I have been practicing traditional Asiatic archery. There is a bunch of stuff in that article that is misleading.
First, the composite bow design used by the Mongolians was widely use as far as the region of the Ottoman-Turks … but also the Manchus, Chinese, Koreans.
Second, the recurve and reflex shapes of the bow is not what gives the bow its power. It is siyahs at the tip, which do not bend, and acts as a lever on the bendable parts. There is a tradeoff. The larger the siyah, the more mass the bow has to overcome to fire these arrows, so the draw weight need to be significant enough to warrant the use of a siyah. Turkish and Chinese composite bows start outperforming longbows of the same draw weight at around 40-50 pounds, while the Manchu horn bows start outperforming longbows at 70-80 pounds. According to those who test it out, the performance gap is exponential.
Third, the most powerful of the Asiatic bows are probably the Manchu bows. They double-down on making long, aggressive (forward angle) siyahs, and even innovating string bridges to increase brace height and help prevent the bows from unstringing themselves. They were not designed to shoot arrows fast. Like most Asiatic composites, these were designed to shoot very heavy, long arrows with great penetration power. Manchus also love their horses, archery, and the hunt.
A hundred years after the Manchus conquered China and founded the Qing dynasty, their archery traditions were in decline. The Qing emperors recruited Mongolians to be trained in the Manchu ways of archery to keep their traditions alive.
There is a lot more to it as well — such as the thumb draw and use of thumb rings; the variations of khatra, etc; how modern Mongolian archers competing in the Mongolian Games are switching away from thumb draw.
Lastly, a note on the Chinese. With early access to metallurgy and ideas on standardized parts, the Chinese “superweapon” was the crossbow. At no point in the Chinese history were there armor that could protect someone from a crossbow, and its effectiveness was likely a factor in the slow adoption of firearms.
> There's still no practical armor, in 2023, that could protect anyone from a crossbow at short to medium ranges.
Unless you're purpose-building some kind of ultra-high-draw-weight crossbow with some very unusual bolt materials, you're not going to penetrate it
Feel free to believe myths if you want, but they're simply not true[0]
>The energy required to defeat a steel plate rises geometrically, not linearly, as the plate gets thicker, as Williams (2003) notes. In practice, a steel breastplate of decent (even just c. 2mm) thickness was functionally immune to handheld weapons and bows and crossbows except at extreme close range. You can see an example here of a high poundage (quite a bit higher than the 80lbs bows used by Williams in his test) longbow being shot into a steel breastplate at point-blank range. The breastplate is secured to the ground and there is no additional protection behind it – in terms of range, power, positioning this is an absolute worst-case test for the breastplate. It is barely scratched.
>Crossbows can do somewhat better. Skallagrim tested a crossbow against both a lamellar (layered metal plates) armor and a breastplate – both of admittedly low quality – against a 350lbs crossbow and a 975lbs crossbow. While they are able to dent and punch holes in the breastplate, neither defeats it in a way that would wound a person wearing it. Range matters a lot – and these were fired at extreme close-range for the weapons.
Now back to you: find me a source for your ridiculous claim that "There's still no practical armor, in 2023, that could protect anyone from a crossbow at short to medium ranges"
Practical armor from 1000 years ago could stop them - and you seriously think armor today cannot?
I forgot about this comment chain and only came across it later, sorry about that.
Did you read the cited source?
> While they are able to dent and punch holes in the breastplate, neither defeats it in a way that would wound a person wearing it.
This sentence in particular doesn't sound credible at all. In fact it seems impossible for a person wearing a breastplate to not be wounded in some way after their breastplate is punched through with a hole.
Starting a reply with a 'lol' also can only decrease the credibility of the writer, so this doesn't seem like a smart thing to do for someone looking to question another HN user's comments.
Slow adoption of firearms by the Chinese was less to do with the crossbow than the fact that the Manchus occupied China during a period when firearms was coming of age. The Manchus famously despised gunpowder weapons in favor of the bow and arrow which they held in extremely high regard. After all it was the bow that in part helped them defeat the disintegrating Ming empire which invested heavily in gunpowder weapons like cannons.
In their early years of Western expansion, the firearms units was always staffed by the Han Chinese and were of low status.
