PRIMITIVE ARCHER, new Selby Article

Thanks! I'm sure there'll be plenty who disagree with me. We should be able to get a lively discussion going here. :?

hi Stephen, I like lively discussions and to disagree, so I?m very interested in your PRIMITIVE ARCHER-article.
Are you allowed to post it here in the forum?
Maybe you could it mail as a private message for all those who want to read it or you could summarize it here?

Michael

I'm not allowed to copy it.

The main argument is that many people ask questions about 'authentic' archery from obscure ancient cultures. I forgive those who ask the questions; but not those who try to answer them.

With some examples, I explained that archery techniques and equipment are subject to short-term vagaries of fashion today. Even apparently homogeneous groups like the Tibetans and Koreans shoot with a variety of styles and equipment in the same local competitions. I argue that archery is particularly subject to changes in fashion, and that inter-community contacts were much more common in ancient times than people give credit for today. Such contacts would have given rise to rapid and continual changes in archery fashions.

I pointed out in addition that some terms like 'Mongol', 'Tatar' or 'Hun' have ethnic/cultural connotations today; but historically they were political alliances. Thus a 'Mongol' army would have many cultures, styles and equipment represented among its ranks.

My conclusion is that people should not try to put 'authentic' and 'historical' in the same sentence when discussing ancient Asian archery tradtions.0.. maybe even modern ones.

S

thank you Stephen, nothing to disagree, it is really very important to clearify here something. But I would like to add a bit of my experience.

I prefer to talk of bow-designs, the scythian bow-design, for example, means to me a specific design-pattern with possible variations, ascribed to the scythians.
I?ve to cooperate a lot with scientists: archaeologists, historians, ethnologists, physicists....and I guess you know that they are often quarreling. It is really difficult to see past or even pre-historical times clearly. So I try to make my job to the best of my actual knowledge.

I think that all these faked horsebows( Grozer, Kassai...) have made an ambivalent effect on bowery. At first they kept alive the memory for the old bows, but at the same time they smudged all the differences between the cultures and above all between real traditional bowery and modern bowery. But this is an effect of the globalisation too.

It is also important to observe new results of actual research or excavations, for to be up to date.
Very interesting is the newest theory on the term "scythian", it is in the meanwhile supported by the leading "Scythian- researcher" Dr. Parzinger and it says that the term "Scythian" means nothing else than "archer".

Michael

I agree that there's no harm in attaching names like 'Scythian' to a recognized design of bow. It helps us gain a mental picture.

Michael,
Does Dr Parzinger say what he thought the Scythians called themselves? I think in Old Persian the western Sakas were called Skudra which is close to the Greek Scythian. Lack of alphabets prevents me from giving you the exact equivalents.

Bede, maybe we should give Stephen?s article reason for to update our knowledge of the ancient bowyers.

Dr. Parzinger was the leader of the expedition which recently excacvated a grave in the Altai-region. Media called at once the excavated mummy a Scythian warrior, Parzinger calls her of indo-european origin and definitely not a Scythian. Anyway the bow within the grave is, what I call of Scythian design.

Parzinger recently stated that the term Scythian should be limited on the region around the Black Sea, we could call the the tribes have lived there the first mounted archers. So their neighbours called them "SCYTHIAN=ARCHER". They were more a loose union of tribes than a people.

There is actually an exciting discussion going on focused on new results and theories about the former Eurasian tribes and people and their migrations.

Michael

This new grave is complete news to me. Have we a picture, measurements, description of the bow and/or arrows, quiver, etc?

One thing we should remember about ethnic nomenclature: literate and sedentary societies might often "lump" other societies based on some characteristics, e.g., steppe nomadism, forest dwelling, etc. But those other societies might not agree. So, the Greeks labelled the horse nomads of the Southern and central Russian-Asia Minor steppes "Scythian" and often attributed common political setups to them. The "Scythians" may not have agreed.

