionate amount of a shoulder ossification condition
Speaker 1: known as os acromiali. This is actually associated with elite archery,
Speaker 1: so you know, repeatedly drawing back them some sort of
Speaker 1: a powerful bow for example, and there were long bows
Speaker 1: on board. It's not one again, but it's an often
Speaker 1: cited correlation when it comes to just like talking about
Speaker 1: like what sort of physical prowess would be required to
Speaker 1: use these bows efficiently in a warfare scenario.
Speaker 3: So the point being that both the longbow and the
Speaker 3: crossbow could be highly effective in various scenarios for hunting
Speaker 3: or for warfare or whatever. But the longbow required incredible
Speaker 3: physical strength and intense physical training, whereas the crossbow did
Speaker 3: require some skill training you had to know how to
Speaker 3: use it, but did not place the same kind of
Speaker 3: demands on the human body.
Speaker 1: Right, And even in cases where you didn't have any
Speaker 1: kind of a pulley system, etc. To aid you in
Speaker 1: drawing the crossbow, you at least did not have to
Speaker 1: do any kind of precision aiming while doing it. All
Speaker 1: you had to worry about was getting it drawn back
Speaker 1: all the way and then the lock would come into place,
Speaker 1: and then you can aim without having to endear that
Speaker 1: physical strain. So yeah, as Fagan and Raley Conway point out, Yeah,
Speaker 1: the crossbow can be kept drawn for much longer than
Speaker 1: an archer can possibly hold a drawn bow, and the
Speaker 1: crossbow can be made even more powerful than the strongest bow.
Speaker 1: But I have to stress on this as we'll discuss.
Speaker 1: I mean, this all comes down to scale, right, I mean,
Speaker 1: and range. There are a number of factors involved there,
Speaker 1: because any given crossbow is not necessarily more powerful than
Speaker 1: a bow, as we'll discuss. But yeah, one of the
Speaker 1: key advantages here is that it kind of democratizes the
Speaker 1: use of a bow weapon. While a bow's power is
Speaker 1: limited by the strength of the archer, a crossbow can
Speaker 1: again be drawn via mechanical devices, so you can end
Speaker 1: up with a weapon that ensures greater accuracy, at least
Speaker 1: at short to medium ranges, with less specialized training required.
Speaker 1: The downside, of course, as we already alluded to, is
Speaker 1: that actually drawing the crossbow tends to take more time
Speaker 1: than drawing a bow. Again, if I'm one side, you
Speaker 1: have somebody who can effectively draw the long bow that
Speaker 1: they're using, and on the other side, you have someone
Speaker 1: who has a nice crossbow. And this is especially true
Speaker 1: if you're having to employ some sort of mechanical apparatus
Speaker 1: to draw the crossbow, but it also seems true if
Speaker 1: you're having to do something like, you know, stick it
Speaker 1: in the ground and then draw back using your arms
Speaker 1: and your legs.
Speaker 3: One other difference in the calculation I have come across
Speaker 3: is the idea that the crossbow equipment would generally be
Speaker 3: more expensive than longbow equipment.
Speaker 1: That's a good point too, So either more gears and
Speaker 1: so forth that are involved, it may make it easier
Speaker 1: for everyone to use it, but it becomes a more
Speaker 1: specialized technology as well. Now, another important battle to touch
Speaker 1: on is another scenario involving the English longbow, and that's
Speaker 1: the Battle of Creasy from thirteen forty six, in which
Speaker 1: the technology of the English longbow ensured victory over French crossbowmen.
Speaker 1: And I was reading about this in the book Connections
Speaker 1: by James Burke, who we've brought him up on the
Speaker 1: show before, and I think fairly recently somebody wrote in
Speaker 1: about James Burke's work on our listener mail episodes. But
Speaker 1: Burke points out that the English longbow had exceptional range.
Speaker 1: He cites four hundred yards and special steel arrowheads that
Speaker 1: were designed to punch through armor at close range, and
Speaker 1: he points out that experienced archer could loose nine arrows
Speaker 1: in a minute, while the French crossbowmen required lengthier reload time.
Speaker 1: So the idea is like the archers have fired, the
Speaker 1: crossbowmen fire, and then before the crossbowmen can reload their weapons,
Speaker 1: the archers have fired again. However, the experienced archer. Part
Speaker 1: of the scenario is key. Once more, Burke writes that
Speaker 1: within decades of this pivotal battle that saw the championing
Speaker 1: of the English longbow over crossbows and traditional armored knights,
Speaker 1: it was after this ten years later, increasingly impossible to
Speaker 1: find enough skilled archers to power the long bow and
Speaker 1: provide the sort of overwhelming fire power that ruled the
Speaker 1: day at Creasy. Burke discusses the possible reasons for this
Speaker 1: at length in the book, and I believe in them
Speaker 1: of course the documentary TV series as well, and he
Speaker 1: cites a number of different different different reasons entailing the
Speaker 1: continued recovery from the plague, improvements in plowing technology, various
Speaker 1: other inventions and innovations, improved diets, and also a general
Speaker 1: improvement in the quality of life for the average human.
