Bow Evolution

This is where we discuss the bows, arrows, quivers and other hardware used in Asian archery.
Dusan
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Post by Dusan » Tue Mar 22, 2011 12:49 pm

Maybe its very long article - and - mostly to Russian threade , but its exactly about this thema -composite bow evolution. I think some of you interesting about it.Enjoy (or delete...)

:wink:

/ its google trans. not verx acurate- word "onion" in text mean BOW-because russian word luk (bow) - was same for onion ./
[Ed. Stephen Selby: I have edited your text so that people won't laugh!]

DG Savinov
New materials on the history of a composite bow and some problems of its evolution in southern Siberia.
/ / Military of ancient tribes of Siberia and Central Asia. Novosibirsk: 1981. S. 146-162.



History of the complex issues of bows, the main ranged weapon for the peoples of the Eurasian steppes, is dedicated to great literature. [1] Later, his form - the bow, reinforced with bone (or horn) pads - has become commonplace since the AD. According to researchers, home to a complex bow with bone plates are Central Asia and southern areas of eastern Siberia. This is where the AP Okladnikov were found most
(146/147)
earliest of all known horn caps bow at the funeral VIII-IV cc. BC by p. Tsepan. [2] The beginning of our era finds date back to the Hun bow type in Mongolia, Transbaikalia, and Tuva. [3] The further history of a complex bows in southern Siberia is considered in AA Gavrilova, on four successive stages in its development, synchronous, according to his [or her] periodization, Berel, kudyrginskomu, katandinsko-Srostki and chasovennogorskomu types of tombs. [4] This paper is devoted to new materials on the history of a complex bows in southern Siberia, obtained as a result of excavation sites at different times in the North and the Republic of Altai and Tuva, as well as some issues of its evolution. Findings remains difficult bows in the graves are generally pretty rare, so each of them is a significant contribution to the further study of this complex and very important for the cultural history of the problem.

By the earliest in this series include bone lining of the Inlet burial mound Scythian burial Urbyun III in the Central Tuva (barrow 1, grave 2), in subjects covering inventory dates back to the II. BC - I in. BC [5] Hence, there are fragments of two long terminal pads with cutouts for the bowstring of various shapes - rectangular and round end caps on the sideon the front . To increase the flexibility needed for shooting kibiti, its outer side further enhanced by more than half of bony plates. The effectiveness of shooting a bow uzuntalskogo ensured, thus contrasting elastic force of the middle part of kibiti, rigidly large lateral plates, and its first segment, the reinforced flexible linings.

Fig. 1. Bone lining the Hun bow type of burial Urbyun III, barrow 1, grave 2.

Image

lopatkoobraznye ends being expressed more clearly, there are additional rectangular inserts.
In the middle of I millennium BC in southern Siberia there are bows with front, ie mounted on the outside kibiti, end-plates. These pads with a total length of 30 cm recorded at yakonurskom bows from the Altai Mountains, but here they are combined with two lateral end plates with notches for the string. [21] New South Siberia for the type of bow was found in one of the mounds rannetyurkskogo time Uzuntal mound in the Altai Mountains (Uzuntal I, mound 1). On subjects covering inventory (direct horny psalm with two holes and buckle with a rounded top edge), the burial can be dated no later than the VI-VII centuries. [22] In total there found six bony plates - two large median and two pairs of slightly curved plates of different lengths, on average, 12 and 24 cm (Fig. 3)

Lateral end plates of the usual form with cutouts for the stringer on this bow was not - they replaced the short plate is mounted front and had the ends of specially carved cross rests with traces of erased under them by tightening the string. Long plate, curved to form the shoulder, fastened in the same way between the median side and front end plates. The total length of bony plates on the outside of the bow is about 70 cm length of median plates of 20 cm If we assume that the length of the bows of Turkic-time on average was equal to 120-130 cm, the wooden part kibiti without pads on uzuntalskom bow did not exceed 30-40 cm along its entire length. The effectiveness of shooting this bow was achieved, apparently, does not decrease the total number of bony plates, which is typical for bows Turkic time compared with the Hun, and carried forwardend caps on the sideon the front . To increase the flexibility needed for shooting kibiti, its outer side further enhanced by more than half of bony plates. The effectiveness of shooting a bow uzuntalskogo ensured, thus contrasting elastic force of the middle part of kibiti, rigidly large lateral plates, and its first segment, the reinforced flexible linings.

