Quote: (01-25-2015 05:52 PM)DChambers Wrote:
Quote: (01-24-2015 08:16 PM)Dalaran1991 Wrote:
Quote: (01-24-2015 07:51 PM)El Chinito loco Wrote:
Mongols by far were the best I think. Then probably other steppe/nomad groups.
Wouldn't doubt that but can anyone go into details why they were the best?
I get the whole idea of being born and live as a hunter, your survival depends on the bow. But hunting alone wouldn't require you to have the kind of mastery like that shown in the video, and I bet mongolian archers were much more badass.
I mean, think about it, why would you need to learn to ride at full gallop and shoot 5 arrows in under 1 sec? What you being chased by a pack of panthers? A lot of the techniques in the video, like fast-shooting and shooting while moving and arrow catching are very battle-field oriented, not something that a hunter would need.
Then again there's a lot of tribal warfares between the nomad people, but those were never full scale and largely skirmishes. It wouldn't require a hunter to develop his skills with the bow into a fine art of deadly weaponry. If one was to become a warrior archer and his life depended on it like the samurai or English retinue longbowman, then I could understand why they would need to fine tune techniques with the bows.
Finally, the Scythians were fucking badass group of steppe nomad, but if I remembered correctly they got ass kicked by the romans. Why?
As far as I know the Scythian never faced the Roman Army in any pitched battle. On this same subject, the Roman Legions that the Scythians faced would have been far more professional than what the Huns, in effect the Mongols, faced.
Had the Huns faced the legions of Cesar or Marius they likely would have been crushed far easier than they were against Arminius.
The legions of the late Roman Empire were a pale shadow of their former selves.
You really can't compare steppe tribes over periods like that and deduce their capabilities.
Mongols were far better at asymmetric warfare and integrated foreign expertise at a significant level. They learned and adapted fairly quickly and learned skills like how to siege european style fortifications which was previously unfamiliar to them. They were also pretty good at subterfuge (spying) and diplomacy unlike the Huns and Scythians.
The Scythians were not the Huns were not the Mongols. Each were very different. The only thing they had in common was horse archery.