I don’t doubt that people throughout history sometimes tried similar moves during practice. But the question is still whether they would be applicable in, say, a battle. What draw weight is his bow, and if it's a low draw weight, would he be able to pull these stunts off with a warbow? And if yes, would climbing a pole or a tree and shooting upside down provide any kind of advantage in a life and death situation, or would it be a waste of time - or actively dangerous, as it exposes you to enemy fire?
@@coracorvusI don’t see how any of that matters though. But to give you a basic answer, warbow: probably not, the upside down shot: SMALL potential chance that being hidden in the branches of a tree and then getting into a upside down position that will clear your line of fire could be used. It was CERTAINLY used by the Japanese though not necessarily with a bow ( their bows are big) but really none of it matters because in the same exact application today would of been used back then: to show off
@@Elliot882might have also been used by particularly skilled bandits/mercenaries/highwaymen too. A lot of people seem to forget that not every conflict was a large scale war that warranted documenting.
I went to one of those castles about ten years ago or something. Back then, they hadn't been building for very long and just had the foundation. Now, I heard there's a tower (haven't been there since, thogh). It's incredible how long such projects take and how much thought has to go into them. The passion the people who build them have makes it even more fascinating.
This is literally how we found out that bronze swords are usable. The general opinion amongst experts was that you can’t use them for fighting (too soft) until some mad lads just started trying shit.
Hey my great(×20) grandma's cousin's stepsister was able to do that wild thing in a way that's supposedly not accurate. So there! XD Also she had a pet gryphon!
Guys have apparently been scrawling crude drawings of boners for longer than recorded history. Just think about that next time you look around you in a public restroom.
One of my favorite saying used to be; 'history is written by the victors.' But i find this saying much more accurate; 'victory is voiced by the survivors and twisted by those who hold the pen.'
It’s a much more specific way of thinking. Broadly speaking, the ones who win will always be the ones who hold power in the end, which is almost never the people. The one who holds the pen is ALWAYS the one benefiting off of the narrative they write.
@erickthomas6133 that's true, but look at Japan with WW2 they did not win the war, nor did they lose, they don't teach about any of the atrocities they committed during the war. You don't have to win or even be any semblance of 'right' to write the history books, which is a truly terrifying concept in my opinion.
@@Name_Less3277they do learn about it in most schools though.. A few textbook that aren't even that used tried to gloss over it got massive international press. But most actually used history textbook teach about Japanese atrocities.
I saw something recently that said glasses were only made around the 1200s so any mythological creatures people said they saw before then, were probably just near sighted people seeing a blurry figure of a normal creature. It made me laugh because as a near sighted person, I can’t count the number of times I thought I saw one thing and when I got closer realized it wasn’t even close to what I thought.
I honestly wonder how huge of an impact this had on history. Imagine today, but without glasses. It would be a different world. I've always found that Shakespeare plays with mistaken identities make a lot more sense when I realize how blind people probably were at night.
Also examples of playing telephone- like imagine trying to describe an elephant to someone who has never seen or heard of an elephant, and have them tell someone what you said, then they tell another....i imagine by the end itll end up being described like medieval dragons were (which were not described like giant reptiles with wings)
@@ConnorNotyerbidness I don't know about dragons, but medieval drawings actually meant to be elephants were clearly the end product of a looooong game of telephone.
Arrows have several distinct parts. There's the nock, the fletching, the shaft, and the head. The nock and head are generally removable in modern arrows, being glued or screwed into place, so if they're damaged or need to be changed that's no problem. The fletchings are usually integral to the shaft on modern arrows, but are pretty durable plastic so it's fairly rare for them to be so damaged that the arrow is unusable. They're also easy to jury-rig a replacement for with duct tape. The shaft of most modern arrows are made of aluminum, fiberglass, or carbon fiber, and generally they're not really repairable. Aluminum you could theoretically whack back into shape, but composites are not super amenable to recycling/repair.
I remember really coming to understand this principle when I studied Cleopatra and realised that the primary source I had was a Roman scholar who lived 300 years after Cleo's death and who also hated her...
He's not wrong history is written from the perspective of the writer, at least prior to there being modern standards. Modern history is accurately recorded, we then just get differing opinions on the same topic, but that's not history. Current events and history are two very different things, not sure he should be conflating them, especially since the actual history books about this time period will show it was a cold war between those who want to take the world in a new direction, and those who want to take it back to things we already tried and failed to do.
The current insane Idiocracy happening in the US unfortunately affects more than your own country. As much as I would like to ignore it, pundits in my own country take it as the go ahead to start spreading their own misinformation and alt-right bullshit.
This is unironically why I reenact. Experimental Archaeology. Does it work? Would a human be willing to do this for weeks or months? A lot of the time you realise the manuals from back then are just patently out of touch with reality, and no soldier is going to meet that standard perfectly. Events that couldn't have happened the way they're described because that's not how a given bit of kit actuall works. It's fascinating.
except you're not a person from that time period, so your tolerance is not their tolerance. You didn't live their lives, you have no clue what they can handle and what they can't. Idiot.
Not to mention some guides only work for someone of the same social standing. Any given king's riding guide could be skipping a LOT of stuff his stablehands did that he had no idea was happening under his own roof, for instance.
@@alpha_9997 No direct examples, but think about workplaces today. Think we follow every OSHA rule and corporate policy to the letter? Heck no, we cut corners and get the job done to good enough. Why would people change that much?