Fig. 2. Lateral medial lining:
1 - Uzuntal V, Barrow 2, 2, 3 - Uzuntal I, mound 2.


Image

Genesis bows with front end plates have not yet been considered in our literature, so it Make sure to stay more. Probably, such bows date back to Neolithic times from the bow Serovsky burials Baikal (III millennium BC), where they found the long bony plates, one-sided convex in section, mounted on a wooden rod - kibit. [23] This is an ancient tradition - to fix the shoulder of the bow extra thin plates - can be traced from the Huns, whose culture was formed to the south, but within the same historical and ethnographic region. Luke with front end plates are stored in the Trans-Baikal region and in the early Middle Ages. Monuments to the end I millennium BC are not yet identified. However, the number of attributes to them can be attributed burial 2 ("grave under a stone") and 11 Sayantuyskogo burial ground, from whence are decorated with a four outlets trehperye arrowheads with "whistle", tending to the bow plate, T-shaped silver escutcheon, and Some other items of similar monuments in Southern Siberia, the ancient time. In these tombs were also found remnants of the bows of two types: one represented by the terminal plate, shaped somewhat like a lining Uighur bows, and a narrow median, and for other characteristic of long (30 cm), narrow, flared at the ends of the front pads, crepe, obviously, both kibiti shoulders and at the ends of the bow.
The same long front lining with flared ends exist in western Transbaikalia until the time of the Mongol (elm Pad [25], etc.). Probably because of the Baikal region bows with front plates to penetrate Yenisei Kyrgyz. It is known that the eastern boundary of the Yenisei Kyrgyz government held in the Lake. Kosogol and culture of the tribes who lived in the western Baikal region and the eastern limits of fixed, obviously, on the shoulders kibiti and at the ends of the bow.

Fig. 3. Side and front lining of burial Uzuntal I, mound 1.

Image

resettlement of the Yenisei Kyrgyz, could have common features, particularly in the complex device of bows. In the monuments of Yenisei Kyrgyz, which recorded many cases of cremation, bone lining the bows, as a rule, no. There are only two finds of this kind in Tuva: calcified remnants of mid-lateral lining burial Khemchik-DB II [26] and the front pads on the shoulder of the bow at the burial mound 4 Tora-Tal-Arta. [27] The latest discovery brings the Kyrgyz bows with Pribaikal: for those and other equally characteristic of the front shoulder pads. YS Khudyakov, notes that "the use of front pads mean fundamental technological improvements in the application of bone parts of bow- the use of flexibility and elasticity of bone as a material.

On this basis of the four selected J.S Khudyakov types of bows Yenisei Kyrgyz: 1) to the terminal and the medial side plates, and 2) with median lateral plates, and 3) with median side and front plates, and 4) with the front shoulder straps, property of the Kyrgyz at the present stage of the study can be considered only bows types 3 and 4, with front plates. In the middle of I millennium BC, according to uzuntalskoy discovery, bows to the front end plates to penetrate the Altai, and in the second half, seems to coexist with the bows and the Turkic Uighur types in the future become one of the most common variants of bow in the culture of pre-Mongolian and Mongolian time. At the beginning of II millennium BC in device complexity bow significant changes occurred.

Fig. 4. Terminal and middle lining of the bows Osinkinskogo repository:
1, 7 - Grave 64, 2 - a random discovery, 3, 5 - Grave 38; 4 - Grave 47; 6 - Grave 9.

Image

Commonplace bows with one, at best, with two plates, one of which (large middle, with distinct lopatkoobraznymi ends) is located inside the kibiti and the other (terminal, podtreugolnaya in section, with an opening for a bowstring) is fixed on the outer her side, gradually narrowing to the point of bending the upper arm. By periodization AA Gavrilova, they belong to the fourth (final) stage of the bow "to the massive liner: one medial, embedded in kibit and in rare cases, a terminal inserted into the split end kibiti (chasovennogorskie and Trans-Baikal). [29] The general opinion of researchers, that's when there are bows Mongolian type, structurally different from the Ancient. New materials allow to specify the process of transition from one important stage in the evolution of a complex bow to another, and to present it not as a discrete and typologically related line of development, where almost all the elements of a bow of the Mongolian type find their analogy in the culture of the ancient and pre-Mongolian period.


