Foreword
"Ladies and gentlemen, we can't even pull the softest bow with our strength in ancient times, can you believe it?"
The bow and arrow tool has been with mankind for more than 10,000 years, and it is also the most reliable before the industrial revolution, and even the early arquebus is not as good as a large-pound bow and arrow.
And after thousands of years of development, the power of the bow and arrow is no longer comparable to the rough wooden bow in ancient times, and the bow and arrow in the cold weapon period can be comparable to the existence of "nuclear **", and the quantity and quality of a country's bow and arrow are directly related to the country's military capabilities.
Therefore, Eastern and Western civilizations have always attached great importance to the development of long-range bows and arrows, and Eastern civilizations have paid more attention to the development of bows and arrows.
Especially during the Qing Dynasty, the Manchu rulers were reluctant to give up riding and archery in the age of firearms, and it can be said that they loved bows and arrows to the bones, and this bow and arrow was simply with them"Wife".I can't wait to sleep with my arms in my arms!
So, the ancient bow and arrow can't be pulled by us modern people at all, is it really that our physical strength has seriously degraded?
When it comes to archers, the kind of scrawny and clothed soldiers who don't even have the most basic armor appear in everyone's minds, and as long as they are touched by local infantry cavalry, they are brutally killed.
This impression is actually mainly used in film and television works and games, such as League of Legends In games like League of Legends, the shooter character generally has high damage and low protection, as long as he is close to the opposite soldier, he will definitely die.
However, I will tell you that ranged troops such as archers are not "little crispy" at all, and archers in the armies of any dynasty are elite soldiers, second only to heavy cavalry.
We can understand the first status of heavy cavalry, after all, this is a kind of army that can decide the outcome of the war, it is a steel knife that can directly destroy the enemy's Chinese army's big tent, it is the absolute main force, and it is also an errand that licks blood on the tip of the knife, and it is the "own son" of the general.
The archers are in second place, which is the main output team of an army, and it is also the most advanced firepower in the military formation, similar to our modern artillery, and the archers master the core firepower.
In fact, in the cold weapon war, more than half of them are killed by archers, in fact, there are very few people killed by close quarters, and they are all killed by long weapons, and the sword almost does not play a role in the frontal battlefield, and most of the time the sword exists as a vice-**.
Therefore, many film and television works capitalize the sword close-up, which is actually nonsense, your one-meter sword frontal battlefield must not be able to beat a four-meter spear, and people with the most basic fighting skills know that after all, "one inch is long and one inch is strong", the words of the ancestors are not joking with you.
According to the theoretical basis of one inch long and one inch strong, we can continue to go down, your four-meter spear can abuse a one-meter long knife, but if you encounter a bow and arrow, then you can only rest the food, clean up and bury it quickly.
The range of bows and arrows on the battlefield is extremely long, the longest range can reach about 300 meters, and the effective range can reach 70 meters, which means that the bow and arrow are much more powerful than the spear, and you will be shot into a hedgehog before you walk to me with the spear.
Therefore, the bow and arrow on the battlefield is the first weapon, a wave of arrow rain covered, your light infantry will be almost killed and wounded, heavy infantry has armor protection, the loss is light, but it can still weaken a lot of combat effectiveness.
It can be seen that the importance of bows and arrows is extremely important, but bows and arrows with such superior combat effectiveness must have qualified archers, so the selection and training of archers is particularly important.
As mentioned above, the archer is not a small crispy skin, the archer is a macho group, first of all, the archer is tall enough, and the height is enough to have a longer arm span, which can completely release the distance of the bow, and the arrows fired will be more powerful.
The archers recruited according to the requirements are measured according to the current unit, each of them is more than one meter and eight macho men, and they must be strong, and the kind of thin and tall thin bamboo poles are not needed in the military camp, to put it bluntly, the thin dog people don't look down on.
After the recruitment is completed, special training will be carried out, the first point is to train the muscles and muscles of these big men first, the chief will arrange them to train at a fixed point, the main subject is strength training, lifting stone locks, barbells, pull-ups, push-ups, bow pulls, etc., similar to our current fitness, but the intensity is more than twice as strong as fitness, but the food of the archers is much better, and there is plenty of meat.
After at least three years of training, the big men become muscular men, and then the commander will bring the real war bow to the soldiers, and the archers will have to fight with the hard bow.
