The Complete History of Archery With Ray Mears

this unlikely looking Farmland landscape has thrown up evidence of our hunter gather ancestors evidence that has forever changed our understanding of life in the Mesolithic and there's one item discovered here that has gripped my imagination like no other the world's oldest complete bow unearth here in Yorkshire 10 years ago it's the earliest evidence we have of archery here in Britain and it serves as the starting point of a long and Rich relationship with the bow in this series I'm going to be uncovering the history of the bow from its early use in hunting that is really really brilliant to its development as the first true weapon of mass destruction but the amount of violence is staggering isn't it yeah absolutely join me as we discover how this one weapon helped to Define our island [Applause] [Music] nation what's it going to be then Jay um how about the green patch that Green Bush yeah Green Bush long shot longest shot yeah two arrows yeah let's do two unless it's fun and then maybe we do three all right okay this is roing this is the old way of practicing with a bow this is what our ancestors did prior to azun cor basss like that men would go out into the countryside and a bit like around the golf they pick marks and take shots at them whoever gets closest picks the next Mark it's very competitive it's good fun and of course the marks uphill downhill into the light the light behind you short far it made for very accurate archers and that was part of the secret of turning these into sticks that we could stand behind as a nation that's a puff how we doing guys all right nice one off Joe there nice a puff of soil look [Music] good it's moments like this in the field when the distance between now and then seems to shorten and the lives of our distant ancestors become tangible I'm really looking forward to this journey for me traditional archery was a very big part of my life for more than 30 years I'm a bit Rusty so it's going to be good to pull a bow string again but you know archery is special I've had the opportunity to travel amongst Hunter gather communities around the world who still use a bow to find their food on a daily basis and I've discovered that there is a fraternity of the bow amongst those who use it they love to compete with it it's great fun this is a a medieval style Longbow quite different to Modern target archery but we're still all archers together and I like to think that if I could be standing here amongst my ancestors from 10,000 years ago they would recognize this equipment too they'd come over we'd have a chat about the equipment that we're using we'd compare our bows and our arrows maybe compete a little that's part of the magic of the subject and here in Britain we have a unique historical Heritage associated with the Longbow the oldest known evidence of the use of the bow comes from South Africa where microliths believed to be arrowheads dating from around 70,000 years ago have been found found evidence of humans use of the bow can be found all over the world from cave art in Algeria that shows a man shooting a slightly curved bow to the mummified body of oty the Iceman a 4,000-year-old murder victim discovered in the Alps with an arrow head embedded in his shoulder we're very lucky to have the oldest complete bow ever found here in Britain in fact to be precise it was found in Yorkshire at a remarkable archaeological site called Star Car the bow discovered at Star car is held here at the Yorkshire Museum archaeologist Professor Nikki Milner is making it possible for me to take a close look at this remarkable find made of Willowwood the 11,000 yearold bow is extremely delicate and can only be be removed from protective storage for short periods of time Nikki some years ago you asked asked me to collaborate with you really to for an opinion on whether this piece of wood is amazing is a bow is this is that is this the item that is correct yes and and you sent me all the drawings and I wasn't 100% certain I was sort of 89% certain but now I see it in the flesh I'm 100% certain this is a bow great well this is what we think is the oldest complete bow in the world amazing and it's very delicate it's a rat tail bow pointy it would have been pointy I think at both ends but in terms of the development of the bow this is right at the beginning of that period that's right yes I mean we well we know that bows and arrows are used in the pthc before this but this is this gives us an insight into the Mesolithic period and and how they're hunting and how this matches up with the microliths that we find which we used in arrows I think what was surprising for us is just how Slender it was you know a lot of a lot of later bows are a lot a lot larger and I know that you were planning to reconstruct it that's right yes and we managed to do that we have done that we have a a reconstruction here here we are wow here we go look at that that's great well that really brings this object to life that's amazing so what you've got here is yeah like that there and then this bit is at the other end there with a little bit missing it's fantastic that you know that brings it to life doesn't it I I don't think this would be used for killing deer would it it's I don't think so I think but you could but but a young Hunter perhaps a boy learning to hunt could use this to hunt small game birds song birds um I know it's a it's a horrible thought for us today but they didn't have a supermarket as we do um and perhaps the arrows were were reads it would have to be something very light but quite stiff and um given the right arrow matched to the bow you would get longer range than that you know it'll be rat tail bows like this are really quite Pokey as bows to fire they they can really shoot that's so exciting seeing those items in the flesh was a amazing it's quite clear that the people who were at Star Car were investing an awful lot of time in their production these weren't just everyday items they must have had massive cultural significance one of Britain's most important archaeological sites Star Car yielded superb finds from the Mesolithic era 11,000 years ago the excavations UN covered a series of incredibly rare organic objects headdresses made from red deer skulls modified fungi Harpoon points as well as a variety of carefully crafted Flint tools including Arro [Music] heads today I am meeting archaeologist Dr Barry Taylor Who's leading a new dig nearby so we've only been here a couple of days so we've