Fig. 5. Medial frontal lining:
1 - Biryusinsk caves, GMM count. 42557, 2, 3, 16 - Minusinsk Basin, GMM count. 95336 4 - Kokoreva, ET, col. 1550, 5, 6 - Chasovennaya mountain, ET, col. 1931; 7, 9 - Ust-Talkin, by EF Sedyakin, 8, 10 - Taphar by EA Khamzin 11 - Yakonur, kurgan 2, MP Gryaznov, 12 - Middle Elbany by MP Gryaznov, 13, 18 - Osinkinsky burial, excavation of the author (1970) 14 - p. Thea, excavation, AN Lipsky (1946), 15 - Hyzyl-Aly, excavation, AN Lipsky (1946): 17 - Chaa-tas for Tasheboy, excavation AD [B.] Andrianov (1889), GMM count. 59, 19 - Tes, excavation SV Kiselyov, col. 1663.


Image

During excavation Osinkinskogo burial in the North Altai in the group burial XII-XIII centuries. were found the remains of four bows: the first preserved the median side and the trailing front pads (Fig. 4, 3, 5); the rest are front: from the second - terminal (4), the third - middle (6) and the fourth - the median and long terminal (1, 7). [30] By itself, the case detection within a single repository of four bows with different shape and location of bony plates indicates the incompletion of the process of forming a bow during this period and much of its variability. Since the median and end caps in materials pre-Mongolian times occur mostly separately and at different bows, they are also useful to consider separately.

Median lining with lopatkoobraznymi ends, mounted on the inner side of kibiti, found in the Baikal region and Transbaikalia, in the Altai mountains and steppes, the Krasnoyarsk Territory, Minusinsk Basin in the monuments of the beginning of II millennium BC Outwardly, they are quite monotonous, and differ only in size and shape lopatkoobraznyh endings (Fig. 5). Typologically, as noted by LR Kyzlasov, [31], they go back to the narrow central pad on the Uighur bows and through them - to the bows Hun type. Intermediate position between the median plates pre-Mongolian time and take the Uighur Srostki median lining that can be used independently, ie without broad lateral plates (Fig. 6). At the same time, the widespread mid-caps with lopatkoobraznymi endings in the monuments of pre-Mongolian time does not mean the complete disappearance of broad lateral plates - they have been preserved, for example, in one of osinkinskih bows with front end grip. Sustainable mix of mid-caps - two lateral and one lopatkoobraznoy - typical of Eastern European materials beginning of II millennium BC These are the remains of the famous Novgorod bows, dating to the second half of the XII century., [32], some nomadic bows [33], etc. At this time, says AA Gavrilova, a Monument to the Sayan-Altai different plates with flared ends, and not shovel as the Sayan-Altai.
(157/158), dating to the second
These differences seem to breed. "[34] From the above it follows that the front pads with flared ends on the Trans-Baikal bows are probably not an option with chasovennogorskih lopatkoobraznymi ends, and reflect the local tradition of design long flat plates with no cutout for a bowstring, known here even during ancient times (sayantuysky bow ).
Limit the front pads with cutouts for the bowstring found in the monuments of the beginning of II millennium BC significantly less than the median. Several of these linings, not sticky side and upper ends of bows, from the Eastern European burials published AF Medvedev. [35] On the Upper Ob such linings found MP Gryaznov on settlement and a burial mound Nearby Elbany IX. [36] In Osinkinskom burial discovered three such plates (length 14, 17 and 32 cm), which obviously cut into kibit with its outer side at one end of the bow. Emphasis is placed on different ways of fastening a bowstring on osinkinskih bows with end plates: with a single cut, which is typical for most of the bows I millennium BC, two cuts - the only known we analogie available materials repository Ust-Talkin in the Baikal region (grave 70) [37] and with transverse groove and focus instead cut to the bowstring. This type of attachment seems to have been fairly widespread, since Osinkinskom burial ground found and the workpiece from the horn for such plates (Fig. 4, 2). Finding early uzuntalskogo bow indicates that the tradition of not using the side and front plates appeared in Altai in the middle of I millennium BC In this regard, it is not a random fact: the manner of attaching the string (using the cross-groove or stop) at uzuntalskom bows and a osinkinskih bows are the same. Probably, in southern Siberia in the second half of I millennium BC there was a mixture of two technological traditions in the manufacture of end caps - flat front (no cut) and side with the notch for the string. The most acceptable, apparently, was a form of front pads, no cutout for the bowstring on the outside. This naturally led to the need to make end-caps are not flat, as before, but podtreugolnymi in cross section, ie precisely in the design, they are presented in the materials Osinkinskogo burial and other discoveries beginning of II millennium BC


Fig. 6. Scheme of development of the middle frontal linings based on monuments VIII-XIV centuries.
1 - Uighur bow on LR Kyzlasov 2 - Srostki bows, based on excavations MD Kopytova in aggregates, 3 - Novgorod, bows, on AF Medvedev, 4 - middle lining of the Mongolian bow of time, MP Gryaznov.