This is the best advice I've heard in a long time and it is very transferable to Renfaire, Larp, D&D, Fencing, just about anything that has had a desire for "historical accuracy". Most people don't really want accuracy anyway. They really want verisimilitude.
It's not true that people "don't want" accuracy. They do, but this want is satisfied by verisimilitude; we don't and can't have knowledge of what is accurate, in many cases, but we almost always have feelings about what is accurate, and that's what the word verisimilitude refers to.
This is worrisome to me. Maybe it's not a big deal in archery but makes you wonder how much of history we have gotten completely wrong. And not knowing one's own history can be a dangerous thing, specially since people in power already manipulate it enough to make the masses fit their interests
Yes. One lesson I remember being taught was the history tends not to be in third person, telling all the perspectives, like we try and make it today. More often it was just told from one persons or country’s way- the way they wanted in seen. After all history is His Story.
Some of that can be counteracted by referencing multiple different sources that had different interests in the story and, where possible, pairing it with archaeological evidence. It is uncommon for major events to only be chronicled by one person. E.g. Richard III was described after his death by Shakespeare as having a severe hunch back/deformity, whilst contemporary writers described him as merely being short, with a slight difference in shoulder height. When his body was discovered in 2014, we were able to confirm that he did indeed have scoliosis, but that it was likely mild enough to be concealed via careful use of padding in his clothing and armour. So, essentially, the truth is somewhere in the middle.
I think its a more commentary of like "Maybe they just did it because they did" like I remember I was playing an Aliens game, the characters were walking around like "I wonder what cultural significance the architecture has" and I just sat there thinking, y'know maybe they just did it cause it looks cool
There's a rock in a museum I went to once that has a whole bunch of carvings of lines and dots on it, and dates back to the neolithic or chalcolithic period (can't remember which). The sign that accompanied it talked about how it clearly had a use/purpose but that no one could determine what the carvings meant or were used for, and all I could think was how much they looked exactly like the doodles I used to draw in the corner of my notebook pages at school. Maybe this small stone did have a use/purpose, but maybe it was also just someone's little art project.
@@biosparkles9442 Yeah, historians appear to not know about this thing called "fun." You do it when most of your inmediate basic needs are met and you need a break. It's really quite... enjoyable. Oh, but of course, people thousands of years ago couldn't have fun or imaginations.
I love this kind of thing in various post apocalyptic books I've read where they're trying to figure out the purpose or meaning of things from such a different perspective that it's almost impossible to be even a tiny bit accurate.
@@emmao6578 Everytime I am reminded of the Coffee cups and sports memorabilia you find in Horizon Zero Dawn, where they think our sports teams were our gods
I like how this guy shows that pole dancing isn’t a last resort career path because look at this man and tell me he couldn’t do literally anything he wanted to. He chose pole dancing cause he’s damn good at it, because he is clearly proud of all his gifts. God bless him.
How could it ever be that though? It's difficult as hell. Any pole dancer is a highly skilled athlete regardless of how she (and/or he) gets paid for it. And they make it look _easy._
@@the-chillianbc it's typically a woman's job, and typically sex work. Both of which are often looked down upon. And idk why but ppl tend to assume that those jobs are easy even when given smoke evidence to the contrary
Not just second- and third-hand accounts. Even, and sometimes especially, first-hand accounts are often biased and incomplete, both deliberately and just because they didn't see the whole thing from every perspective. Looking at you, Guderian and Manstein.
We run into this issue in sword fighting as well. The manuscripts from Fiore are pretty detailed but you look at some of the illistrations and go "ok but that makes absolutely no sense" Another issue is translations being difficult to do correctly, especially when you're also trying to account for period specific allegories/metaphors/jokes
"Gone With the Wind's" corset tight lacing scene is notorious for perpetuating the myth that corsets were these horrible torture contraptions inflicted upon women. Margaret Mitchell, the author of the book, was only a little girl when corsets were beginning to be replaced by girdles and brassiers, and when the book was written in the 1930's corsets were long out of fashion. She evidently knew hardly anything about corsets, yet her incorrect and out-of-period account of corsets is still taken as gospel today.
An decades of hollywood actresses laced down to extreme numbers mixed with a thread of Tightlacing fetish storys. Really a good well fittred corset is not a horrible torture contraption at all.
This was likely influenced by notes a similar feeling that many women in our contemporary have with more current bras and taking it off at the end of a long day. As someone who has worn corsets, I don't imagine there would have been anyone who wore them regularly would have never said they were glad to finally have it off.
Great video, very important point to keep in mind. One thing that always stuns me is that historians admit that they don't actually know how Roman formations worked. They know that they had formations, divided up into separate units called maniples. And they know that occasionally they would switch the units at the front out for the units at the back, but how that switch (called the 'maniple swap') happened is a total mystery, nobody knows for certain. I think the single best way of getting close to an answer on this question, would be for huge groups of people to fight simulated melee battles, it's the only way to figure out what works and what doesn't.
I hope to be a ghost someday when future reennactors try to recreate gun styles of the 20th century from movies like Equilibrium, Wanted, or the Matrix.
I think the message of this video is much more important than most realize. I studied history and the very first thing we learned was that history is NOT what happened in the past. It is merely our interpretation of the sources, whether they are written sources, architectural, or whatever else. We have to assume that most written sources are heavily biased. We also have to assume that our own bias can easily lead us to wrong conclusions. Many cultures didn't leave any written sources at all and were only described by others like the romans, which makes it especially hard to be accurate.
