A list of things easier said than done, from a 16th century archery manual by Wang Ju, as translated and quoted in ‘Chinese Archery’ by Stephen Selby. More from this remarkable book to follow in due course.
Category Archives: history
#tbt – archery on coins
12 March, 2015
Did you know that some of the first coins of all, and the first thought to have borne royal or imperial likenesses were of Darius the Great, ruler of Persia in the 5th century BC, and they depicted him as an archer?
The coins played a major part in making the modern world. Via Wikipedia:
“Darius introduced a new universal currency, the daric sometime before 500 BCE, which came in gold and silver versions. The gold daric had a standard weight of 8.4 grams with a purity of 95.83%, and it bore the image of the Persian king or a great warrior armed with a bow and arrow. Darius used the coinage system as a transnational currency to regulate trade and commerce throughout his empire. The daric was also recognized beyond the borders of the empire, in places such as Celtic Central Europe and Eastern Europe… Trade goods such as textiles, carpets, tools and metal objects began to travel throughout Asia, Europe and Africa. Their use ended with Alexander the Great‘s invasion in 330 BC when they were melted down and recoined as coins of Alexander. “
“In ancient times, the coin was actually nicknamed “the archer”. For instance, the Spartan king Agesilaus II remarked that he had been driven out of Asia by “ten thousand archers”, referring to the bribes distributed by the Persian King.“
It wasn’t just Persia; the archer was a potent numismatic symbol in antiquity and appeared on coins in India and the Parthian Kingdom during the same period.
(Not to be confused with an Archer. Or Spanish Archer. For the archery fifty pence piece produced for London 2012, go here.)
wood working
7 January, 2015
“The Ahrensburg culture or Ahrensburgian (11th to 10th millennia BCE) was a late Upper Paleolithic nomadic hunter culture in north-central Europe during the the last spell of cold at the end of the Weichsel glaciation, resulting in deforestation and the formation of a tundra with bushy arctic white birch and rowan. The most important prey was the wild reindeer. The earliest definite finds of arrow and bow date to this culture, though these weapons might have been invented earlier. “ More here. A perfect demonstration of the capacity of human beings for finding elegant technical solutions. It’s extraordinary what you can do when your survival depends on it.