only just opened up our trenches but what we're looking for is evidence for early Mesolithic occupation contemporary with star car hopefully um in this sort of like Lake Edge sort of Shoreline than zones and Nikki was explaining you you're more likely to find organic materials in the Pete yes although people almost certainly were camped up on top this is the place where you're going to you might like you might fingers crossed find the exciting stuff definitely yes and we already have so some really nice Flint blades like this one oh that's beautiful it's really nice isn't it so um a lot of material like that and it's sort of scattered it's following a line along roughly what would have been sort of the the late water level so just where the water sort of reaching the shore right on the shoreline yeah so how many thousand years ago this is is this contemporaneous with star car yeah it should be certainly within within a few centuries of sort within the same sort span of occupation of star car yeah so somebody sat here on the shoreline and struck this little blade long beautiful blade delicately from a flint core what have you learned about our ancestors from digging in the in the P well they have they have very rich lives there is this idea that hunter gatherers particularly early prehistoric hunter gatherers are sort of living on the edge of starvation that idea that people who don't Farm are living hand to mouth and I think when you see sites like Star car and sites like this yeah these people are living quite comfortably they're they're they're they're certainly they're very accustomed they're very good at what they do do and really being sort of tuned to the sort of that rhythms of the sort of like of the natural environment really that that for me I think is the thing that comes out most Star Car particularly has been astonishing it has thrown a window on the lives of our hunter gatherers it is quite remarkable there's the earliest evidence for carpentry in Europe there is the astonishing ritual Behavior there's the ornamentation that was discovered there but particularly for me I'm interested in the spotlight that it has shown on the methods employed by the hunter gatherers themselves for hunting [Music] game inspired by the excavation I've come to the nearby York experimental archaeological research center using Mesolithic style tools and materials I'm going to try making something myself but it's not my first time here this is a replica of one of the artifacts from Star car that was found in the 1940s um this was thought for many years well for for decades to be a paddle although as you can see it's very small but I remember as soon as you saw it in the museum on display you said that's not a paddle and a bow and you came yeah and you came back and we we had to go making this replica bow and this is what we made that day of course now I when I look at it it looks unfinished but we didn't have very much time did we I said at the time it would be nice to make an arrow to match this bow because the arrow we shot on the day was way too heavy for this bow I think I thought maybe being here we would have a go at that what do you think that would be great I have already straightened um uh a birch shaft here a few days ago and if I bounce this off this piece of wood hopefully you hear that ringing sound that shows you how good this is it's a it's a really good wood it gives a real ping and um so now it's really quite sh quite quite straight and we need to start working it down I'm going to put the point on the heavier end using a flint blade I've made I'm going to start smoothing the arrow shaft it's a real skill then isn't it to to get it the arrow is underestimated how complicated an arrow is to make them make well in fact medieval arrows are better than modern bought arrows then I'll switch to a Sandstone that I picked up at the dig site this helps to shape and taper the head of the shaft now we we the next stage we have to put a knock in the tail of the arrow and we have to fit the point I'm going to use a buin for this task it's an ancient version of a chisel and it gives very good control on the wood yeah yeah better than just a blade which is yes better than just it's quicker too now I will saw the knock for the bow string how deep does it have to go does it to go more a lot more than that got to go all the way in all the way through it's got to go all the way in it have to be very careful not to split wood at that point once we get to that point okay that's now that's now done that's amazing now we've got to fit our microliths to the arrow a secure grip for the Arrow Head I and I find what's interesting as well is that when you do this you realize how precise people in the past were the arrow I'm making today will feature two blades one for the tip for piercing and another on the side to cause greater hemorrhaging while you're doing that I finished the notches and the wood is actually grasping the point oh well so you gain some idea of what this is going to going to look like when it's when it's done next I form the Fletching from kestral feathers we're now in the lap of the Gods we don't know how the arrows here were made I really hope that you will uncover one in the future and be able to answer these questions we do know that the majority of arrows found in prehistory were bound on with senu with tendon fibers but one of the most most complete Archery sets from prehistory or though much later period was of course the Archer equipment that the ican had and what was fascinating is that he was using metal fiber and I wonder whether that might not also have been done in the Mesolithic I thought as an experiment maybe we would give that a go yeah I think that's a good idea and we have and again Nettles are found at Star car so it's not Nettles are found possible at all if you soften it with your thumbnail becomes good sometimes people don't do this and if you leave the nodes they're weaks spots but by just using a thumbnail on the dry fiber you remove that and they become viable fibers and I've moistened the fibers which makes them more gummy and creating a loose attachment to position the feathers then I'll tightly bind them with nettle fibers well there we go i' i' I've put the barbs back together and there is the Fletching done and you can see the nettle Fiers really strong and now it's bound the Fletching on all the way up there's no need for adhesive making the fibers damp they will actually glue together with some of the chemicals that are