Research is about triangulation. The reality of history is that only what survives becomes the basis of primary source artifacts. But there is a difference between actual research, and just goofing around.
This is correct, but I think it's important to not turn around and fall into the equivalent hole of "okay so nothing is to be believed". There are things that we know for certain. Yes, you can't trust a single source blindly, but that is why historical research is an entire field that people dedicate their lives to and by cross-referencing multiple sources and attempting to recreate what they claim, we CAN know some things with a very high degree of certainty.
You're so right! I still get figurative punches in the guts when peoples tell stories of things I lived and they weren't born yet. But they know best and I'm just dunb liar! Grrrrr
The same thing happens now. Imagine historians 300 years in the future finding a John Woo movie in the irradiated rubble and thinking that was how warfare was back in the 20th century.
They'll wonder how we were able to slow down time while jumping sideways through the air. Or just laugh at our primitive time-slowing anti-physics technology.
Medieval people unironically believed there was a place where people with dog heads lived. Just regular people but with the heads of dogs or some reason. That was a fact of life, kinda like how we view the French.
If I remember right, Marco Polo as he travelled asked about the dog-headed people, and was told they were further east. When he got to China, he asked, and was told he must have passed them, because "everyone" knows the dog-headed people are to the West. Says a lot about convergent ideas. Almost like we're all human beings or something :)
"Witnesses" being wildly inaccurate is true, (it's a common problem even in modern times btw), even firsthand accounts can be suspect, since, "winners write history" is not an empty saying. Never mind personal bias that existed since forever. 🤷
I can't speak for archery, but in linguistics we can only base our ideas of what a language was based on written evidence. However, due to the slow changes within languages over the centuries, we are able to somewhat... "backwards predict" how something COULD have sounded like. So even if our earliest records of, say, English writing dates to the 7th century, we can make educated guesses as to what "English" could have been like in, for example, 300 AD. It's no guarantee of course, and more of an educated guess based on later written findings and linguistic analyses thereof. But it's still something! Btw, languages are something practically NO media has ever got historically correct. A modern day English person would not be able to understand Old English/Anglo-Saxon. And in future time travelling media, future humans in the year 4000 most likely would speak a completely different English than we do today. Or in fantasy, where people speak modern day English, which implies that French and Latin exist in those worlds. But then, who spoke Latin? Which French speaking nation/race influenced the fantasy "common tongue"? Why do they have concepts of phrases/sayings/religious statements despite not having the same context as we do? So at least with languages, historical accuracy is pretty much ignored most of the times x'D Sorry for the wall of text, I forget myself sometimes..
@@Windmelodie it's perfectly fine, I'm a summoner of walls of text as well XD thanks for the reply, it did help me work out a completely different part of what I'm trying to do XD
Exactly!! This is why experimental archeology is so important. It’s one thing to look at an old drawing, it’s another to pick up the tools and attempt it yourself
History is interpretation of the past. Not all interpretations are equal. Backing up your interpretation with evidence of is better than whatever Graham Hancock does.
One of the major problems with using ancient art is that if the artist didn't understand how/why rhe archer did something,nthey won't translate that nuance to their work.
My mindset is that if I can imagine it, some freak 1000 years ago can imagine it. And if they've imagined it, they've likely tried it. In my opinion, if it's physically possible, then it's not a battle on whether or not it's historically accurate, it's whether or not it's historically successful.
When he says, "There are a *lot* of pictures," the one in the upper left is of Hank and Bobby, now grown up, from the 1980s Saturday morning cartoon, "Dungeons & Dragons!"
reminds me of the question of "how heavy were the bows used at hastings" at firest you could write off the drawn bows across the chest as creator error in terms of the bayox tapastery however you must take into accound other things to get a better idea eg how did their bowstring not get in the way of the nasal helmets or how did harold not immediataly die when struck
Not necessarily the same thing but during an excavation archaeologists found some sort of a kitchen with some tools and the sharp tools were stored up high and some of the archaeologists started to come up with fantastical reasons as to why the sharp objects were there up high, then a female archaeologist came and said “it’s probably to keep them safe from kids” which the others hadn’t thought of yet.
Let's just say there's a major religious figure where the sources generally cited for his supposed life were all written decades after he was said to have died (once of the ones considered most credible as a source was born after the religious figure in question was said to have died), and the consensus of historians is that if at least one guy lived even years before and after that figure's birth or death and had a similar-enough name, then he historically existed.
Anyone who thinks History is just a log of events that historians memorise is sorely mistaken. It's the art of analysing and cross-comparing multiple different sources to try and get some level of an idea of what might have happened
It's true, until we devise Quantum Tunneling, allowing us to peer into the past as it happened, we'll never actually know how events played out. We're really just making best estimates based on available information.
Pliny the Eldar(I think, could have been the younger) on his treatise of the Gauls used the first paragraphs to say that the Huns were a race of goat people who lived in a swamp and only found their way out by following a goat.
Also, painters weren't archers. And, not like archers were poor, but, I'm fairly sure they weren't commissioning many paintings. Which means that the person who wanted the picture probably wasn't an archer either.
