Heh. I was watching that now as well, though she mainly seems to travel to Iran to learn her art.
No. Lapland is in Fennoscandian Arctic Circle, no Steppe Culture there – I only chose that video, because it showed the sport beautifully.

Of Europeans, the Magyar-Hungarians do/did traditionally practice mounted archery.

The Eurasian Steppe map:
https://hungarians.weebly.com/upload...338027.jpg?730

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They say apes and humans had a common ancestor.




Newton's laws work every time they are tested.






There was a progression from Newton, who was the first scientist who was free to speak free from Church persecution, and based his work on Copernicus and Galileo, both of whom were persecuted let alone condemned by the Church, and people such as Maxwell and Faraday continued to advance the work over 250 years when Einstein wrote Relativity. You are taking centuries of intense, rigourous, peer reviewed study and calling it a 'guess'.


Feynman explained the scientific process as, first you make a guess, then you test it to see if it is true. If the experiment doesn't work, you guessed wrong, so you make another guess and test that, and when your test eventually works, you have finally made the right guess. Theory is made of right guesses.

You're right....without looking at a map...in my mind I was picturing Lapland as being farther to the east and not so much into the arctic circle as it actually is....

And yes....mounted archery runs all through middle eastern culture through Hungary and Turkey into Asia......this is just really interesting stuff and I'm going to have to research it more!

In the New World of course the horse was unknown till the Spanish brought them over.....

Aboriginal Americans (Native American's) didn't even have a word in there language for horse...at first, the Comanche called it Sarii (meaning a big dog)....later "puuku" meaning a horse was added to the Comanche language.

While they didn't know about horses initially....the Comanche caught on fast and became master horsemen and were as good with mounted archery as anyone on the planet coming to be feared by all as the "People of the horse"

When it gets down to it....a mounted archer was the equivalent of a battle tank in its day.....very hard to stop!

Thanks for bringing the subject of archery up – it is fascinating to learn more about it and look at the different types of bows used.

This is a good map showing the different ecological zones people live/lived in, which then determined the kind of culture that developed:
https://d1ca4yhhe0xc0x.cloudfront.ne...Sci_img042.jpg

This didn’t mean that people wouldn’t trade. So, the similarity of our bows with the steppe people’s bows may very well have resulted from this trade and exchange of ideas (?). Besides, our horse’s close genetic relative is the Mongolian horse.

Interesting to look at their bows:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sez4GNIOaNY

I do love these Iranian/Persian horseback archery videos though, the elation of high speed, spirit like the wind or wildfire – the ease, the charm and the elegance when sitting on the horseback hitting the targets plus this tradition of horseback archery allegedly goes back 10 000-12 000 years!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LleShqmazu8

Indeed:
https://www.historyonthenet.com/wp-c...Empire_map.gif

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Hey
I just want to say I was highly blessed by the visit and conversation here.
Thanks

That is a great video on the Comanche bow!

I've been trying to get a collection of authentic native American bows going for years!

It's hard though...there are so many fakes and reproductions out there that finding the real thing is tough to do.......I do have a few including a vintage Kickapoo bow(related to Apache's) that an anthropologist with Texas A&I university dated as late 1700's or early 1,800's

I have a Comanche bow I bought from an elder on the Brazo's Indian reservation near Waco Texas....it is authentic in the sense that it was made by a living Comanche elder who makes bows in the old way.....but it still feels like a reproduction some how....just me I guess.

all the native American bows I've seen... regardless of tribe have been "self bows" meaning made from splitting a single piece of wood where as the best old world bows were made of lamination's....strips of wood glued together such as the Northern Eurasian and Asiatic bows were.

All this talk of history and shooting styles has made me think of my own shooting style...which some archery purists find....how shall I say?...a bit ba$tardized?

for starters....I shoot with the arrow on the left side of the bow like the English did and like modern target based archers do......but turn the bow to the top right about 45 degrees like horse mounted American Indians did.....

But where horse mounted archers in most cultures used a thumb style draw....like the Finnish woman in that video you posted.....

but while I have a posture that is a combination of target form and Indian form....instead of the "split finger" draw style found in target archery (that really comes from the Mediterranean...and known as a Mediterranean draw) I draw the bow with three fingers under the arrow like American Indians do....if you at my avatar closely...you can see that my three draw fingers are under where the arrow sits on the string.

The purists are often appalled!! That is until they see me put arrows on target....I have a archery range in my backyard and practice all the time with 3-D animal targets out to about 50 yards and I'm damn accurate!!!

I'll put it this way....you wouldn't want me hunting you!

Your welcome and I've enjoyed your input!
Stay around...this thread seems to be getting some legs and the conversation might last for a while!

I guess our earlier models were “self bows” as well, till we caught on what the steppe people were doing.

Are these, what you call "self bows"? (We call them traditional wood bows):

http://www.puujousi.fi/images/puujousi.jpg

http://huntsm.com/6.JPG

https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/i...QALgLVoyTVgMXJ

Still, the purists reckon that these old bows had/have their own individual character - their own soul in them, making them more magical to use and to have.

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Well, it is just you and your bow ... isn't it.

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Yes.....those all look like what would be considered "self bows" or sometimes "stick bows"

Made from splitting and carving down a single carefully selected branch.