within the fibers um so now we have one job left which is to attach the uh points to attach the points I will use Birch tar a Mesolithic glue similar to pine resin but much stronger Birch is you know it's useful in lots of different ways isn't it for this bow they used Birch and they and they use the tar and the B Birch was quite literally the Tree of Life I'll wrap the points with nettle fibers heat the tar and then use it to bind the arrowhead there we go finished Arrow my interpretation of what the starart arrows may have been like we can't be certain about any of this but it is certainly possible this on the other hand the arrowhead we got pretty good evidence from other parts of the world but this was just the beginning of Britain's involvement with archery it was a long and interesting history it was a long journey from the bows of our hunter gatherer ancestors to the war bow of medieval Europe Birch a key material was replaced by stronger better suited Woods like U witch Elm a ash items used to create bow strings would change from animal senu to hemp or flax and linen to explore how the bow developed from the Mesolithic into the Middle Ages I've come to meet Todd an engineer who specializes in making historically accurate tools and weapons well that's a fine site two Englishman practicing at the butts that's a that's that's a piece of history in its own right amazing yep it's it's a lovely site to see I thought you might like to see this this is um a Mesolithic style Arrow this what our ancestors were hunting with 10,000 years ago uh it's a it's a a bit mysterious because at that period people made tiny tiny stone tools and glued them in it's still going to work viciously I mean it's a one strike object if you need to reset the head after it doesn't matter but how do we get from this to Medieval bow that's the interesting thing isn't it it's a big step up well Joe can you pull one of your arrows out actually so this is sort of like a getting on towards Lake chuda sort of thing look at that so so that's basically when arrows stop being a functional Battlefield weapon what would be really good would be to explore the journey from this you know one of the earliest maybe the earliest form of hunting Arrow to this the absolute you know the Zenith of military archery well it's not a straight line but if we go to the workshop I can show you roughly where we're going with [Music] brilliant right oh here we are got a great Workshop so that's the the arrow that Joe was shooting now let's say around 1540 1550 but we start at the beginning with your Mesolithic y for me what I'm seeing there is absolutely razor sharp razor sharp edges y so that is 10,000 odd years ago yeah and then of course the Stone Age ends and the Bronze Age starts yeah now bronze we think of as being softer than iron but actually you can still make razors out of it you can still make blades plenty sharp enough so in some respects you might say that bronze arrowheads or or iron arrowheads there's not really any difference you know you you end at the end of the Stone Age and then you're into the land of metals time of metals you enter an arms race now and and it becomes a race between the bows and the arrows and the armor the first arrow that we have here in fact is this one which is a Saxon so let's just say that that's from around the year 950 900 950 so you got leaf leaf shaped head nice strong rib in the center now these arrowheads are going to be iron and the reason one of the reasons that you have a strong strong rib is it gives good support because the material itself is really very soft yeah beautifully made though and then the next arrowead we've got here is um a Norman style one so let's say from the uh well Battle of Hastings is this is very much a hunting style Arrowhead as well that sort of hunting and warfare is probably largely the heads are largely indiscriminate hasn't specialized yet y but again you can see a lot of parallels with the earlier Saxon head that nor they're very much so of course there's one more item than any other that has helped shed much light on this period the Bor tapestry completed after the Battle of Hastings the tapestry not only helps to tell the story of Williams Conquest but provides a unique glimpse into how war was waged and what it was fought with Joe you are uniquely qualified to tell us about the bow because you are an extraordinary Bower as I can see tell me about the history of the bow I you know we've got such a long history don't we of military archery in Britain and infamously the perhaps the the the the story that most people are familiar with was when our King Harold was felled by an arrow at the Battle of Hastings what sort of archery equipment was being used back then um so you'd have a ubo roughly the same draw we as the one we're going to use today um so sort of seven 80 for our testing today this one is going to be pretty much similar to what they would have used at that period so we can see it an action and gauge what the arrows were capable of doing so let's see let's explore then the sort of drawway that was being used at the time of the battle of hting okay the draw weight measured in pounds indicates how much force is needed to draw the bow to an anchor position the higher the weight the harder it is for someone to pull and the more strain the bow can take I guess this is a moment of truth in a strange way so you've got the scale set up what drawway length are you going for here just 28 in 28 that's that's what they were doing in probably yeah slightly shorter than than later period and you got a marker on that that will hold on the the maximum draw weight yeah because this is this is what a lot of people won't realize this is a nervous moment for you as a bower isn't it because when the bow is at full draw length it's is at its most vulnerable exactly I'm hanging under it um obviously use my body weight to pull it cuz it's that heavy um yeah and if it breaks I'm not in a good position I'm going to stand back because if it does break they go off with some Force for boers like Joe this is a tense moment any weakness in his craftsmanship could see the bow shatter okay well you're above 70 about looks like like 7475 PB draw we that's a really healthy draw we on that bow yeah a bow like this can be shot fairly accurately so it's what you're wanting really at that time with Joe's Bo having passed the test we took a look at the other quickly developing technology armor so we've got 75b bow in Joe's hands that we don't know that's