Man, those articles are both super cringe. The debate was neither easily forgotten nor was it all that tense 😂💀. In fact, it’ll likely be well remembered for how respectful and agreeable it was pretty much all the way through.
Not to mention misinterpretation of art. St. George's dragon was most likely a reptile related to the varana or Komodo dragon. Forked tongue > flame-like tongue > tongues of flame > breathes fire is a likely process if you look at the progression of the artwork. Or the famous 'stegosaurus' at Angkor Wat, where what are likely decorative lotus petals appear to be back plates.
Fan fiction and propagranda arent modern inventions, there is some ancient fan fiction that has maintained wide acceptance all the way to modern times. For instance, Spartans for instance were not particularly warlike, or even exceptional at warfare compared to other Greeks. It was a shock to me, given the level of idolization the Spartans get in modern times.
Interesting. When you search for Medieval depiction of Alexander the Great, you can see that he wore medieval armor and medieval clothing, which isn't true at all because people at that time had no idea what ancient Greek cultures even looked like. This is why we should be careful in sourcing our materials to make historical movies or documentaries.
What amuses me with anybody using historical artwork/written piece as a rigid "this is how it was!" forgets that we humans have, as a generalisation, a pretty poor ability to remember detail. We can tell you that a bow is a 2 handed weapon, it's drawn with one and held with the other, has a bendy stick, some kind of string, and a sharp stick... any more fine detail like where the arrow rests on your hand etc... nah. I'll make that up. Just ask anybody to draw a bicycle from memory, and you'll have some wacky ideas about what a bicycle looks like!
A perfect example of this is the bible depiction of the Leviathan. Many bibles nowadays have corrupted the Leviathan in to a fish, when if you track the description back. It's actually a crocodilian of somesort.
From the spiteful to those who just troll history is mired in obfuscation. Even though I have sheer loathing for futher inaccuracy I deign to trust my own recalls fully. I hesitate to trust my own memory so often that I have my recollection called to question. It truly is frustration of the highest caliber.
The Seerah is the most accurate historical accounts of the biography of prophet Muhammed transmitted and documented as chains of first hand narrations of well known people verified by two whole sciences of rejal(men) and hadith.
The fact how "unrealistically" you use the bow in your videos was the thing that made me start questioning the whole "accuracy" narrative :P
There's no way that's...oh....oh it isn't just a trope.
I don’t doubt that people throughout history sometimes tried similar moves during practice. But the question is still whether they would be applicable in, say, a battle. What draw weight is his bow, and if it's a low draw weight, would he be able to pull these stunts off with a warbow? And if yes, would climbing a pole or a tree and shooting upside down provide any kind of advantage in a life and death situation, or would it be a waste of time - or actively dangerous, as it exposes you to enemy fire?
@@coracorvusI don’t see how any of that matters though. But to give you a basic answer, warbow: probably not, the upside down shot: SMALL potential chance that being hidden in the branches of a tree and then getting into a upside down position that will clear your line of fire could be used. It was CERTAINLY used by the Japanese though not necessarily with a bow ( their bows are big) but really none of it matters because in the same exact application today would of been used back then: to show off
@@Elliot882might have also been used by particularly skilled bandits/mercenaries/highwaymen too. A lot of people seem to forget that not every conflict was a large scale war that warranted documenting.
@@KHfanz very true very true
Good point! That is why I like “experimental archaeology”, rebuilding a Trebuchet or a Medieval castle.
I have mad respect for anyone that recreates medieval castles. They're hardcore buildings
I went to one of those castles about ten years ago or something. Back then, they hadn't been building for very long and just had the foundation. Now, I heard there's a tower (haven't been there since, thogh).
It's incredible how long such projects take and how much thought has to go into them. The passion the people who build them have makes it even more fascinating.
@@sirius_ly.-. wait did you go to Guedelon castle?
@@razzakbane Nah, the castle I'm talking about is in Austria. It's the Friesach castle, in case you're interested.
This is literally how we found out that bronze swords are usable.
The general opinion amongst experts was that you can’t use them for fighting (too soft) until some mad lads just started trying shit.
Humanity: Shitposting since 10,000 BCE
😄
Its true! Its true!
Hey my great(×20) grandma's cousin's stepsister was able to do that wild thing in a way that's supposedly not accurate. So there! XD
Also she had a pet gryphon!
Literally carved into mountains even.
Guys have apparently been scrawling crude drawings of boners for longer than recorded history. Just think about that next time you look around you in a public restroom.
That's when we started writing it down, we've been at it for a lot longer
One of my favorite saying used to be; 'history is written by the victors.' But i find this saying much more accurate; 'victory is voiced by the survivors and twisted by those who hold the pen.'
It’s a much more specific way of thinking. Broadly speaking, the ones who win will always be the ones who hold power in the end, which is almost never the people. The one who holds the pen is ALWAYS the one benefiting off of the narrative they write.
@erickthomas6133 that's true, but look at Japan with WW2 they did not win the war, nor did they lose, they don't teach about any of the atrocities they committed during the war. You don't have to win or even be any semblance of 'right' to write the history books, which is a truly terrifying concept in my opinion.
@@Name_Less3277 You could argue they didn't lose though, which is an important distinction.
@@crazydragy4233 Sorry for the misunderstanding. I didn't really mean that Japan lost, just that they didn't win. I can see how I worded that poorly
@@Name_Less3277they do learn about it in most schools though..
A few textbook that aren't even that used tried to gloss over it got massive international press.