The bows and arrows on the battlefield are calculated according to modern standards, in fact, most of them are about 180 pounds, and the pulling force is equivalent to about 162 catties, which means that the pulling force of a bow and arrow is equal to the weight of an adult man.
Archers are also trained to be able to pull such a bow apart with both hands, and the intensity of their training can be imagined, and they will be punished if they can't pull it away, so although these archers are treated and fed very well, the training intensity is also purgatory-level.
This pound of bow and arrow can easily pierce through the whole cowhide armor, and can also deal damage to iron armor, which can be said to be a great killing weapon, and these archers are in the service of these bows, and the bow and arrow are more important than their own lives.
Moreover, the general archers will be equipped with very good equipment, iron armor and swords are not lacking, even if the infantry rushes to the front, it can be easily killed, heavy archers can even stand in the rain of arrows and shoot at the opponent's archers, if equipped with heavy crossbows, they can also stand directly in the front row to resist heavy infantry or heavy cavalry, the combat effectiveness is very strong, the Tang army is everyone is heavily armored and holds crossbows, this combat method can often lead the enemy army to collapse at a touch.
However, such a strong combat effectiveness comes at a price, the archer's long-term hard bow will lead to scoliosis, the wear and tear of the arm bone cartilage will increase, the loss of the upper body is very huge, and some will even be disabled for life, so don't look at the archers are quite chic, in fact, they are quite pitiful, many of the archer's remains unearthed are very seriously deformed, and almost every one of them has arthritis.
In fact, Guda's bow and arrow are not suitable for us to use, the best design idea on the battlefield is not at all what we imagined, the first thing the designer pursues is to fight the power, and the man-machine effect ranks second!
There are only two ways to increase the power of the bow, one is to strengthen the weight and shape of the arrow, and the other is to increase the kinetic energy of the bow.
Therefore, the weight of the bow is actually rising all the time, and the limit of the tension that humans can withstand is actually 250 pounds, and then it is not human-capable of pulling.
It is precisely because of the limited tension that the human body bears is limited, so the crossbow was invented, the poundage of the crossbow is very terrifying, it can generally be more than five hundred pounds, and it can penetrate iron armor, so the crossbowmen of the Tang Army can be hard steel heavy cavalry, which is the reason.
Therefore, the bow and crossbow are actually used to kill and injure the enemy on the battlefield, and the use of our modern bow is different, and the power is not the same, modern bows are generally used as sports equipment or hunting equipment, without facing iron armor, so the poundage is generally not very large.
The general hunting bow is about fifty pounds, and with hunting arrows, it can actually kill large animals, so the power of a fifty-pound bow is still very great, but it is already very difficult for ordinary people to pull.
Those who have not been trained can only pull a 35-pound bow when they get started, those who are very strong can barely pull a 50-pound bow, and there are very few people who can pull 50 pounds, so don't think about challenging the ancient heavy bow.
We don't know how much the ancient archers suffered in order to adapt to the hard bow in their hands, and we modern people have no special training, so we can't pull heavy bows and arrows at all.
Moreover, even if you can pull the heavy bow, you have no place to use the power of this bow, it is a waste to use such a large example for hunting, and it is not interesting to use it for entertainment, and few people can shoot such a heavy bow.
Therefore, the weight of competitive bows and arrows is very low, generally about 25 pounds, and it is not difficult for people with low tensions to pull, and they can maintain their posture and aim, but they are not accurate at all.
What's more, ancient archers don't actually pursue accuracy, what people want is rapid fire, give you a direction, you give me a fixed angle, you just hold the bow and shoot wildly, no one cares if you shoot accurately, let the accuracy die!
To sum up, it is not that our modern manpower has degraded, in fact, the strength of the ancients is not much greater than ours, the ancients just did special training, and we also have many modern enthusiasts who can pull a 160-pound bow, and it takes at least two years just to train.
Therefore, the inability of us modern people to pull a heavy bow is not a problem of our strength, the fundamental reason is training.
The ancients pursued such a heavy bow and arrow because there was no way, and if they didn't need to deal with armor and shields, in fact, a soldier with a 70-pound bow and arrow was enough, and it was easy to shoot to 150.
Therefore, it is not at all that our modern people have degenerated, on the contrary, because of our good living conditions, it is very likely that our physical strength is better than that of the ancients, but we have nowhere to compare all this, and we can't travel through time and space!