the kind of weight they had but it's probably more that than 130 yep so that feels about good good weight for hunting we got some and arrows nice Leaf shaped head on there and we're going to see what they do against the male okay no pressure right let's give them a bit of space well that's the answer that would hurt oh ouch well that's pretty definitive I mean this could have hit brachial artery couldn't it but that there's no surgeon of the day could fix that injury no there's no no question there and also it it couldn't even luckily have missed something that is right Square where your stomach and you got so yeah having seen what Joe could do with his bow against Mel it was my turn I'm not sure I can even pull it back these days so long since I've done any of this that's quite tasty isn't it that is about as good as it gets lovely you wouldn't want to charge onto that no you can see why an army of well-trained English archers was going to be a formidable [Music] Force to discover how the bow was used to claim a victory that would change the course of English History forever I've come to the most famous Battlefield in England Hastings in the year 1066 one of the most significant battles in British history was fought here at battle it is of course the Battle of Hastings between William of Normandy and the Saxon King Harold I've come here today to explore the role that archery played on that fateful day it was here that the two opposing armies led by the Anglo-Saxon King Harold of England and William Juke of Normandy would meet to decide the fate of England King Harold and his forces arrived here on the 13th of October just the day before the battle exact figures will never be known but it's believed Harold's Army numbered between 7,000 and 8,000 troops and consisted almost entirely of infantry on the other side Williams Force comprised a similar number but included a significant force of archers I'm meeting with historian Mark Morris a man who has spent his life working to uncover the events of that fateful day so Mark tell me what we know of the battle itself well for a battle that happened nearly a thousand years ago we are incredibly well informed we've got three closely contemporary sources we've got famously the biotapestry I mean you know 70 MERS of embroidery that survives almost a millennium of potential destruction we've got that and we've got two very very full written accounts page after page after page written by people who lived through those events so we've got the Norman Army which is recently invaded they've come from France geared up ready for this big battle that's what they want a definitive battle and you've got Harold who's arrived from Stanford bridge where he's just had a massive battle with a with a Danish Army how did they line up against each other what what what were their strengths and weaknesses going back to our contemporary sources William AER very well informed he says William had his army drawn up in in three divisions three ranks at the front he says were the archers behind them were the uh heavily armed foot soldiers so he's say kind of men with helmets and hor books and you know and armed with Spears and swords behind them was the Cavalry because the Normans of course unlike the the Anglo-Saxons the English they are have are so masters of the cavalry charge the the English have horses of course but to the disbelief almost of the the the Continental chroniclers they say they they wrote turn you know turned up on their horses and then they dismounted and stood to fight so we know the Normans have got archers did the Saxons have archers well this is the thing the the the French sources go into great detail about their deployment with the English they basically say they all stood in a line forming the shield wall there's only one shred tiny scrap of evidence for archers on the English side there is a solitary Bowman in the Bayer tapestry there's also very interestingly um the the Norman chroniclers disparage the military abilities of the English and they say these are weak people these are military incompetent people a people that doesn't even have arrows this this kind of becomes a repeated phrase in later uh Chronicles the legend goes that Harold was felled with an arrow to the eye what's your opinion on that well it's a tough one the arrow in the eye I mean the the reason the arrow in the eye is famous is because it's depicted on the biotapestry in the 20th century people started to look again at the tapestry and sort of pick it to pieces and said is this figure actually Harold is Harold You Know a Man Slightly further along does he really have an arrow in the eye because the tapestry was restored in the 19th century and bits and pieces were added in a way that you know we wouldn't be done nowadays the problem is that it's an artistic interpretation of the um of the event no other contemporary source of the ones I mentioned says he was killed in that way we have the song of the Battle of Hastings which describes a completely different death for Harold of him being deliberately done in by a Norman death squad who ride up and Surround him and chop him to pieces so no mention of an arrow in our most closely contemporary written source so we can't be certain of how Harold died but what we see here is perhaps the first demonstration of what happens if you don't have sufficient archers with you the fact that Harold rushed down here I mean Harold Harold has you know this this desire always to take people by surprise and it it it backfires on this occasion spectacularly because William is forewarned of his coming and William has been planning this for months William has got squadrons of Cavalry squadrons of heavy infantry and squadrons of archers and from this point forward archery would very clearly be demonstrated in the history of our nation uh King William Rufus uh dying in a so-called hunting accident with an arrow in his chest in the New Forest and then Richard the lard being felled by crossbow bolt being King is a dangerous job you know you couldn't like be like a modern political leader or even a recent military commander you know 10 miles behind the lines you had to lead from the front you had to lead your troops you had to be therefore In Harm's Way in arrow shot you had to be yes in within the the range of a bow so Harold might not have been killed by an arrow to the eye but what's not in doubt is that he lost his life in the battle and whilst we might not be certain what killed him there are strong Clues pointing