But most actually used history textbook teach about Japanese atrocities.
I saw something recently that said glasses were only made around the 1200s so any mythological creatures people said they saw before then, were probably just near sighted people seeing a blurry figure of a normal creature. It made me laugh because as a near sighted person, I can’t count the number of times I thought I saw one thing and when I got closer realized it wasn’t even close to what I thought.
I honestly wonder how huge of an impact this had on history. Imagine today, but without glasses. It would be a different world.
I've always found that Shakespeare plays with mistaken identities make a lot more sense when I realize how blind people probably were at night.
Even with my glasses on sometimes I see weird shit and then I get closer and it's just a trashbag on the street or something
@@IottiPHxD all type of mythos born of so many fuzzy late night sighting
Also examples of playing telephone- like imagine trying to describe an elephant to someone who has never seen or heard of an elephant, and have them tell someone what you said, then they tell another....i imagine by the end itll end up being described like medieval dragons were (which were not described like giant reptiles with wings)
@@ConnorNotyerbidness I don't know about dragons, but medieval drawings actually meant to be elephants were clearly the end product of a looooong game of telephone.
Strange question!
What do you do with damaged arrows?
Recycle them by repairing them? Throw them away? Use them elsewhere?
Just curious.
Depends on the type and location of damage.
Arrows have several distinct parts. There's the nock, the fletching, the shaft, and the head. The nock and head are generally removable in modern arrows, being glued or screwed into place, so if they're damaged or need to be changed that's no problem. The fletchings are usually integral to the shaft on modern arrows, but are pretty durable plastic so it's fairly rare for them to be so damaged that the arrow is unusable. They're also easy to jury-rig a replacement for with duct tape. The shaft of most modern arrows are made of aluminum, fiberglass, or carbon fiber, and generally they're not really repairable. Aluminum you could theoretically whack back into shape, but composites are not super amenable to recycling/repair.
@@lmack3024
Thank you!!
I remember really coming to understand this principle when I studied Cleopatra and realised that the primary source I had was a Roman scholar who lived 300 years after Cleo's death and who also hated her...
i did not expect the vice presidential debate to show up on the funny little british fantasy history archer man’s channel
He's not wrong history is written from the perspective of the writer, at least prior to there being modern standards. Modern history is accurately recorded, we then just get differing opinions on the same topic, but that's not history.
Current events and history are two very different things, not sure he should be conflating them, especially since the actual history books about this time period will show it was a cold war between those who want to take the world in a new direction, and those who want to take it back to things we already tried and failed to do.
The current insane Idiocracy happening in the US unfortunately affects more than your own country. As much as I would like to ignore it, pundits in my own country take it as the go ahead to start spreading their own misinformation and alt-right bullshit.
This is unironically why I reenact. Experimental Archaeology. Does it work? Would a human be willing to do this for weeks or months? A lot of the time you realise the manuals from back then are just patently out of touch with reality, and no soldier is going to meet that standard perfectly. Events that couldn't have happened the way they're described because that's not how a given bit of kit actuall works. It's fascinating.
except you're not a person from that time period, so your tolerance is not their tolerance. You didn't live their lives, you have no clue what they can handle and what they can't. Idiot.
Im really curious, do you have any examples?
Not to mention some guides only work for someone of the same social standing. Any given king's riding guide could be skipping a LOT of stuff his stablehands did that he had no idea was happening under his own roof, for instance.
@@alpha_9997 No direct examples, but think about workplaces today. Think we follow every OSHA rule and corporate policy to the letter? Heck no, we cut corners and get the job done to good enough. Why would people change that much?
@@Aesculathehyena good point. Im curious to what they cut though.
This is the best advice I've heard in a long time and it is very transferable to Renfaire, Larp, D&D, Fencing, just about anything that has had a desire for "historical accuracy". Most people don't really want accuracy anyway. They really want verisimilitude.
It's not true that people "don't want" accuracy. They do, but this want is satisfied by verisimilitude; we don't and can't have knowledge of what is accurate, in many cases, but we almost always have feelings about what is accurate, and that's what the word verisimilitude refers to.
@methyod I take it you disagree with the video then?
New word to add to the vocab, thanks. Genuinly hadn't heard verisimilitude before.
This is worrisome to me. Maybe it's not a big deal in archery but makes you wonder how much of history we have gotten completely wrong. And not knowing one's own history can be a dangerous thing, specially since people in power already manipulate it enough to make the masses fit their interests
Yes. One lesson I remember being taught was the history tends not to be in third person, telling all the perspectives, like we try and make it today. More often it was just told from one persons or country’s way- the way they wanted in seen. After all history is His Story.
You are describing the job of historiographers.
Ever heard the quote, "History is written by the victors"? There's a reason why that exists...
Some of that can be counteracted by referencing multiple different sources that had different interests in the story and, where possible, pairing it with archaeological evidence. It is uncommon for major events to only be chronicled by one person.
E.g. Richard III was described after his death by Shakespeare as having a severe hunch back/deformity, whilst contemporary writers described him as merely being short, with a slight difference in shoulder height. When his body was discovered in 2014, we were able to confirm that he did indeed have scoliosis, but that it was likely mild enough to be concealed via careful use of padding in his clothing and armour. So, essentially, the truth is somewhere in the middle.
Don’t worry most of history is long lost anyways
Reminder that the best source we have for the first Punic war has Scipio Africanus literally fighting dragons on his march to Carthage.