Image

Special mention should be on the bow of the graves of 64 Osinkinskogo burial ground, where the median plate with lopatkoob-
(159/160)
different endpoints and long (32 cm), slightly curved front terminal cover plate were found in situ in close proximity to each other (see Fig. 4, 1, 7). The reflex force of one half bow, reinforced elastic bone plate, should have been balanced by another force here, the longer its half, and a whole bow this certainly was asymmetric. BA Litvinskaya collected extensive material on the asymmetrical bows in Central Asia, East Turkestan, Parthian and Sassanian Iran. "Here, - the author wrote about images kulagyshskogo dishes - shows two parts: on one end of the string kept out of the loop, attached to the inner surface of the bow. On the opposite side on the outer surface of the straight line shows the tip of the bow strap. [38] It may be so designed and had osinkinskie bows with one long terminal strip. Siberian and Central Asian bows, perhaps, not so much related to each other genetically, as are the single source of origin - Asymmetrical Hun bow type design features which persist up to the Mongol time.
It should be noted one more detail Compound Siberian bow, namely rectangular inserts. In Kokorevs (Krasnoyarsk Territory), together found a large piece of lopatkoobraznoy lining and massive liner size 3x7, 5 cm [39] Obviously, the development of rectangular inserts from the shallowest (Bobrovsky) to the largest (Kokorevsky) went in parallel with an increase in the size and allocation of the median lopatkoobraznoy front pads.
Thus, the evolution of bow in southern Siberia in the early Middle Ages was a complex and multi where different traditions are closely intertwined - the technological, social and ethnic. To clarify the key development stages of this process must take into account not only technological, but also the ethnic factors that contribute to features of the formation of bows in a given period. In the I millennium BC in South Siberia coexisted different types of bows, which is proved not only by the difference in location and number of bony plates, but their simultaneous discoveries in the graves (East Kazakhstan). They are all alike in its genesis goes back to the bows Hun-type device in which the outlines are already separate.
typological variations. It is considerable variability, characteristic of the Hun bow type, became defining of their development and during ancient times. In the future, perhaps, these options became isolated in a number of independent technological traditions which spread to a certain ethnic environment, established as the leading element of the culture of ethnic group within the larger medieval ethno-social groups and adopted by the armed troops. Thus, one can speak of the existence in the period under the bows of Turkic, Uighur, kimak types in a wide ethnic and cultural values of each of these items. Constant, the military, trade and cultural contacts between different groups of South Siberia (even apart from their occurrence in any political union) caused appearance of mixed, composite options, as the search for optimal solutions design bows always paid great attention. At the beginning of II millennium BC is a certain unification of bows, bound, apparently, with a predominance of kimaki-Kypchak cultural tradition, submissions Srostki archaeological culture IX-X centuries.

It has already met almost all the structural elements characteristic of the pre-Mongolian bows of time - developed form of the central plates with sufficiently distinct lopatkoobraznymi ends rounded (in contrast to the Turkic Uighur and bows), the form side of middle plates, a combination of them at the same bows, the use of additional square liners, etc. Yet materials Osinkinskogo burial ground, giving the most complete picture of the bows pre-Mongolian time, indicate that at the beginning of II millennium BC continued the search for optimal design of a bow, taking into account the different ethnic traditions.
Bows generic type, commonly referred to as Mongolian, at that time was not yet. Of particular note Hunnish basically a tradition of manufacturing the bows with the end and the middle side plates, preserved in the Uighur and then Srostki (kimak), bows, and a tradition of front end plates, which appeared in the Baikal region as early as dohunnskoe time (Serov bows) and later gradually penetrated to the west by the Huns, the Yenisei Kyrgyz (?) and some local (tele) Altaic tribes. The combination of these two traditions are mainly caused by structural features South Siberian bow at the beginning of II millennium BC Probably kypchaki, separated at the end of X century. Kimaks from the state, more than anyone contributed to the wide spread of South Siberian forms bows pre-Mongolian time in western Eurasia steppes. Only in this way the bow of the Mongolian type could appear in Novgorod (!) in the second half of the XII century.