to the exact spot where he died so mark this is Battle Abbey it's supposed to DeMark the site where King Harold was killed well the thing the first thing that struck me the first time I saw this is what a strange place to put a building it's a mad place to build an ABY I mean that's one of the reasons we think that the the story that Harold this was the spot the very spot on which Harold died is actually a true story um because well in the first place because that story is a contemporary one goes right back to the time of Harold and William the Conqueror themselves and secondly because as you say it's a bonker's place to build any building never mind an Abbey because you can see looking at this 13th century uh dormatory range one end of the uh the basement is about 10 feet high and by the time you get this end it's about 30 feet high it's built on this this slope when the monks were invited to found this Abbey here at some point after the battle soon after the battle they initially founded it at the bottom of the hill because that's where there was a water supply and very quickly William the Conqueror this came to William the conqueror's own ears and he said no you must build it on that very spot you know not nearby not just about the place where God granted me the Victory and of course people were quite Kings were quite superstitious in a way well well I would go for it's not just St Superstition they are very Pious they're very God-fearing and when you say you know they're they're God-fearing it's not just atoning for Harold's death this site you know on the the the morrow of Hastings the 15th of October 1066 was thickly strewn with thousands of dead dead men's bodies so he's atoning he's commemorating the the victory but he's also atoning for this massive amount of Bloodshed it's amazing to think that we're standing on the ground where that all took place yeah I mean this everywhere you see here would have been thickly strewn with bodies and and and you know a wash with blood 10,000 years after our Mesolithic ancestors carefully placed the Star Car bow into a lake in Yorkshire it would be Norman archers invading from across the channel who' come to this battlefield to change the course of history we'll never know whether King Harold was killed with an arrow in the eye but one thing I think we can say is that that at the battle that was fought in this area archery entered the psyche of the British Nation as a means of Waging War in the coming centuries bows arrows and the men who stood behind them would become a definitive weapon in the armies of Britain in the next episode we're going fully medieval to discover how the bow went from bit part player to the weapon of the age I'm getting special access to the bows that lay undisturbed for 500 years aboard Henry VII ship the Mary Rose and I'll visit the scene of one of the bloodiest battles of the wars of the Roses to see firsthand the damage archers on mass could [Music] inflict there's one type of tree that is synonymous with medieval archery the u u trees grow widely throughout Britain but really there's nowhere better to see them than here at kingly Veil National Nature Reserve which is just North of Chichester in Sussex this is Europe's largest U [Music] [Laughter] Forest I love you Woods like this reminds me of the Woodland where I grow up as a boy you trees are special it wasn't just for making bows this is a tree that we as a nation have had an incredibly long association with it's even been suggested that during the Neolithic we may have worshiped under UT trees and in fact when I look into the branches of a UT tree I see the architecture of a cathedral the branches the way the light falls through them even the atmosphere feels like the cloysters of a great natural church or Cathedral it was the tree of life and the tree of death it said that if you fall asleep under a u tree you'll never wake up well I'm living proof that's not the case the reason it was so good for the making of bows is the nature of the wood here this lighter wood this is the outside of the tree the sap wood which is strong under tension while the hwood the dark red wood is strong under compression so it's naturally laminated and that was its great Advantage this natural combination makes you the perfect spring providing both the stretch and the power that a bone needs the problem is it's very slow growing these are very ancient trees they grow incredibly slowly and our demands for bow wood quickly outstripped the supply of wood available and and it's this demand that would push us into the next stage of our journey in part one we saw how the bow developed from a hunting tool in terms of the development of the bow this is right at the beginning of that period to its Beginnings as a deadly weapon on the battlefield oh there's no surgeon of the day could fix that injury in this episode we'll continue our journey into the story of the bow uncovering how it became the defining weapon of the Middle Ages it's known as the bloodiest battle fought on English soil and how one incredible Discovery has shaped our understanding of the Bose's place at the heart of medieval history it had become England's main weapon of mass destruction although the bow had been around for a very long while it's not until the Middle Ages that we start to see the coordinated use of M archers on the battlefield the Middle Ages extends from the fth to the 15th century the first written evidence of bows being used on mass in Britain comes from the 11th century Chronicles record Welsh Bowman inflicting heavy casualties on Anglo Norman Invaders the Normans must have been impressed after the conquest of Wales Welsh archers were recruited into the anglo-norman army but the period in which the bow really came of age was the Hundred Years War spanning the 14th and 15th centuries England and France faced off in a series of brutal battles for territory and riches across the continent a Royal Decree ordered that all Englishmen must practice archery so when the time came the crown could call on a formidable force of skilled Bowman who had honed their skills roving and at the butts to explore how archery Advanced during this this period I've returned to Todd's Workshop to discover how the Technologies of the bow and arrow had developed so those are great against fabric armor if you sharpen them up they're great against flesh of course but then male starts to come in and also fabric Armor gets tougher and so you now you need to start looking at other things like needle