Friday, March 29

They reconstruct the most lethal weapon of the Bronze Age | Digital Trends Spanish


An arch built with horns and bones over four thousand years old, and which belonged to the Sintashta people, an ancient Indo-Iranian tribe, was reconstructed by researchers from the Southern Ural State University (SUSU).

They lived in the Southern Urals at the end of the third and second millennium BC. C., in which the famous archaeological site of Arkaim can be dated to the time of the Bronze Age.

This weapon had the highest accuracy, firing distance, and killing power of its time. This bow was probably an elite weapon of a warrior, but could also be used by aristocrats to hunt large animals. The asymmetric shape of the bow, offset by the balance of the horn parts, may have given the lower arm of the weapon special combat ergonomics, allowing it to be fired from the body of a war vehicle, experts believe.

Ivan Semyan, head of the SUSU Experimental Archeology Laboratory, commented on the implications of this historical reconstruction.

“The Sintashta bow, in our opinion, is a composite longbow with a series of special parts to improve the mechanics and expand the functionality. Tests and simulations showed that effective shooting of large Sintashta arrows required a bow tension of over 28 kilograms, compared to just 25 kilograms for a modern men’s Olympic bow. The result of our experiment was a bow 187 cm long with 29.03 kg of tension. It can be used for target shooting at a distance of about 80 meters,” he maintained.

The horn pieces are complex in shape and require many hours of drilling, sawing, cutting and grinding with bronze tools, the scientists explained. In addition, the creation of a set of quivers (it is a box or cylinder of skin, wood and/or cloth used by archers to transport arrows), for example, required at least three specialists: a thrower, a flint splitter and a bone carver.

“It was extremely important for us to strictly adhere to three principles: use authentic materials, authentic technologies, and not exceed the level of technical thinking of the old masters. Therefore, only four materials were used: wood, horn, bone glue, and sinew. In total, we tested four versions of the design: two of our colleagues and two of our own,” said Ivan Semyan.

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