“And Elisha said to him, Take a bow and arrows. And he took a bow and arrows …"
(Fourth Kings 13:15)
I have always believed that it is bad when science is isolated from the people. It is bad when a person writes in such a way that even a specialist and he hardly understands his colleague. It is bad when there is science for specialists and non-specialists. And, on the contrary, it is good when the latest achievements of specialists become available to everyone. Actually, this is how this article appeared. Initially, it was a publication in a very narrow international scientific publication, which, except for specialists in historians and cultural studies, no one reads. But its content seems to be so interesting that the article was somewhat adapted for the military, so that those who are simply interested in modern military history could also get acquainted with it. So … let's start with the fact that we note the great variety of methods of typologizing cultures that exist today: truly, how many people, so many opinions, and why so, it is understandable. This phenomenon is very diverse, and if so, then the criteria for distinguishing different types of cultures can be very different. These are ethnographic criteria, which can be everyday life, economic structure, language and customs. Spatial and geographical, based on the most diverse regional typologies of cultures: Western European, African, Siberian, etc. Chronological-temporal, due to the time of existence of a particular culture ("Stone Age culture", "Bronze Age culture", Renaissance culture, postmodernity). Well, someone is trying to generalize the disparate characteristics of a particular culture in the form of the most generalized typology of cultures along the lines "East - West", "North - South".
At the same time, just like in the case of the "Pareto principle", the same culture, depending on the point of view of the researcher, can be included in one type of culture, then in another. As you know, V. I. Lenin singled out the types of bourgeois and proletarian culture, based on the class characteristic as the basis of this typification. But weren't there elements of bourgeois culture in the proletarian culture, and weren't practically all the inhabitants of Russia of that time Orthodox (not counting foreigners, of course), that is, belonged to the same Orthodox culture?
Ancient frescoes of Tassilin-Ajer, depicting archers.
That is, it is clear that there are many typologies of cultures, and among them what types and varieties of them have not been invented by culturologists. Within the framework of the historical and ethnographic typology, these are anthropological, household and ethnolinguistic. And they, in turn, are subdivided into numerous subspecies. There are also culturological models of a number of famous scientists, about whom too much has already been said to be repeated again. These are the typologies of N. Ya. Danilevsky, O. Spengler, F. Nietzsche, P. Sorokin and K. Jaspers. That is, what modern students, both "techies" and "humanities", are trying to learn with difficulty, and, most importantly, to understand and remember within the framework of the university course "Culturology". However, it is surprising that neither F. Nietzsche, with his Dionysian-Apollonian dichotomy, nor K. Jaspers with four heterogeneous periods of history [1] failed to notice another very important typological factor in the development of human society, namely: its division already in ancient times into the peoples of lukophiles and peoples of lukophobes. Moreover, both of them gave birth to their own civilizations that developed in the vastness of two continents at once - Eurasia and Africa.
Wooden bow and arrows of the Ainu living on the island of Hokkaido.
It is important to note here the preferences that this division of culture has over others, since some signs, naturally, are more significant than others. Let's start with the following: according to the latest archaeological finds, bows and arrows were used in Spain already in the Paleolithic era. In the Sahara, images of hunters with bows and arrows refer to the era when the Sahara "bloomed", and exactly such images are found on the rocks near Lake Onega and in Altai, and in the Alps, the famous Otsi, a warrior and a blacksmith of a copper-stone century [2]. That is, once the bow was widespread, it was used very widely, and the attitude towards it, as a weapon for hunting and war, was the same everywhere.
Relief from the burial temple of Ramses III at Medinet Abu in Upper Egypt, depicting a sea battle with the "peoples of the sea." Modern processing in color. Please note that this is a naval battle, but the warriors only use the bow!
But then, somewhere in the region of Central Asia, something happened that caused, let's say, an ambiguous attitude towards onions among some people! The British historian T. Newark, following the others, drew attention to this very important circumstance in his article "Why the knights never used bows", published in the magazine "Military Illustrated" in 1995. Today, this is perhaps the most important issue related to the genesis of the defensive and offensive weapons of equestrian soldiers, as in the European part of Eurasia, and, consequently, its entire military culture and - this is unlikely to be an exaggeration - culture in general!
He notes that in the Middle Ages, the most effective weapon was the bow and arrow, especially the composite bow, which was fired from the back of a horse. The greatest horse archers of the Middle Ages were, of course, the Huns, Mongols and Turks. Their names bring to mind the terrible images of racing mounted warriors, eluding attack, imitating retreat only to turn around in their saddles and release a deadly shower of arrows from their bowstrings. But despite repeated defeats at the hands of these eastern hordes, the military effectiveness of such horse archers has never been exploited by the military elite of Western Europe. The knights never used bows and arrows. Why?