bins like this so that's great Arrow from let's say 1300 terrifying weapon oh horrific because you can see also it doesn't take much of a um a whole size before you get a long deep penetration yeah and piercing wounds are very very dangerous deep ones yeah um even today they' be very dangerous for surgeon to fix in those days fatal and then so we now have this one which is what's called commonly called These Days a plate cutter short vodkin meaning short needle but now it has a very very Stout strong isn't it just Edge so a bit like a cold chisel you wouldn't use a a fine wood chisel to cut metal but a coarse cold chisel you can cut metal with and that's effectively what this is you are trying to strike the Knight hard you're trying to go through the armor and where do we go from here it becomes a little difficult again to work out what's going on but we end up with heads like this so at something like the Battle of Talton this kind of head would have been absolutely front and foremost of the usage and it carried on really until the end of the both so through let's say floden in 1513 I think it was and then through to marry Rose for these heavier arrows archers would need bows that were strong enough to shoot them they needed War bows our knowledge of this formidable weapon comes largely from the chuda warship the merry rose raised from the solent in the 1980s the merry Rose has revealed a trove of artifacts including a number of perfectly preserved War bows these discoveries have given incredible insights into late medieval archery inspiring Todd and Joe's investigations here today so Joe there's a 70 76b bow but in medieval times we know from the merry Rose the bows were much heavier well what what would this one be so this bigger bow this is sort of 35 140 lb draw weight which is what you need really to shift a heavy Arrow to do some damage so we're talking about a war bow a war bow exactly and and we know from the Mery Rose the bows that were brought up for that the average draw weight I think was 140 yeah 140 so that's perfect fits in with what my findings have been to shoot a heavy Arrow decent weight but there were bows on the mirror roads that were much heavier 180 185 pounds draw we I mean monsters yeah as you say it's some real big ones which take a a long time to learn how to shoot accurately um years in fact so this one's about 160ish so yeah you've got the real nice flexible sat wood and the nice hard compression resilient belly Heartwood which makes a perfect belly as we had seen previously there's only one way to determine the true strength of a bow it's another tense moment for Joe as he tests the heavier warbow wow 154b drawway it's a similar draw weight to those discovered aboard the merry Rose I get big guys who go to the gym all the time who oh I'll pull that they literally pull it halfway they can't do it because their muscles haven't developed in the right way to pull that bow it's for these reasons why practice was so important for Archers and might be why Edward the first insisted that men forgo all other sports but of course it it wasn't just the science of attack that was changing so was the science of defense and there's one item more that can attest to this armor did you hold that for me right sash it in there we go so this is a breastplate made by a friend of mine Ash and it's representative of one that we would have found as in cor a little different to ton but not massively different it's very strong isn't it I mean it is very strong just and cuz it's it's a variable thickness and what it means by that is the threat of course comes predominantly from the front and so it's thicker at the front than it is at the sides and that saves you a bit of weight so how thick would it be in the in the middle of the front 2 and a half millim 2 and a half millim yeah something like that on this one and is that designed predominantly to to resist arrows or other weapons as well what was the main motivation for that strength well it certainly is going to be resisting arrows but of course an awful lot of combat is going to be on foot to foot against other Knights and so on so really it's a multi-purpose item okay um but it is the the layering the composite layer of the armor that helps to defend it against multiple threats so you've got a padded garment on here uh under here which is not massively thick but maybe four six eight layers over that you've got the mail then over that you've got the breastplate and the rest of the arm and the arms and the legs and everything else and it's that combination that really helps helps you to resist the the attack and this fluting is that to deflect arrows here yeah it's you can see that um fundamentally you've got the neck defenses here what you don't want is arrows hitting and skiding up ricocheting up under the neck and so that deflects them away and again it's exactly the same on on tank armor now uh or at least certainly was second world war it's exactly the same thing you do not want the shells coming in just under the Tet skipping under so that just sends them away so it's it's same device for hundreds of years has worked grabbing our bows Joe and and I are going to put the armor to the test wow yeah the armor worked it did the AR slow down yeah that is nasty wow that's really interesting now he's in trouble he's got two uh injuries here um three injuries but I mean despite the strength of this plate armor you've still you've made a hole in it which is amazing well you kind of got two things going on so one Joe's made a hole through it which is amazing you know arrows bent piece of wood making whole three sheet steel you don't imagine that but then the other thing is the armor has done exactly what it's meant to do that you've got a bit of defamation that takes some of the the shock out some of the force but then also it hasn't penetrated deeply yes there's a hole there but it's not a hole that's deep enough for the arrow to pass through and hurt the person inside so it it looks a lot worse than it is to the guy inside it's nothing except that you've got a mass of men facing 5,000 archers firing at you know at this range that would have been just terrifying waros like Joe's played a decisive role in English victories in the Hundred Years War but their power wasn't only felt on the battlefields in France just 40 years after the epic battle of aenor British archers once again Drew their bows but this time the arrows weren't raining down on a for an enemy they were landing on Brothers fathers