The deadliest weapon of the Bronze age

[Imperial Dave]

And there was me thinking it was scrofula...

[Erpingham]

And there was me thinking it was scrofula...

Erm. Bit lost there Dave. What did you think was scrofula?

[Imperial Dave]

The deadliest weapon...possibly a bit too Pratchetarian

[DBS]

Of course, the indisputable, "purest" weapon of war of the Neolithic, Chalcolithic and Bronze Ages is the mace.  Simply, it has hardly any conceivable use other than for bashing out the brains of a human opponent.  Any other contemporary weapon of which one can think probably has equal utility for hunting or (especially axes) as a tool.  But you are not going to go hunting deer or hippopotami or whatever with a mace.  This is surely why it becomes the weapon that denotes royalty and/or divinity.  Whether it is reserved for such elites is of course for debate.  But to New Kingdom pharaohs, is it his mace or his composite bow that more clearly denotes his status?  I suspect the former.

[Cantabrigian]

Simply, it has hardly any conceivable use other than for bashing out the brains of a human opponent. 

Quite useful when crushing the biscuit base for a cheesecake.  But you may feel that that proves your point.

So, if I understand your earlier posts, massed bows weren't really a thing in early societies, because the lack of suitable trees meant that they were never a cheap option.

Then the Welsh came along with an excess of suitable wood, and an eye for a good deal.  Once they had massed archers, then training them to handle bigger draw weights became worthwhile and then you get an evolutionary process that leads to Agincourt which may have been like going over the top at the Somme (which isn't far away).

Presumably, then opposing armies developed better armour and tactics which made the cost of training longbowmen unworthwhile.

[Erpingham]

Then the Welsh came along with an excess of suitable wood, and an eye for a good deal.  Once they had massed archers, then training them to handle bigger draw weights became worthwhile and then you get an evolutionary process that leads to Agincourt which may have been like going over the top at the Somme (which isn't far away).

I'm not sure access to suitable bow wood was an issue for Europeans, certainly before the late middle ages. As for the Welsh having much to do with longbow development, that's yet another discussion

[Nick Harbud]

I suspect that material availability might have been an issue.  Although other woods (such as elm) can be used, the best wood for longbows is European yew whose distribution is shown here.



Certainly the Middle Ages saw the stock of yew in England undergoing rapid depletion due to its use for longbows and in the period thereafter yew staves were stocked as a strategic material in the Tower of London.  This may account for why longbows fell out of use - no one could lay their hands on a bow to practise with.  Nevertheless, as anyone who has ever wargamed the English Civil War will know, longbow units could still be found in England during the 17^th Century.

Going back to the distribution map, yew is not found anywhere near Mesopotamia and staves would need to be imported if any Bronze Age archers felt the need to master the longbow.  This is not to say that use of this wood for weapons is only a relatively recent phenomenom.  For example, this picture of the Clacton Spear shows a weapon estimated to be 400,000 years old.



Finally, Hardy and others have investigated other civilisations for their use of bows and, amongst others, noted the use of composite construction amongst First Nations warriors in North America.

[Erpingham]

While yew was certainly the best bow would for European self-bows, it wasn't the only one. By the later middle ages, the English (and other longbow users) were engaged in long range trade to obtain supplies (a lot of Tudor longbow staves came from Dalmatia, via Venice, and others from central Europe via the Baltic).  So, in theory, the trade networks in the Ancient Middle east should have been capable of shipping appropriate wood, even if not yew.

[RichT]

(In the map, green shows native range and yellow shows naturalized.)

Obviously, absence of yew will mean no use of yew bows [unless obtained by trade as Anthony points out]. Yet apparently, presence of yew does not mean use of yew bows, unless I am forgetting the Pyrenaean, Breton, Alpine, Greek, Carpathian, Caucasian and Norse longbowmen, sadly overlooked by history. There seems to be something else to the decision to make bows out of yew (and to make them long) than availability of raw materials.

(Edit to add - though Wikipedia has just reminded me that eg Ötzi had a yew longbow.)

[Erpingham]

Norse longbowmen, sadly overlooked by history.

Yew was a common wood for longbows in the Viking period. We have more Viking yew longbows than actual medieval English ones.

[Adrian Nayler]

Finally, Hardy and others have investigated other civilisations for their use of bows and, amongst others, noted the use of composite construction amongst First Nations warriors in North America.

The research article from which the Greek Reporter took their story deals with this issue. The author considers them to not be an indigenous innovation but much later introductions (via Siberia), and nor are they the same design of bow lacking one of the three key materials or the glue or both.

You can find it here: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10816-025-09750-4

[Cantabrigian]

I'm a bit confused about how the author is using the word millennium.

Firstly, recent scholarship indicates that partial com-
posite bow technology in North America was an Asian import, likely introduced during the late first or early second millennium CE

I think I understand that one - about 500-1500 AD.

Furthermore, the bows of the Inuit, Chukchi, and Koryak populations exhibit features that appeared in composite bows only after the second millennium CE

So that means in the last 25 years???

[Adrian Nayler]

The author of the paper, Gabriel Šaffa, may not necessarily be a native English speaker so it is possible that when he said "only after the second millennium CE" he meant something more like "only in the second millennium CE" i.e. only after the first millennium CE.  If that is the case perhaps Springer's editorial process ought to have picked that up, but there we are!

He obtained his PhD from the University of South Bohemia in České Budějovice in 2023 (The Evolution of Human Socio-Cultural Adaptations: A Phylogenetic Cross-Cultural Perspective). He now appears to hold a research position at UCL.

Scrolling to the bottom of Springer's page reveals a link to a supplementary material document containing more illustrations of the objects he cites. You can find it here:
https://static-content.springer.com/esm/art%3A10.1007%2Fs10816-025-09750-4/MediaObjects/10816_2025_9750_MOESM1_ESM.docx