Reminder that that's a lie, Roman culture had no dragons.
@@LorrddThat's just what they want you to believe!
/jk
Though still disappointing, dragons are cool 😎
I think its a more commentary of like "Maybe they just did it because they did" like I remember I was playing an Aliens game, the characters were walking around like "I wonder what cultural significance the architecture has" and I just sat there thinking, y'know maybe they just did it cause it looks cool
There's a rock in a museum I went to once that has a whole bunch of carvings of lines and dots on it, and dates back to the neolithic or chalcolithic period (can't remember which). The sign that accompanied it talked about how it clearly had a use/purpose but that no one could determine what the carvings meant or were used for, and all I could think was how much they looked exactly like the doodles I used to draw in the corner of my notebook pages at school.
Maybe this small stone did have a use/purpose, but maybe it was also just someone's little art project.
@@biosparkles9442
Yeah, historians appear to not know about this thing called "fun." You do it when most of your inmediate basic needs are met and you need a break. It's really quite... enjoyable. Oh, but of course, people thousands of years ago couldn't have fun or imaginations.
Folks did a lot of stuff cos it was fun or a challenge.
You have a spare week? add a stone to the circle, there beer in it and fame.
I love this kind of thing in various post apocalyptic books I've read where they're trying to figure out the purpose or meaning of things from such a different perspective that it's almost impossible to be even a tiny bit accurate.
@@emmao6578 Everytime I am reminded of the Coffee cups and sports memorabilia you find in Horizon Zero Dawn, where they think our sports teams were our gods
I like how this guy shows that pole dancing isn’t a last resort career path because look at this man and tell me he couldn’t do literally anything he wanted to. He chose pole dancing cause he’s damn good at it, because he is clearly proud of all his gifts. God bless him.
How could it ever be that though? It's difficult as hell. Any pole dancer is a highly skilled athlete regardless of how she (and/or he) gets paid for it. And they make it look _easy._
@@the-chillianbc it's typically a woman's job, and typically sex work. Both of which are often looked down upon. And idk why but ppl tend to assume that those jobs are easy even when given smoke evidence to the contrary
Not just second- and third-hand accounts. Even, and sometimes especially, first-hand accounts are often biased and incomplete, both deliberately and just because they didn't see the whole thing from every perspective.
Looking at you, Guderian and Manstein.
We run into this issue in sword fighting as well. The manuscripts from Fiore are pretty detailed but you look at some of the illistrations and go "ok but that makes absolutely no sense"
Another issue is translations being difficult to do correctly, especially when you're also trying to account for period specific allegories/metaphors/jokes
"Gone With the Wind's" corset tight lacing scene is notorious for perpetuating the myth that corsets were these horrible torture contraptions inflicted upon women. Margaret Mitchell, the author of the book, was only a little girl when corsets were beginning to be replaced by girdles and brassiers, and when the book was written in the 1930's corsets were long out of fashion. She evidently knew hardly anything about corsets, yet her incorrect and out-of-period account of corsets is still taken as gospel today.
An decades of hollywood actresses laced down to extreme numbers mixed with a thread of Tightlacing fetish storys.
Really a good well fittred corset is not a horrible torture contraption at all.
Interesting about corsets is despite being out of fashion they are back. Also the "bad" corsets were most likely made of cheap material
This was likely influenced by notes a similar feeling that many women in our contemporary have with more current bras and taking it off at the end of a long day.
As someone who has worn corsets, I don't imagine there would have been anyone who wore them regularly would have never said they were glad to finally have it off.
I absolutely love the Mediaeval marginalia! Those poor clerks were so bored making all those copies.
I feel this video should be shown in history classes around the world...
Great video, very important point to keep in mind.
One thing that always stuns me is that historians admit that they don't actually know how Roman formations worked. They know that they had formations, divided up into separate units called maniples. And they know that occasionally they would switch the units at the front out for the units at the back, but how that switch (called the 'maniple swap') happened is a total mystery, nobody knows for certain.
I think the single best way of getting close to an answer on this question, would be for huge groups of people to fight simulated melee battles, it's the only way to figure out what works and what doesn't.
This had the energy of a Ground News sponsorship
Is this a bad or a good thing? 🤔
@@23UAS does it have to be one or the other?
I hope to be a ghost someday when future reennactors try to recreate gun styles of the 20th century from movies like Equilibrium, Wanted, or the Matrix.
I think the message of this video is much more important than most realize. I studied history and the very first thing we learned was that history is NOT what happened in the past. It is merely our interpretation of the sources, whether they are written sources, architectural, or whatever else. We have to assume that most written sources are heavily biased. We also have to assume that our own bias can easily lead us to wrong conclusions. Many cultures didn't leave any written sources at all and were only described by others like the romans, which makes it especially hard to be accurate.
Research is about triangulation. The reality of history is that only what survives becomes the basis of primary source artifacts.
But there is a difference between actual research, and just goofing around.
"Remember kids, the only difference between screwing around and science is writing it down." -Adam Savage
@@EnderSpy007 very important difference!
How long did it take to become this good of an archer
This is correct, but I think it's important to not turn around and fall into the equivalent hole of "okay so nothing is to be believed".
There are things that we know for certain. Yes, you can't trust a single source blindly, but that is why historical research is an entire field that people dedicate their lives to and by cross-referencing multiple sources and attempting to recreate what they claim, we CAN know some things with a very high degree of certainty.