Speaker 1: Burke writes, quote, it took years for a man to
Speaker 1: be trained to use the six foot u bow, and
Speaker 1: here was the adult male population frittering away valuable training
Speaker 1: hours enjoying itself. The reason therefore, that the long bow
Speaker 1: enjoyed such a brief spell of success lay in the
Speaker 1: rising standard of living which the agricultural revolution had brought about.
Speaker 3: Although interestingly, I was reading historical fact about how the
Speaker 3: introduction of widespread crossbow use did not eliminate this tension
Speaker 3: between between sort of like free time and enjoyment and
Speaker 3: the military leaders emphasis that everybody really should be training.
Speaker 3: So there's a book I've been looking at called The
Speaker 3: Medieval Crossbow by Stuart Ellis Gorman, published in the year
Speaker 3: twenty twenty two Pen and Sword Military Press, and this
Speaker 3: is a book length investigation of the crossbow. And I
Speaker 3: was reading a reddit ama with this this author who
Speaker 3: points out that you have multiple ordinances from the government
Speaker 3: in various places throughout medieval Europe, in England but also
Speaker 3: in late medieval France and at some point in Genoa
Speaker 3: that were like banning leisure activities and telling people to
Speaker 3: be doing archery or crossbow practice instead. So like Genoa
Speaker 3: at some point banned tournaments and banned gambling and said
Speaker 3: you should be seeing your crossbow instead of doing these things.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like the Conan the Barbarian principle. You know,
Speaker 1: you watch Conan the Barbarian, It's like, yeah, he's a
Speaker 1: great warrior, but man, he seems miserable. He's not he's
Speaker 1: not really making any time or is given any time
Speaker 1: to do anything else. So you know, of course he's
Speaker 1: this mighty warrior. But is it becomes less as people
Speaker 1: begin to have other choices in their life. They're not
Speaker 1: they're not just constantly, constantly practicing those archery skills, and
Speaker 1: therefore you can see the shift perhaps being made to
Speaker 1: something like the crossbow that is usable by the average person,
Speaker 1: but without all of this extensive training.
Speaker 3: Though as the shows, it wouldn't require the same level
Speaker 3: of physical training, but you would still have to practice.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, you couldn't. You couldn't just hand them out
Speaker 1: and expect everyone to just automatically hit everything you're aiming at.
Speaker 1: Though I guess there's room in that statement for various
Speaker 1: arguments about what sort of scale are you handing them
Speaker 1: out at? And certainly, as we may discuss in this
Speaker 1: episode in the next, I mean, there are examples where
Speaker 1: a lot of crossbows are deployed in given battles in
Speaker 1: different scenarios. Now this leads us to the question, of course,
Speaker 1: when do we see the earliest crossbows, And of course,
Speaker 1: in one of the issues again in dating earliest crossbows,
Speaker 1: of course, are the organic materials that aren't going to
Speaker 1: survive the test of time, and you're having to rely
Speaker 1: on things like crossbow bolt heads and also the locks.
Speaker 1: But another interesting point that's brought up by Fagan and
Speaker 1: Raley Conway is that sometimes it's difficult to say what's
Speaker 1: a crossbow and what's a catapult. They point out that
Speaker 1: the earliest crossbows in some regions anyway kind of resembled
Speaker 1: small catapults, and there was likely, they think, some sort
Speaker 1: of transformative step from stationary to mobile weaponry. Here kind
Speaker 1: of imagine this is kind of like you can imagine
Speaker 1: people thinking, what if we made a bigger bow, Well,
Speaker 1: we wouldn't be able to pull that back. We'd have
Speaker 1: to do something else. And then they're like, okay, I've
Speaker 1: created it, and what have you created? It's kind of
Speaker 1: like a cross It's kind of like a big crossbow.
Speaker 1: It's kind of also like a catapult. And then you
Speaker 1: might think this is interesting, what have we scaled this
Speaker 1: back down? And then you could hold it?
Speaker 3: Yes, though I do think scale does tend to place
Speaker 3: different requirements on like what kinds of mechanisms you can use.
Speaker 3: For example, you can look at the the ballista, which
Speaker 3: is like a siege weapon, which has existed since ancient
Speaker 3: times and say, well, that looks a lot like a crossbow,
Speaker 3: but it does have a different mechanism for storing energy
Speaker 3: than the crossbow does. The crossbow stores it in the
Speaker 3: tension of the bow of the limbs, whereas there I
Speaker 3: can't remember exactly what the mechanism is for the ballista,
Speaker 3: but it's different. I think it has to do with
Speaker 3: like winding ropes or something.