I quote my co-author, Vladimir Karasev, in our article on the Sakian Gorytus, " Herodotus, the Greek historian of the 5th century BCE known as the father of history wrote, 'It was the Persians who called the Scythians-Saks.' In the first century BCE Diodor(us) said, "The Scythians tribes grew wide and had amazing kings. In honor of them they were called Saks, and others were called Massagets, some of them Arimaspams, & etc.' The Byzantine Stephan in his turn said, 'The people are Saks. They are called Scythians because of the armor which they invented.' Probably this armor was a shield, which was the name of a Sakian group. The opinions of many ancient authors who connected the Saks and the Scythians are confirmed by the considerable similarity of their mythological plots, which occured on the territories of the Eurasian steppes. "
I am looking for his letter in which he interprets the Haumavarga as drinkers of horse milk and Tigravarga as Scythians with pointed caps, also spoken of in Herodotus.

My interpretation is that Scythians and Saks are the same culture, separated in place and time by modern convention. I also find this distinction useful. -j-

There was a movie about the excavation in the German TV (ZDF) last November.
For whatever reason the Mongolian Government and German media make a big hype around this excavation and so the pictures and drawings with the details were kept secret.
E. Godehardt and me will do to make the reconstruction of the excavated bow, pics and drawings have arrived last Friday. The bow is 116cm in length, 3cm in width(midlimb) and 1.8cm in thickness(midlimb), the design is "Scythian". It seems to be a wooden lamination built up of 4 strips in the center and fading out to 2 strips at the end of the limbs. There are recurves, painted red. It seems to have been completely wrapped with hide or rawhide.
This is a challenge to me, cause I can?t believe that such a lamination could be a working bow ( remember my postings last spring).
The quality of this excavation is, that the corpse is freeze-dried and not frozen. It laid on ice not within ice. So the researchers have much more possibilities to do their jobs.

Dr. Parzinger states that this grave is of Arimaspian, Sauromatian or Issedonian origin.

Michael

"Sak" (Modern Chinese 'sai' 塞) was also the name by which Indo-Aryan people of Central Asia were called in Chinese at least up until the Tang Dynasty.

Shaka > Saca > Sak > Sai.
It is nice to come up with names, but without some form of consistent naming we end up with several versions of the same word. That leads to people wondering who is speaking about what group.

Where do the names come from?

Saka is documented in Old Persian in Achaemenid inscriptions. There are two versions. Simply

Saka

is the generic term. A particular group who wore pointed hats is know as

Saka Tigrakhauda

. Farsi speakers will recognise Khud, the word for head covering.

Most of these terms in European languages come from Herodotus originally. He wrote down more about the tribes on the steppe than anyone before him. However, it is problematic to be precise about peoples whose languages were not written down. Who called themselves what? In America, they refer to the Sioux, but the word is from another language which means foreigner. Some of the Sioux referred to themselves as Lakota.

The Greeks in general did little to distinguish between various forms of nomads. From the sixth century BC to the seventh century AD, in Greek, writers referred to nomads generically as Scythians. At various times more precise words were used.

Stephen; I realise that all this Scythian posting is taking away from the importance of your article for which I regret. Will find that article soon.

But to continue with Scythians, some little trivia. These folks were not all alike eachother at all. Herodotus said that there were those who lived on seal meat alone. Maybe the Caspian sea was once a bit larger and many believe that the Amudarya River used to empty into it.

There were once huge grainery fortresses in Siberia to protect the Scythian harvests in areas not suited to this agriculture today. In Uzbekistan there were tribesmen who lived in colossal corrals with their livestock in the drainage of rivers. Their corral complexes went on for miles.

And then there are the Sarmations, which Red Hawk mentioned. This is the tribe which began with the Amazon warriors, married by Scythians for their fierceness. The Romans defeated these folks and took many of them to England as military auxilaries. One might reasonably imagine that these nomads became part of the racial stock of the Brittish empire. One day (maybe already) a DNA test could confirm some descendants of these displaced warriors of the steppes. -j-

I dropped in my comment about the Chinese term 'sak' as a curiosity, not to claim that it proves anything. The word also means 'border' and 'blockage' :?

One thing that I find VERY striking is that people that I have seen on some of the Scythian gold treasures and the people I have seen in graves in Xinjiang. Their faces, clothes and bows look VERY similar. The Xinjiang grave dates, at around 800BCE to 600BCE, are not wildly out of line, either.