How far was the range of the bow and arrow of the ancient people

From Xiaogangban, a friend of Knowledge.com

To clarify, China has long had the concept of maximum range and effective range, to the Song Dynasty has been down to the situation of the bow, the bow's maximum range is generally about 200 meters, the effective range of the bow is within 120 meters. That is to say, the two sides really start the battle formation after the effective exchange of fire with bows and arrows, is at a distance of 100 meters apart.

Then said the single crossbow, single crossbow of various data records, although great, but the actual battle is generally flat shooting use, to the current artifacts of the remains as well as drawings of the material, it is difficult to confirm that in practice to achieve what 300 paces, 500 paces of the maximum range, up to one hundred paces one hundred and fifty-sixty meters to achieve the accuracy of the shooting on the distance is very good, to give an example of the atlas of the Li Yinglin.

This double-armed crossbow can be regarded as the standard posture of crossbow shooting in the Song Dynasty, so some military forums have recently mentioned in the discussion of crossbow shooting in the face of the enemy is not more than three rounds, that the distance of the engagement will not exceed 100 meters, the crossbow is close to the flat shot rather than parrying, this is basically still a certain basis. Cavalry shooting is more complex, the actual use of cavalry clusters have a variety of ways, such as a light and heavy armor configuration, light armor cavalry in front of the arrows charge, heavy armor cavalry in the back of the line, this is basically a way to deal with cavalry; the second is a heavy armor cavalry in the front to act as a meat shield, light armor (or locking armored cavalry) in the back of the long-distance parrying, which basically belongs to the cavalry to deal with the way of the infantry square; there are more more complex configurations here is not to mention. There are more complex configurations that are not detailed here, and the shooting methods used are different, for example, some people say that the cavalry shoots arrows at a close range of 20 meters, which is correct because this belongs to the first configuration of the shooting method; for example, some people say that the cavalry shoots arrows at a long range of 100 meters, which is correct because this belongs to the shooting method under the second configuration of the shooting method.

In addition to the so-called shooting birds of prey, the traditional bow and arrow can be fully realized, in fact, do not overestimate the flying height of birds of prey, many carnivorous birds of prey actually flying height is not high, the real difficulty is to prejudge these birds of prey flight line, because of the medium and low altitude birds are generally very flexible.

The last thing I want to say is, don't think that 150 meters or less or even 100 meters of cold weapons before the firefight seems to be much shorter and poorer than the same. Even into the modern war, light weapons of the general firefight distance is not more than 250 meters, only to improve the firepower density and accuracy, that's all. A large number of ancient and modern light weapons combat, basically in the 50 meters or even within the distance.

So there is often a saying that playing with a traditional bow: to talk about archery apart from actual combat (actual operation) is to juggle with a book, and there is some truth in that.