Hmm. That makes sense. Probably also why the Qing underestimated naval cannons at around the time of the Opium Wars.
I was thinking though, about how long the Chinese had gunpowder, and even bombs before the gunpowder formulas proliferated through the Silk Road, pre-Ming.
The Qing also fielded firearm units. The Manchu bows and arrows evolved to taking the role of short-range weapon, ceding the long-range to firearms. Maybe it was a case of not going all in with firearms.
I shoot with the local SCA, but they don't really know much about this.
Youtube have several people that goes through the techniques. Justin Ma and his buddies spent time reconstructing the techniques from Gou Ying's late-Ming manual on traditional Chinese _military_ archery. The core techniques are available for free on Youtube, and the rest of it is in a book called _Way of Archery_. I think Justin Ma is based out in Bay Area so you might be able to find out where they shoot. Armin Hirmer also has a number of youtube resources (with variant techniques), and a large library of reviews for bows.
The key thing with Justin Ma's videos is that they focus on the form. I took it to mean that accurate shooting is a byproduct of good form -- from the draw, to the release. The biggest initial hurdle is in contacting the rhomboids and lats to provide the power to draw. The key to the thumb draw is that, you are trading off being able to distribute the load to multiple fingers with having a very clean release; meaning, if your thumb release is not clean, it's an anti-pattern.
Most of my practice is with the gaozhen -- shooting at about 1 - 3 yard range, and focus mostly on good form. Other Asiatic archery traditions practice this way. I'm not there yet where everything draws smooth without me having to concentrate yet, but that's the goal. You can create a gaozhen in your own home if you got the space and can keep dependents away from them. (I saw a video of a guy practicing in his unfinished attic).
Keep in mind too, if you are looking at traditional Chinese archery, there were many schools (all thumb draw), with different goals. Confucian archery, for example, is ritualistic. The Manchus have a strong hunting tradition that became a part of their military techniques.
Facebook has a group of traditional archery enthusiasts. I would also be glad to talk about what you would need to get started and the gotchas I had to overcome. (Example: most Western archers don't know that arrow weight, not just spine, matters for these bows) Feel free to contact me if you want to continue talking about this.
My practices have been a slow, minor realizations of non-duality.
You ever read the Neko no Myojutsu, or the Tengu’s Sermon on the Martial Arts?
In the meantime, I have been working on archery in the context of internal martial arts (yijinjing principles). I have no idea what that will look like, but it will be interesting to find out.
Among my goals are being able to walk and shoot, and shoot from different postures.
First, the composite bow design used by the Mongolians was widely use as far as the region of the Ottoman-Turks … but also the Manchus, Chinese, Koreans.
Second, the recurve and reflex shapes of the bow is not what gives the bow its power. It is siyahs at the tip, which do not bend, and acts as a lever on the bendable parts. There is a tradeoff. The larger the siyah, the more mass the bow has to overcome to fire these arrows, so the draw weight need to be significant enough to warrant the use of a siyah. Turkish and Chinese composite bows start outperforming longbows of the same draw weight at around 40-50 pounds, while the Manchu horn bows start outperforming longbows at 70-80 pounds. According to those who test it out, the performance gap is exponential.
Third, the most powerful of the Asiatic bows are probably the Manchu bows. They double-down on making long, aggressive (forward angle) siyahs, and even innovating string bridges to increase brace height and help prevent the bows from unstringing themselves. They were not designed to shoot arrows fast. Like most Asiatic composites, these were designed to shoot very heavy, long arrows with great penetration power. Manchus also love their horses, archery, and the hunt.
A hundred years after the Manchus conquered China and founded the Qing dynasty, their archery traditions were in decline. The Qing emperors recruited Mongolians to be trained in the Manchu ways of archery to keep their traditions alive.
There is a lot more to it as well — such as the thumb draw and use of thumb rings; the variations of khatra, etc; how modern Mongolian archers competing in the Mongolian Games are switching away from thumb draw.
Lastly, a note on the Chinese. With early access to metallurgy and ideas on standardized parts, the Chinese “superweapon” was the crossbow. At no point in the Chinese history were there armor that could protect someone from a crossbow, and its effectiveness was likely a factor in the slow adoption of firearms.