Speaker 1: M Yeah, so catapults, we might have to come back
Speaker 1: to another siege equipment, because there's a lot of interesting
Speaker 1: innovation that goes on there. Apparently, biblical accounts point back
Speaker 1: to the reign of Uzaiah around eight hundred BCE as
Speaker 1: a possible time during which people were using catapults, and
Speaker 1: then there's a definite mention of them in Sicily around
Speaker 1: four hundred BCE. But of course all this stems from
Speaker 1: ancient world scenarios in which you had walled city states
Speaker 1: encountering siege situations, and of course the besiegers would have
Speaker 1: to devise various ways to have to contend with this,
Speaker 1: and of course the besieged on their end, would come
Speaker 1: up with various means of defending themselves. So Fagan and
Speaker 1: Rowley Conway point to two key dates for earliest crossbow emergence,
Speaker 1: one in second century BCE Rome, which will come back
Speaker 1: to in a bit, and the other in fifth century
Speaker 1: BCE China. Now you can well ask for these independent advances.
Speaker 1: Perhaps it's also been arives by many that the Chinese
Speaker 1: invention simply spread to the West, perhaps more than once.
Speaker 1: And we can't necessarily connect all the dots here, but
Speaker 1: you can point out the key dots and some of
Speaker 1: the time periods that are associated with them.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so you don't know exactly how it traveled, though
Speaker 3: it does seem to me uncontroversially agreed upon that the
Speaker 3: earliest crossbow usage was in ancient China.
Speaker 1: Yes, so the fifth century BC dating believe concerns bronze
Speaker 1: crossbow components, bronze bold heads, bronze crossbow locks, and these
Speaker 1: have been dated to the mid seventh century BCE. Bolts
Speaker 1: have also turned up in Chinese tombs from this time period.
Speaker 1: John Key, in his book on Chinese history, rights that
Speaker 1: the crossbow was long quote the weapon of first choice
Speaker 1: in the Chinese military, but advancements in equestrian power did
Speaker 1: end up limiting its effectiveness somewhat so these would not
Speaker 1: so much be the fact that people were riding the horses,
Speaker 1: but people were armed on the horse. The horse and
Speaker 1: the strength of the horse and the speed of the horse,
Speaker 1: we're able to convey an armored individual around more easily.
Speaker 1: But of course this comes a good bit later.
Speaker 3: But it's not just artifacts, right, because I think ancient
Speaker 3: Chinese texts do make explicit mention of the crossbow.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Sun Zoo in the Art of War from the
Speaker 1: fifth century BCE definitely mentions them. It brings up like,
Speaker 1: sort of philosophically right that it says, quote, energy may
Speaker 1: be likened to the bending of a crossbow, decision to
Speaker 1: the releasing of a trigger.
Speaker 3: Ah, so the physical device there being so familiar by
Speaker 3: the point of sun Zu's writing that it's that it's
Speaker 3: a proper source of metaphor.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it's kind of like this is not what
Speaker 1: he's talking about, but it's kind of like you can
Speaker 1: imagine someone saying, hey, when it comes to slinging insults,
Speaker 1: do you want to be an archer or a crossbow wielder?
Speaker 1: You know, be a crossbow wielder. Think up that insult
Speaker 1: in advance, store it away, store its potential away, and
Speaker 1: then when the time comes, you pull the trigger. Now,
Speaker 1: one source that we often come back to when we
Speaker 1: discuss technology and innovation and invention in ancient China is
Speaker 1: of course the work of Joseph Needam's, particularly his Science
Speaker 1: and Civilization in China series, which gosh, off the top
Speaker 1: of my head, I can't remember how many volumes are
Speaker 1: in this series. Anytime I read it, I'm always I
Speaker 1: always get excited about it, and I'll take a moment
Speaker 1: to see if I can just buy them all, and
Speaker 1: then I quickly realized that I cannot do that. They're
Speaker 1: they're not necessarily in print, and there are a bunch
Speaker 1: of them.
Speaker 3: If I'm not mistaken. Though Joseph Needum was the original author,
Speaker 3: the Science and Civilization and China series has sort of
Speaker 3: continued after his death.