“Throughout the Middle Ages, knights believed that killing an enemy with an arrow from a bow was despicable and did not honor a good warrior. True knightly nobility goes to the winner in one-on-one mortal combat with a spear, sword or mace. The use of the bow and arrow was left to people of lower social status who could not fight as bravely or bravely as their masters. That is why peasants who could not buy a horse for themselves, even if their material well-being allowed them to do so, were recruited into archers; therefore, for the most part, European archers were on foot, and only social and cultural snobbery did not allow horse archers to become a characteristic part of the war in Europe.
When the West met the East, in the fields of Western Europe or along the coast of the Holy Land, the western knights still found themselves on an equal footing with the eastern horse archers, but only until they used the bow. The principle of fair fighting - one-on-one combat, equal weapons - did not imply the knight's bow. It was the infidels who changed the laws of battle, so why did the knights stay the same? Apparently, a dignified defeat looked better than a dishonest victory. But the roots of this aristocratic prejudice do not lie in the knightly code of the Middle Ages, as was observed in ancient Germanic military customs.
The "Immortals" are the personal guard of Tsar Darius. Frieze from the palace of Darius in Susa. Stored in the Louvre.
During the siege of Rome by the Ostrogoths in 537, the Greek historian Procopius documented how vulnerable the Germanic barbarians were to horse archers. To break the siege, Bellisarius, a Byzantine-Roman general, sent several hundred horsemen to wear down the Goths. They were given clear instructions - not to engage in close combat with the Germans, to use only their bows. As ordered, the Byzantines avoided the fierce attacks of the Goths, climbed the hill and showered the enemy troops with a hail of arrows. As soon as the supply of arrows ran out, they quickly took cover behind the city walls, pursued by angry barbarians. These raids proved to be so successful that Bellisarius employed such tactics several times, with heavy losses to the Goths. If you believe the words of Procopius, and he was the undisputed witness of the siege of Rome, the losses of the Goths were enormous, and indicates that the Goths did not have horse archers, but the Byzantines had them. And this is far from the only such case.
When the Goths were surrounded by the Byzantine general Narses in 552 in the Apennine village of Taginai, Procopius was again surprised that none of the barbarians had a bow. He explained this by the fact that their leader ordered his soldiers not to use any weapons other than their copies for some mystical reason.
East Roman mosaic depicting warriors from the era of the decline of the Empire. Pay attention to the very large shields with which it was necessary to defend against the arrows of the Avars, Slavs and Arabs.
Whatever the reason, the Germanic soldiers were killed by the arrows of Byzantine archers, both mounted and on foot. But was such a disastrous military policy widespread?
Archaeological and literary evidence states that horse archers were very rare in the Germanic barbarian armies of Western and Central Europe. The equestrian retinue of the German "warlords" used only sword and spear, and the main part fought on foot with spears. Some of the barbarian warriors, in particular, the Goths, lived in Eastern Europe for many centuries, but, despite close contact with horse archers of peoples such as the Huns and Sarmatians, they did not see the need to use the bow on their own. The reason the ancient Germans disliked the bow was the same as that of the knights. Archery was considered dishonest!
The fanaticism with which the bow was so denied was inherent in all German Europe. The Romans and Byzantines had no problem accommodating large numbers of archers in their armies, whether they were foreign mercenaries or imperial troops - they all had a powerful composite bow. In the East, professional warriors considered it necessary and worthy to master equestrian archery skillfully. Beautifully decorated bows were presented to distinguished noble warriors. The Eastern rulers had a gilded bow as a sign of power. There were no decorated bows in the West. A professional warrior-rider or knight touched the bow only when he used it for hunting or in sports.
Arrowheads from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
With the disappearance of the Mediterranean Roman Empire and the political rise of the German aristocracy, this fashion became widespread, despite all the Eastern lessons learned by the Romans and Byzantines. From this point of view, one thing is surprising: how did the Germans even win their place under the sun? The answer to this question is that a swift melee attack negated any advantage of horse archers over German horsemen. In addition to this strategy, economic and political factors, the triumph of the barbarians is not that hard to understand. However, over the next thousand years, the western horsemen's inexplicable aversion to the bow cost them dearly in Spain and the Holy Land, where the crusaders suffered greatly from the swift attacks of the Saracen horse archers. When the Mongols conquered Europe, Western chivalry proved ineffective. Then only the death of the great khan saved Europe from subsequent annexation to the Eastern Empire.
A very interesting tombstone, which is located in Russia in the courtyard of the archaeological museum in the city of Temryuk. The inscription under the relief reads: "Queen Dynamia (put the image) Matian, (son) of Zaidar, for the sake of memory." Probably, she herself composed the text of this epitaph, and she herself ordered to make a tombstone for the head of the detachment of her bodyguards. Since Dynamia (60 BC - 12 BC) was the queen of the Bosporus kingdom, it is obvious that at that time there were horsemen in her army who rode horses without stirrups, but used long spears and, in addition, while not parting with the bows, which they kept in a leather case with a lowered bowstring. (Photo by the author)
(To be continued)
