Uploaded by MILITARY HISTORY 2015. A look at the Military History of the Crossbow and Bow and Arrow. Shows how to operate the crossbow, one of the first hand held missile weapons. This show explores the different types of medieval crossbows and teaches how to load and fire each. They then see how these ancient weapons match up with modern day firearms before learning how to operate modern day crossbows.
Part 2 starts 21:05 and is based on the Bow and Arrow. One of man’s earliest effective hunting weapons, we learn why the bow and arrow became so dominant in history. Learn how to make your own as we study the craft of the bowyer and fletcher. We learn about Egyptian bows and try to fire accurately from an Egyptian chariot, and experiment with North American Indian bows–composite bows of horn and wood. And reenactors, using rubber-tipped arrows, recreate what it was actually like to be subjected to a “cloud of arrows”
Much of what we know of ancient history is the history of militaries: their conquests, their movements, and their technological innovations. There are many reasons for this. Kingdoms and empires, the central units of control in the ancient world, could only be maintained through military force. Due to limited agricultural ability, there were relatively few areas that could support large communities, so fighting was common.
Weapons and armor, designed to be sturdy, tended to last longer than other artifacts, and thus a great deal of surviving artifacts recovered tend to fall in this category as they are more likely to survive. Weapons and armor were also mass-produced to a scale that makes them quite plentiful throughout history, and thus more likely to be found in archaeological digs.