cousins in one of our bloodiest Civil Wars The War of the Roses the wars of the Roses were one of the bloodiest periods in English History fought during the middle of the 15th century and spanning roughly 30 years the conflict saw brutal battles for control of the English Throne pitching the house of York against the House of Lancaster one of the bloodiest turning points was the notorious Battle of Talon on the 29th of March 1461 just here at ton a decisive battle in the War of the Roses was fought Englishman against Englishman shooting our most deadly weapon the Longbow the battle took place in the middle of a snowstorm and is considered to be the largest EST and bloodiest battle ever fought on English soil I've come to meet Chris baren who's going to help me investigate the battlefield and discover where the war bows did the most damage so you have two armies you have the army of the anointed and crowned King Henry VII and you have an army of Edward IV who has been acclaimed King in London uh but hasn't yet been crowned so Henry's the lancastrians with the red rose yes and Edward is the the orist with the white rose yes okay and Edwood really is the Challenger here so he has to make the running so he brings his army up from London acquires more troops coming through the Midlands how many troops well it's it's debatable I think at least 10,000 and possibly as many as 25 that's a lot of people so it's a lot of people lancastrians probably have slightly more uh this is an area and the north as a whole really is an area that that is uh supportive of the lancastrian house so this is their home turf yes so everything's easier for them in terms of Supply y local support and I guess they get the opportunity to choose the ground perhaps well we think so and and in choosing this ground you have very strong uh military advantages you're on the High Ground you're dominating the road the other side of the road is Marshland and fenland uh and so you're protected on that side no one can bring an army through there and Beyond the marsh you have the river Warf on the other side you have the river cot backck so you have both your flanks protected and it's a fairly narrow spit of land on The High Ground the yorkist move up and deploy here well 2third of those are probably archers anything um and and only a third are the are the professionals and the and the Billman I mean it just shows you the regard with which archery was was held as a weapon of War it it had become um England's main uh main weapon of mass destruction in many ways it was a machine gun of its age it was the way the battle starts lorus Commander Lord falconberg he's noticed the wind has switched into the South into their backs so he takes his archers forward a bit and he starts launching um volleys of arrows into the lancastrian forces they do respond their archers respond but they are inconvenienced by the wind and can't see as well because of the snow when The yorkist Archers ran out of ammunition they stepped forward collected the lancastrian arrows and shot them back realizing they couldn't just stand there the lancastrian command ERS gave the order to charge hours of brutal hand-to-hand combat ensued but eventually with fresh reinforcements arriving the yorkists were able to break the lines of the lancastrian Army in their attempt to save their lives the remaining lancastrians fled for a valley just to the west of the battlefield it's here where thousands were cut down by the pursuing yorkis troops well it's really interesting so in the distance tall tree that's where the yorkists were on that slope Y and they're they're forced aren't they they're funneled by the battle down into this defile you can actually see this as a as a gap in the Horizon forc people down what happened then so essentially they emerge but what they emerge onto is a lake uh the cot Beck River coming through here floods comes all the way through and it it meanders through but that whole area in front of us would just be water so you're tired you've fought for however many hours and you're emerging into this Lake of water and you've got to try and get across so is this a fighting withdrawal or is this a route no this is a route oh this is a route so this is the worst possible situation absolutely need I ask what happened many Die um the accounts that have survived to us which I think we have to we have to take with a certain pinch of salt talk about um between 28,000 and 36,000 dead most of them lancastrian um I think that's questionable because of the size of the population and the size of armies and so forth but it will have been a terrible ghastly scene down there with men being forced into the water you'll have had potentially archers up here if they still have ammunition shooting down into them you'll have had men making sure they keep going men will have fallen into the water they will have drowned an awful situation yeah you know you really can't beat walking the battlefield you have the luxury of seeing uh the ground from every perspective something that the combatants themselves didn't have and this really is a battle that's all about The High Ground you have two armies facing ing each other on prometes but one manages to go the other to give up the possession of High Ground by the Supreme use of their Archer Force but honestly I can't think of anything worse than two medieval English armies facing each other both with large forces of archers it was brutal remarkably some of the remains of the men who fought at tton were discovered in a mass grave they're being studied just a few miles away at the University of Bradford I've come to meet Dr Joe buckbury to see what these men's skeletons can tell us about the Carnage archers could inflict these um individuals were buried from a mass grave and it was excavated back in 1996 and we have the remains of 38 people who died at the Battle of ton um all show evidence of how they died very violently in that conflict um and they also tell us more about the individuals and and how they live their lives as well it's no longer just a field when you start to see human remains it's a place where real people it's real people and the level of casualties at Tums immense it's known as the bloodiest battle fought on English soil we don't know for certain how many people did actually diet toon relatively few of them have ever been found um through excavation and and this is the largest group so tell me about this this skull here so um this individual is ton 21 and he was aged between about 25 