Author | Cold Research Author Team - Two-tailed Cat
Word count: 1958, Reading time: about 4 minutes
Editor's note: Will the previous Cold Weapons Institute's "Will The Arrow That Was Shot Past Be Picked Up and Shot Back?" Don't worry, the ancient war arrow shaft is much more expensive than the arrow", "What is the best material for the ancient war bow and arrow shaft?" Why the ancient Egyptians used reeds to make arrows" two articles, introduced in ancient times, although the arrow rod is not a scarce material, but the performance of the material is still required. This article continues to tell the story of the arrow, but today it is not about the arrow itself, but about a tool for processing the arrow - the terminal.
In the picture above, the cultural relics collected by this Shanxi Provincial Museum are the tools used to process the shafts of arrows, also called terminals, also known as arrow ends. So how do you get this thing?
In the stage of arrow shaft selection, the wood is often mixed with a lot of curvature, which needs to be straightened and used. Terminals are tools used to straighten. The corrective "correction" word, with a "ya" word in it, comes from this.
The straightening method of the arrow shaft is: first use the fire to roast the hot curved part, and then hold the arrow terminal in one hand, hold the arrow shaft in the other, embed the heated bend in the groove of the arrow terminal, and then clamp it with both hands, which can be repeated many times to make the arrow shaft straighter.
This kind of tool is recorded in the Ming Dynasty's "Tiangong Kaiwu Jiabing No. 15": "The wooden pole must be curved when it is dry, and when it is cut, it is carved with a groove of several inches of wood, called the arrow end, and the wooden pole is dragged inch by inch, and its body is straight." That is, the weight of the beginning and the end is also stopped by the end. ”
However, the history of this thing can be much earlier than that of "Heavenly Works". For example, the note on the display board of this arrow straightener is written in the Neolithic era. And its excavation site is the famous Tao Temple site. The ruins of Tao Temple are believed to be the legendary Yaodu, dating back more than four thousand years.
Although no arrow shafts have been found at the Shi'an ruins near the tao temple site, many such arrow straighteners have also been found.
And this artifact is not the earliest arrow shaft straightener, in fact, this tool appeared earlier.
According to the research of professor Li Xinwei, in addition to the Tao Temple, similar artifacts were also found in 1935 when the Japanese scholars Hamada Kosho and Mizuno Kiyoichi presided over the excavation of the 5500-year-old Ruins of Chifeng Hongshanhou.
At present, the sites of such stone tools are widely distributed.
Among them, Inner Mongolia has: Linxi Baiyin Changhan, Yuanbaoshan Halahai Ditch, Ao Han Xinglongwa, Zhao Baogou, Ordos Zhu Kaigou.
Liaoning has: Fuxin Chahai, Long Island Xiaozhu Mountain. In addition, there are Beifudi in Yixian County, Hebei, Dawenkou in Tai'an, Shandong, and Xinhua in Shenmu, Shaanxi.
Chronologically, some of these sites date much earlier than the Tao Temple, and some are similar to the Tao Temple, and the absolute age is roughly from 6000 BC to 2000 BC.
Could it be that such tools appeared eight thousand years ago?
In fact, it is not only that such tools appear in the Proto-Neolithic cultural sites of 9000 BC in the Near East. In addition to China, it has been found throughout Eurasia and the islands, as well as in Africa and even North America.
The North American Indian civilization and other Eurasian civilizations separated about twelve thousand years ago. Therefore, the discovery of this tool in North America indicates that this tool appeared very early, and the use of similar artifacts in North America is also very similar to that in East Asia.
The aforementioned arrow shaft needs to be heated before processing, and the American scholar O.T. Mason also mentioned in a special study of indian bows and arrows that the Panamint Indians would heat the U-shaped trough stone tools first, and then put part of the shaft into the trough. In addition to correction, this stone tool also has a grinding effect, that is, the Indians also use this type of stone tool to polish the shaft.
The American anthropologist A.L. Kroeber recorded the making of arrows by California Indians in the early 20th century. They also heated the straightener first, then corrected the shaft, and polished it.
The arrow straighteners found in East Asia, in addition to straightening the shaft, also have the function of polishing the shaft. However, later, with the improvement of other processing equipment, this polishing function was gradually eliminated.
From similar principles to similar uses, it shows that the requirements of the early ancestors for the performance of bows and arrows were not a coincidence. They also knew what worked well and what didn't work well, but they didn't have the discipline theory and experimental equipment that we have perfected today. So they just grope for themselves. It should be known that the processing difficulty of this stone tool is much more difficult than that of manufacturing cutters.
Why do you do that, don't you still see the benefits of the arrow shaft processing? And it is their pursuit that promotes the continuous progress of society.
Back to the arrow shaft. Arrow shaft correction is only one step in the production of arrow shafts. The processing, polishing, painting, and winding of the arrow shaft, each link needs to consume manpower and material resources, although an arrow is not particularly expensive, but the price is not cheap. In the Song Dynasty, it cost seventy yuan, which was also equivalent to the living expenses of the Northern Song Dynasty for a few days. A military arrow in the Qing Dynasty also had three cents of silver. What is the concept of three-cent silver? In the Qing Dynasty, one or two pieces of silver was one hundred points, and the replacement for copper coins was generally 1,000 yuan, while one or two silver coins could buy 150 pounds of rice. It can be seen that three cents of silver is also equivalent to a day's meal money. Besides, an arrow is not a single one. Thirty is almost close to one or two pieces of silver. For fighting a war, the number of bows and arrows needed is not dozens.
Therefore, some people believe that the ancient large-scale coverage of the arrow rain projectile is actually difficult to appear, because the production and price of the arrow lead to each arrow rain projectile, which is actually a "clean throw". Of course, ancient wars sometimes did not matter the cost of that kind of arrow rain record still exists.
Therefore, before the war, all regimes will produce a large number of ordnance, and the cost of war is also based on the economy of the regime. This is also why there is a situation where the war ends and the money is burned like firewood. This is also the reason why it is said that fighting is the ability to mobilize.
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