Speaker 1: Right, that's right. And then also some volumes have been
Speaker 1: somewhat abbreviated because they are there by other authors. They're
Speaker 1: pretty extensive, but I've always found them to be very
Speaker 1: readable and enjoyable. And his mastery and the mastery of
Speaker 1: those who was working with, not only historically but linguistically,
Speaker 1: it's just awe inspiring. But one thing that he points
Speaker 1: out I'm going to mention a few things that he
Speaker 1: mentions about the crossbow in these books. He writes, quote,
Speaker 1: it has been demonstrated that in ancient times in China,
Speaker 1: the progress of invention in offensive weapons, especially the efficient crossbow,
Speaker 1: far outstripped progress in defensive armor. This, he points out,
Speaker 1: is reflected in various accounts of feudal lords in ancient
Speaker 1: China being overtaken by peasants armed with crossbows. So this
Speaker 1: is just like another case of like a very very
Speaker 1: broad generality that you can make about the crossbow in
Speaker 1: that it democratizes the use of the bow weapon. You
Speaker 1: don't have to be an expert archer to wield it.
Speaker 1: And especially if, like Needham was writing here, if you
Speaker 1: have defensive innovation is lagging behind offensive innovation, you may
Speaker 1: have the upper hand. Now, there wasn't just one Chinese crossbow,
Speaker 1: and I think in the next episode I'll talk about
Speaker 1: a specific innovation, but there were multiple innovations of the crossbow,
Speaker 1: and Needham discusses that one of the standard Chinese crossbows
Speaker 1: would be loaded by either lying on your back or
Speaker 1: standing on the bow using leg thrusts and arms to
Speaker 1: cock the bow. Now, another thing he points out concerns gunpowder.
Speaker 1: We did an episode or episodes about the invention of gunpowder,
Speaker 1: and we talked a bit in that about Chinese innovations
Speaker 1: concerning gunpowder, even in an offensive capacity, And he points
Speaker 1: out that, yeah, crossbows were also used with various incendiary
Speaker 1: implements of flammable or explosive crossbow bolts, etc. On the
Speaker 1: other hand, sometimes crossbow was used in the naming of
Speaker 1: a pyrotechnic ranged weapon, even if it was not actually
Speaker 1: a crossbow. He brings up the example of the fire
Speaker 1: crossbow meteoric arrow shooter. That's like the literal translation of
Speaker 1: the Chinese here, But he points out it's not as
Speaker 1: the name andies a crossbow. It's also not as the
Speaker 1: name implies a rocket. He describes it as a quote
Speaker 1: proto gun firing ten poisoned arrows at a time, which
Speaker 1: came out quote like a flock of locusts. So still
Speaker 1: kind of hard to imagine what that is, but apparently
Speaker 1: not an actual crossbow. But it's like, again, the technology
Speaker 1: is along so so long it becomes a metaphor. It
Speaker 1: also becomes a way of thinking about subsequent innovations and discoveries.
Speaker 1: But on the crossbow itself. He writes that quote China
Speaker 1: of the Warring States period fifth century PCE was almost
Speaker 1: certainly the home of the crossbow, and by the time
Speaker 1: that this became the standard weapon of the Han armies,
Speaker 1: it had acquired a bronze trigger mechanism of beautiful and
Speaker 1: intricate construction. The crossbow was introduced to the Western world
Speaker 1: probably twice before the fifth century and again during the
Speaker 1: tenth century. He also contends that in this the trigger
Speaker 1: as we know it extends from Chinese technological origins, the
Speaker 1: trigger as something that would be used to fire guns.
Speaker 1: But then also we can take that even further and
Speaker 1: just think about like the use of a trigger again
Speaker 1: as a technological metaphor.
Speaker 3: Right, Well, I mean there are tons of inventions that
Speaker 3: are that are not weapons that have like elastic potential
Speaker 3: stored in some way and there's a trigger lock holding
Speaker 3: it in place that can be released.
Speaker 1: All right, Well, we're gonna go ahead and close out
Speaker 1: this episode, but we will be back with more discussions
Speaker 1: of the crossbow, the invention of the crossbow. We want
Speaker 1: to get more into early examples of the crossbows in
Speaker 1: Western traditions and Mediterranean traditions. Specifically. Also, there are a
Speaker 1: couple of key innovations I want to touch on from
Speaker 1: either the Middle East or again Chinese crossbow innovation of
Speaker 1: later years. And in the meantime, Yes, if you have
Speaker 1: any personal experience of crossbowts you'd like to chime in
Speaker 1: about or with the bow, We did a good bit
Speaker 1: of discussion from there about the bow. Or if you
Speaker 1: just have experience in the imagined worlds of Dungeons and
Speaker 1: Dragons and other games concerning the use of a crossbow,
Speaker 1: well that's fair game as well. Just a reminder, The
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is primarily a science podcast,
Speaker 1: with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays. On Mondays we
Speaker 1: do listener mail. On Wednesdays we usually have an artifact
Speaker 1: or monster fact episode, and then on Fridays we set
Speaker 1: aside most series concerns to just talk about a weird
Speaker 1: movie on Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 3: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Jj Posway.
Speaker 3: If you would like to get in touch with us
Speaker 3: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
Speaker 3: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
Speaker 3: you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
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