Bronze Age Bow by HuntingDoor

Hey, this is Jack from Historical Archery, and today we're going to check out this Bronze Age Modern Reproduction Bow. This one comes from Huntingdor. It's difficult for us today in 2023 to determine what cultures use what kind of bows. Did the Babylon's, did the Hittites, the Egyptians use specific bows? Well, the archaeology and the artwork that we have usually depict the nobility. Occasionally we get, you know, soldiers with bows depicted, but even then that's artwork, and sometimes the artwork is very ambiguous. Sometimes you get bow shapes like these reflex-deflex shapes in the artwork, much longer than this though. Sometimes you get simple D shapes, and then sometimes you get these deflex-reflex, sometimes you get a much more angular deflex-reflex. So at what point do you say which bows are more common? And that's just for the Egyptians. Then you go into the Hittites, for example, and there's very few archer artwork of the Hittites, but we do have some artwork, and they also show similar bows to these. Same with the Canites, and also a lot of Bronze Age cultures. Even the Sea People likely would have picked up bows like these. So at what point do we call this an Egyptian bow? What kind do we call this? It's difficult to say today in the 21st century. What I find during this time is archery is very important. In fact, it was a key strategy of defeating the Sea Peoples, and chariot warfare, for example, often had archers, but also foot archers were very common. You would have, of course, melee infantry to protect the archers, but more importantly, people at this time during the Mediterranean didn't wear a lot of armor, so archery was a good way. Amassed archery, like shooting hundreds of thousands, millions of arrows, was a good idea of countering many armies because morale was a big difference. For the militia of the time, it'd be difficult to convince them to actually engage and sacrifice their life in a melee, but if you give them a bow, it's a lot less personal to kill someone because now you can shoot them at a distance. In fact, in World War II, we had data showing many of the shots were fired and missed purposely. People don't like killing people intentionally for the average person. There are, of course, exceptions, but if you want to give militia or give recruits with limited military experience some combat ability, the bow is a logical choice because it reduces the personal effects of the PTSD that you get from a combat. If you're much closer, within 10 meters, and you're stabbing each other with spears, the psychological effect later after war or just the morale would be much more affected than shooting at a much further distance because you're not seeing the person face-to-face, eyeball-to-eyeball. So archery was an important time at this time, but also armor. If you have less armor, arrows make a bigger difference now, and shields of this time. There are big shields, of course, but if you're able to shoot at the flanks with no armor, then it can do a lot of damage. And, of course, chariots. It's very important for chariots to have archers on top so that you have some kind of hit-and-run skirmishing ability as well. This comes from Hunting Door, which I'm sure you know. Sometimes they call them top archery. I'm not exactly sure. I think they're two brands, but comes from the same manufacturer, just different marketing, but comes from China, of course. In terms of its boat design, it's very modern. It's got the top and the bottom both with fiberglass sandwiched in on the bamboo. It's good to have the back and the belly as fiberglass to give it the reliability, and then bamboo as the core to fill it to give you some kind of meat. I think that's a good idea, but at the same time, you get a low draw weight, which is great for beginners. This one is 30 pounds. This one's 40 pounds. Both great for beginners. This one is very similar. The only thing is I wrapped artificial sinew. You can see with the artificial sinew, it just looks a lot more historical. Of course, if I want to be more hardcore, I'll even make the string out of artificial sinew. If I really want, I can even try to glue artificial sinew at the back to give it a sinew look on the back. The belly, because it's black, it kind of looks like horn, which is good. The tips now, they don't try to make the tips look modern, so I like that. Now, back in the day, they had a variety of tips, but it seems like there's a lot of artwork depicted in some of these tips, but usually these are working tips. These are not siyas. When you get into the 200 BC era, you get into like yurtsi bows, then you get bone reinforcement, which becomes a siya, which in other words becomes a static tip, but these aren't static tips yet. Let's not jump ahead to 200 BC. Let's go back to the 2000 BC era of this time. These are still working tips. Perhaps they had siyas at the time, but the ones that we see from my archaeological finds, they're working tips. For this specific bow, they have arrow pass here. I believe it's some kind of plastic or a synthetic arrow pass, so it doesn't rub. On the other side, they don't though. I don't like that because now you're limiting to one side or you put tape on the other side. At least put it on both sides. So what do I think about this bow? Did some shooting, about 150 shots, and hasn't broken yet. Great bow, no issues so far, and for the draw weight, I mean, it's fun to play with, but it's not a military weight for my purposes, but it's a lot of fun. It's got a modern string as well. It's quite durable. I find the glue sticks pretty well with the bamboo. I've been drawing to 30 inches, even 31 inches sometimes, and it still hasn't broken, so that's good on it. I wouldn't assign a specific culture. I wouldn't call this Hittite, I wouldn't call this Egyptian or Assyrian, just Bronze Age inspired. That's the best way I would describe these ones. Anyways, it's fascinating that we know so little about the Bronze Age, yet it was a very long time period, and people often forget that. We focus so much bows from 500 years ago, or 700 years ago, but bows from 3,500 years ago, we know very little about. But it's nice that some people are starting to make reproductions today, or modern inspired ones. It's nice to bring back Bronze Age bows to modern people to enjoy. They're different to shoot, you gotta get some practice, but you can use modern archery techniques if you want, and they shoot great that way as well. Anyways, thanks a lot for watching. This is Jack reviewing Hunting Door.