At the time of the Mongol greatest fame get bows with one massive front grip and extra wood inserts on the ends kibiti. [40] According to the history of a complex bow in southern Siberia in the new era of factual material collected is not enough. Of the later discoveries of complex bows can note the medial pad with markedly isolated from the ends of the excavation of graves telengitskih in Gorny Altai (Fig. 7), [41] is entirely preserved bows from late burial at Kyrgyz with. Ust-ect in Khakassia, studied, AN Lipsky, [42] and some others. They show that in the recent past in different population groups of South Siberia, along with new forms of ethnographic bows [43] continued to exist bows with bone plates, typologically similar bows pre-Mongolian time.
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jiao
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Post by jiao » Thu Mar 24, 2011 3:40 pm

Bede wrote:Thanks Jiao for the pictures.

The ancestors of the Manchu extended even further north beyond the Amur river.

yes, thank you for good thread i search lots divertive history

the manchu typical hunt method is use a whistle imitate female deer sound, so deer come there, the wolf bear tiger also follow the sound and dear, when the hunt need lots hourse back teams they are hunt in hundred-thousand km ,the diffter team need sound for info of differ job and the contact, the besiege circle form big compress to small then some archery shoot as two or there line on open area(has no tall tree and tall glass) , the small and female not be killed and not kill them all, if they got enough food the hunt end

you can use google translate
http://dict.folkw.com/Old_dict.asp?id=5300
http://www.mzb.com.cn/html/report/159942-1.htm

the manchu is quite differ in wiki english and chinese, read wiki english i sure it is ture and the democratic/free/human rights country think better way is china need ban the marriage of manchu with other china people and collect all manchu peoples in differ china province send them to area near Siberian ,never lost one and never mind other province quite fine than northeast, the cool snow winter and the forest can rebuild their strong physique and nation's Psyche and pure manchu ancestry like the Aryans
:lol:
Ken
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Yeuh-Chih asymetrical bows

Post by Ken » Wed Oct 22, 2014 5:30 pm

Though I have had the books themselves for about 15 years I recently found that both volumes of "The Armies of Bactria" by Valerii P Nikonorov are available online here: https://www.scribd.com/doc/24274587/The ... D-volume-2. I'd always been put off reading them because of the naff colour plates but now notice that Figure 27 in Vol. 2 of B+W drawings purports to show Yeuh-Chih mounted archers circa 1stC BC to 1stC AD and is taken from an article in Russian by Litvinskii et alia. The description says "Yeuh-Chih mounted archers . . .engraved on ivory casket panels from the Oxus Temple of Takht-i-Sangin" A photo also appears of the panel in an issue of JRAS.

The text goes on to comment on the long ears of the bows depicted and continues "note also that . . . .the bows are obviously asymmetrical, with the upper arms longer than the lower ones . . ." This is all on page 11 of Volume 2 with the drawing itself on page 59 and can be read online as above.

In my ignorance I had always though it was the Huns who introduced asymmetrical bows somewhat later. Can someone better informed that me please clarify?
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Uli
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Post by Uli » Wed Oct 22, 2014 9:04 pm

it depends on what you define as "hun".
the european huns were not the first as they appeared later than the central asian "huns"

+ the scythian bow is asymmetric, too (and older)
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Bede
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Post by Bede » Thu Oct 23, 2014 1:00 am

Discovering only the bone plates of bows can be misleading about the degree to which the asymmetry of the tips is reflected in the finished bows. For instance, the bows associated with the Steppenkrieger exhibition show a dynamic relationship between the length of the ears (or the non-bending extremities of the bow limbs) and the bending sections. Here are some examples of bows where most of the bow survived, but there were no bone plates.

Zargalant
Lower Ear 270 mm
Lower Arm 360 mm
Total Lower Limb 630mm
Grip 100 mm
Upper Arm 360 mm
Upper Ear 289 mm
Total Upper Limb 649 mm

Chonot Uul
Lower Ear 332 mm
Lower Arm 330 mm
Total Lower Limb 662 mm
Grip 95 mm
Upper Arm 370 mm
Upper Ear 290 mm
Total Upper Limb 660 mm

Cagaan Chad
Lower Ear 326 mm
Lower Arm 324 mm
Total Lower Limb 650 mm
Grip 98 mm
Upper Arm 365 mm
Upper Ear 301 mm
Total Upper Limb 666 mm

These measurements show there is variation in limbs where in some cases they are very close in overall measurement. Looking at some of the measurements suggests the identification of upper and lower limbs may not be accurate.
Bede
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