Longbow(s)

[Tuuvi]

Anyways, as to the age of the longbow, meh. It's just a large self-bow; Stone Age tech readily manufacturable by any culture which now was in the habit of making self-bows to begin with (and had ready access to suitable types of wood; in the absence of such somewhat different design approaches, such as the flatbow, were apparently necessary).

A rather more relevant question would be if people had a *reason* to carry around bows of such - let's face the facts here - inconvenient size, or found smaller staves sufficient for their needs.

I own a longbow and I haven't found the size to be too inconvenient. While they are taller than other bows, all wooden bows are skinny, thin and lightweight. Carrying around a longbow is pretty much like carrying around a walking stick.

A point that has seem to be missed is that the La Tene cultures of NW Europe, usually referred to as Celtic, did not seem to use bows much at all (in EBs time frame), and especially not for war. Slings and throwing spears were their missile weapons of choice. So proto-Welsh longbowmen ain't on the list, guys.

Another point that everyone always seems to overlook is that people don't choose technology solely (or even primarily) for materialistic or mechanistic reasons. What I mean is that all this hoo-hah about long bows being better than short bows blah blah blah is indicative that this is a discussion amongst statistics-minded video-gamers and not real people.

There is not an ultimate "best bow" that everyone in the world would have used if only they had the chance (and the same goes for swords, spears, armour and everything else). Weapons, like pottery and all other aspects of material culture, are deeply tied to the cultural identities of the peoples producing them, and are not always the most efficient or advanced technology available. The Japanese didn't use katanas because they are the best possible swords of all time, they used them because to do so was part of being Japanese. Sure, material considerations play a part- a culture poor in metal will not develop metal body armour, as in South America before Columbus, but in many cases a culture with adequate metal supplies will also not use body armour, for non-statistical reasons. Try and keep in mind that the Total War world is a very incomplete model, and the conclusions that you draw about war from playing the game might not be applicable to reality.

A lot of people seem to have misunderstood me, I apologize for that I agree that there is no such thing as the "best bow". The reason I stated that longbows are more efficient than short bows is because I felt that the proto-germans would not have gone to using shorter bows when they already had a good design. I did not take culture into consideration there so you may have a point. The bow artifacts I cited were thousands of years before EB's time frame. Also I have been into archery for about 7 years so I have some real-life experience. Please don't dismiss me as a "statistics minded video gamer".