You're so right! I still get figurative punches in the guts when peoples tell stories of things I lived and they weren't born yet. But they know best and I'm just dunb liar! Grrrrr
The same thing happens now. Imagine historians 300 years in the future finding a John Woo movie in the irradiated rubble and thinking that was how warfare was back in the 20th century.
They'll wonder how we were able to slow down time while jumping sideways through the air. Or just laugh at our primitive time-slowing anti-physics technology.
Medieval people unironically believed there was a place where people with dog heads lived. Just regular people but with the heads of dogs or some reason. That was a fact of life, kinda like how we view the French.
Sounds like someone gathered friends to play a huge practical joke.
If I remember right, Marco Polo as he travelled asked about the dog-headed people, and was told they were further east. When he got to China, he asked, and was told he must have passed them, because "everyone" knows the dog-headed people are to the West. Says a lot about convergent ideas. Almost like we're all human beings or something :)
"Witnesses" being wildly inaccurate is true, (it's a common problem even in modern times btw), even firsthand accounts can be suspect, since, "winners write history" is not an empty saying. Never mind personal bias that existed since forever. 🤷
So...
Are we just ignoring the ass trumpet centaur?
I, for one, am not ignoring the ass trumpet centaur.
Pretty typical marginalia, really.
@Pippin-yy5mn Nor am I. What were they smoking?
I love this guy and his takes on fantasy, games, anime and all that things that make certain people cry their eyes out because "muh realism"
That pause after how events played out was beautiful
I think what goes for historical accuracy is if it works now, it probably happened back then.
I feel like half the mythical creatures were things like some dude bragging to his buddies and exaggerating a bunch of
that last sentence is basicly the whole idea about guedelon castle in france or the Meßkirch monestary in southern germany
I love how in the middle ages artists depicted ancient or mythological battles with their contemporary equipment, like seeing knights sieging Troy.
Hmm... That's actually good advice. Would that apply to more than just archery techniques? When does it make sense to base something on history?
I can't speak for archery, but in linguistics we can only base our ideas of what a language was based on written evidence. However, due to the slow changes within languages over the centuries, we are able to somewhat... "backwards predict" how something COULD have sounded like. So even if our earliest records of, say, English writing dates to the 7th century, we can make educated guesses as to what "English" could have been like in, for example, 300 AD. It's no guarantee of course, and more of an educated guess based on later written findings and linguistic analyses thereof. But it's still something!
Btw, languages are something practically NO media has ever got historically correct. A modern day English person would not be able to understand Old English/Anglo-Saxon. And in future time travelling media, future humans in the year 4000 most likely would speak a completely different English than we do today. Or in fantasy, where people speak modern day English, which implies that French and Latin exist in those worlds. But then, who spoke Latin? Which French speaking nation/race influenced the fantasy "common tongue"? Why do they have concepts of phrases/sayings/religious statements despite not having the same context as we do?
So at least with languages, historical accuracy is pretty much ignored most of the times x'D Sorry for the wall of text, I forget myself sometimes..
@@Windmelodie it's perfectly fine, I'm a summoner of walls of text as well XD thanks for the reply, it did help me work out a completely different part of what I'm trying to do XD
Completely unrelated but I love the archer card at the end from Gwent from The Witcher 3 (Nilfgaard faction)
Exactly!! This is why experimental archeology is so important. It’s one thing to look at an old drawing, it’s another to pick up the tools and attempt it yourself
Is there anyone who is even close to be that great in archery AND pole dance? 😅
I love how you are talking about far more than just archery!❤❤❤❤❤
“History is written by the victor”
…and idiots. Sometimes idiots.
I kinda expected a ground news sponsorship there for a second
great thesis, i've been saying this type of thing for a long time =P the reimagining of hoplite warfare was similar to what you're saying here =)
Hey man! One thing I’m curious about archery is how’s drawing the bow horizontally instead of vertically is it good or bad 😁
Thought this was gonna be a Ground News promo at first lol
History is interpretation of the past.
Not all interpretations are equal.
Backing up your interpretation with evidence of is better than whatever Graham Hancock does.
This is a very common in HEMA where they would debate a technique that's displayed in the manuals
One of the major problems with using ancient art is that if the artist didn't understand how/why rhe archer did something,nthey won't translate that nuance to their work.
The british in ww1 swore up and down that angels were shooting at the germans with old english longbows
A man will swear any thing when there bleeding an full of morphine.
How many cameras have you accidentally killed with arrows?
What runes do you use? Also, barried or heal adc?!?
Can you re-enact that scene in LOTR where Legolas surfs down the battlement steps on a shield firing arrows as he goes. Never gets old :)
What bow and arrows do you use??
Probably all of them
My mindset is that if I can imagine it, some freak 1000 years ago can imagine it. And if they've imagined it, they've likely tried it. In my opinion, if it's physically possible, then it's not a battle on whether or not it's historically accurate, it's whether or not it's historically successful.
Well you weren't there, how do you know there wasn't giant battle snails.
