Horse Archery

The Ancients

History Hit

History

4.7 • 3.5K Ratings

🗓️ 19 July 2020

⏱️ 59 minutes

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Summary

The horse archer was one of the most feared warriors of antiquity. Triumphing mobility and fluidity, these swift skirmishers came to epitomise a feared ‘eastern’ style of warfare. Renowned historical weapons expert and avid horse archer Mike Loades joins me to chat through horse archery's ancient history. Where did it originate? How did this method of warfare come to be? What sort of equipment did they use? Mike explains all. We first focus on this warfare method’s importance among ancient Near Eastern cultures before taking an in-depth look at antiquity’s superlative horse archers: the Scythians!

Mike is the author of ‘War Bows’, an in-depth history of four iconic weapons that changed the nature of warfare.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Mike Lowe's is joining me today, the military historian who's covered topics varying from
0:07.1	Ajin Kor to feudal Japan.
0:10.1	And today we're going to be talking about ancient horse archery.
0:13.6	In particular we're going to be looking at its importance for the ancient Near Eastern
0:17.2	cultures, such as the Parthians, the Persians and the Assyrians.
0:21.8	But we're also going to be looking at its importance for another culture, north of the
0:26.7	Caspian Sea, north of the Black Sea that dominated the Eurasian steps.
0:32.2	I am of course talking about the Scythians.
0:35.6	Enjoy.
0:41.7	Mike, it is an honour to have you on the podcast today.
0:45.2	Always a pleasure Tristan.
0:47.0	Now we are talking about a fascinating topic, ancient horse archery and this is a subject
0:52.6	very close to your heart.
0:54.5	Yes it is.
0:55.5	It is, but not only is it something that I've written about quite extensively, not least
1:00.3	of all in my book War Bows, but it's something that I still do and love.
1:05.8	It is my passion in life.
1:08.2	So let's start at the very beginning.
1:11.3	Where do we think or do we know horse archery originates?
1:15.6	That's actually a much harder question to answer than you might think.
1:19.8	When the answer is it probably originates in several places independently.
1:25.2	It doesn't necessarily have to be one of these things that was invented in one place and
	...

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