Daaaang! Now I’ve got even more reason to be confused about the past! 😅
“Weird things going on in them” and it shows a dude who has his arrow on the right side (that’s a valid way of shooting arrows 😅)
When he says, "There are a *lot* of pictures," the one in the upper left is of Hank and Bobby, now grown up, from the 1980s Saturday morning cartoon, "Dungeons & Dragons!"
reminds me of the question of "how heavy were the bows used at hastings"
at firest you could write off the drawn bows across the chest as creator error in terms of the bayox tapastery however you must take into accound other things to get a better idea
eg how did their bowstring not get in the way of the nasal helmets
or how did harold not immediataly die when struck
"Will swear blind" oh yea yea yea pick on zatoichi mehhh 😂
As an American, I can confirm.
Not necessarily the same thing but during an excavation archaeologists found some sort of a kitchen with some tools and the sharp tools were stored up high and some of the archaeologists started to come up with fantastical reasons as to why the sharp objects were there up high, then a female archaeologist came and said “it’s probably to keep them safe from kids” which the others hadn’t thought of yet.
I honestly thought this was going to be an ad for ground news or something.
Can you list the types of gear/attire you have on in this clip?
for all we know prehistoric idol statues might not even be a religious thing. it could just be equivalent to current days action figures.
Let's just say there's a major religious figure where the sources generally cited for his supposed life were all written decades after he was said to have died (once of the ones considered most credible as a source was born after the religious figure in question was said to have died), and the consensus of historians is that if at least one guy lived even years before and after that figure's birth or death and had a similar-enough name, then he historically existed.
He who wins, gets to write the history.
Anyone who thinks History is just a log of events that historians memorise is sorely mistaken. It's the art of analysing and cross-comparing multiple different sources to try and get some level of an idea of what might have happened
It's true, until we devise Quantum Tunneling, allowing us to peer into the past as it happened, we'll never actually know how events played out. We're really just making best estimates based on available information.
Pliny the Eldar(I think, could have been the younger) on his treatise of the Gauls used the first paragraphs to say that the Huns were a race of goat people who lived in a swamp and only found their way out by following a goat.
Immagine a historian 500 years in the future seeing a Monster Manual and thinking it was a real bestiary
Where’s that bow from
Maybe there really were giant snails and the knights hunted them all to extinction for that tasty tasty escargot.
Damn that one guy in the painting was literally talking out his ass
I think I’m tripping balls, I thought you had a video that explained slightly twisting your wrist on release helps it fly straighter.
Better argument here than in the other video imo.
Also, painters weren't archers. And, not like archers were poor, but, I'm fairly sure they weren't commissioning many paintings. Which means that the person who wanted the picture probably wasn't an archer either.
0:50 Hank and Bobby?
"When in doubt just go with religion"
--Historical Scholars
Man, those articles are both super cringe. The debate was neither easily forgotten nor was it all that tense 😂💀. In fact, it’ll likely be well remembered for how respectful and agreeable it was pretty much all the way through.
Not to mention misinterpretation of art.
St. George's dragon was most likely a reptile related to the varana or Komodo dragon.
Forked tongue > flame-like tongue > tongues of flame > breathes fire is a likely process if you look at the progression of the artwork.
Or the famous 'stegosaurus' at Angkor Wat, where what are likely decorative lotus petals appear to be back plates.
I wonder how many mythical or legendary creatures or beings are just simply the result of someone having poor eyesight before glasses were available.
only seen videos of you using a shortbow, do you eve ruse a real size longbow? like the huge one snot the slightly bigger bows.
Fan fiction and propagranda arent modern inventions, there is some ancient fan fiction that has maintained wide acceptance all the way to modern times. For instance, Spartans for instance were not particularly warlike, or even exceptional at warfare compared to other Greeks. It was a shock to me, given the level of idolization the Spartans get in modern times.
I had to double take at the Gwent card at haha.
Your microphone seems to be broken to some degree.
Wait, was that a picture of Hank and Bobby?
Interesting. When you search for Medieval depiction of Alexander the Great, you can see that he wore medieval armor and medieval clothing, which isn't true at all because people at that time had no idea what ancient Greek cultures even looked like. This is why we should be careful in sourcing our materials to make historical movies or documentaries.
Lars invented an X bow😊
C'est pour ça que l'archéologie expérimentale existe!❤️
What amuses me with anybody using historical artwork/written piece as a rigid "this is how it was!" forgets that we humans have, as a generalisation, a pretty poor ability to remember detail. We can tell you that a bow is a 2 handed weapon, it's drawn with one and held with the other, has a bendy stick, some kind of string, and a sharp stick... any more fine detail like where the arrow rests on your hand etc... nah. I'll make that up.
Just ask anybody to draw a bicycle from memory, and you'll have some wacky ideas about what a bicycle looks like!
A perfect example of this is the bible depiction of the Leviathan. Many bibles nowadays have corrupted the Leviathan in to a fish, when if you track the description back. It's actually a crocodilian of somesort.
What do you mean? shield can't defend me agaimst goats shit spray? how is it not historically accurate?
How the fuck… you just shot… two… what…
From the spiteful to those who just troll history is mired in obfuscation. Even though I have sheer loathing for futher inaccuracy I deign to trust my own recalls fully. I hesitate to trust my own memory so often that I have my recollection called to question. It truly is frustration of the highest caliber.
The Seerah is the most accurate historical accounts of the biography of prophet Muhammed transmitted and documented as chains of first hand narrations of well known people verified by two whole sciences of rejal(men) and hadith.
And yet the bible was written in 400 AD and people think it's a primary text
What works today probably worked back then and was probably the thing that happened back then