and 35 um when he died at ton what's particularly interesting we can see we've got evidence of a sword injury on the side of the skull really quite substantial um but of particular interest to you I think is this very small hole on the back of the skull so this is right up sort of around the hairline level um by looking at the different medieval weapons that we have at the Royal armor is this has been identified as being a armor piercing Arrow Square crosssection yeah Square cross-section it's slightly rectangular but that could be due to uh mass production isn't always perfect when you're doing it all by hand wow so could this have killed him as well um possibly it depends what it did to the soft tissue on the inside um so a small hole in the skull isn't a huge problem but that's there to protect your brain so really it's the brain injuries that are the particularly dangerous side of this whilst we can't say for certain which side these men fought on the Arrow wounds suggest that they were part of the lancastrian army perhaps fleeing The yorkist Archers and so how did this person die do you know um yeah again we've got evidence of um trauma on this individual I think um the one that you're again particularly interested in is this hole in here um which you know is from a um flesh piercing arrow and actually you can see it's quite big round with um it's like wings blades to it yes absolutely picture the arrow that arrowead that would have done that injury and that would have gone quite deep in yeah I mean apparently it would have gone almost up to the skirt of the arrow very very deep penetrating injury so obviously that's going to have ramifications as to what's happening with the soft tissue because that's also going to be penetrating into brain tissue y but the skeletons don't just tell us how these men died they can also tell us a little bit about how they lived recent scientific research SE Arch suggest that archery practice contributed to a high prevalence of a condition known as osac chromal evidence of this the detaching of small bones at the end of the shoulder blades has been found in a large number of skeletons from this period including some of those from ton um so if you look at this scapula here on the right side this is what we known as as the little um separate part that separates this is the OS of chromal and what you can see is they fit together and you've got this false joint surface between the two so this is pulled away and healed over and and remained in situ remained in situ so this potentially could be somebody who's trained with the use of a bow from childhood um potentially there's likely to be some kind of a genetic weakness that predisposes certain people to getting this particular injury and it's thought that strenuous activity in the shoulder can exacerbate it and then increase the likelihood of somebody getting it and archery is one of the many things that could do that we know that there is more evidence of OAC chromi Al at ton than we see in other medieval populations that was incredible the thought that some of those skeletons belonged to archers is special but I guess the thing that I'm really left with is the ense of the extreme violence that led to their deaths that snowy day in 1461 the wars of the Roses was a high watermark in the story of the bow soon battlefields would be filled with the sounds of gunpowder and small arms as cannons became the weapons of choice the days of the bow were numbered but they weren't over not just yet to see this evidence I've come to one of the most famous shipwrecks in the world the Mery Rose the Mary Rose was a veteran of many campaigns having served chudah Kings for 33 years and it would be fighting in another angl French war that would see her luck finally run out sinking off the coast of England in 1545 the Mary Rose claimed the lives of nearly 500 crew members and lay undisturbed for over 400 years before she was raised in a daring feat of marine archaeology I've come to meet a member of the team who was involved in the raising of the merry Rose Dr Alex hildred W this is amazing I mean to stand here this close is really special it feels like time travel so what do we know about how the ship sank well what we do know because we found the archaeological evidence is that all of the gunports both on the starboard side and the port side all the lids were open and Hing above them she goes out of the fleet and we've got a very good image of that we call it the cow engraving but it's the encampment of the king's forces at Portsmouth and you see that the the flagship the Henry grasser is engaging the French gleys the Mary Rose has come out from behind her because the rest of the been wedge formation behind and fire the guns on her starboard side as she goes over and then turns and sinks so she's turning then to the port she's turning to Port why she did it whether the ship was slightly sluggish whether she'd been hit earlier in the morning by by French gunfire we don't know the French actually say that they sank her but if she were Sun sunk then any damage that would have caused that would have been on the side of the ship that's that's now missing that's right and so we have crawled over the the side of the ship looking for battle damage there is absolutely nothing but you're you're you're right it would be on the side that's missing when a battleship comes back to Port the first thing is take everything off and fix it up what's unique about the Mary Rose is that she was engaged in combat so you had everything on board that a warship would have at at the peak of its operation absolutely and we have an inventory for all of the the vessels within the king's Fleet and you can tick off the things so this is an inventory of what she should be if she was fully functional and we can tick off archaeologically all of those virtually all of those things that's amazing yeah the artifacts preserved in this tragedy would help revolutionize our understanding of Tudor archery amongst the Cannons and Small Arms discovered were hundreds of waros so we're now in the reserve collection of the museum where we storing some of the longbows that are on display oh my God look at that that is amazing you've just opened opened the door to a medieval boa's Workshop these are all from one chest in the lower deck so they were in store which is why they're in such light condition they haven't they haven't taken up any color from the sediment because they've been protected by the elm chest they look like new they do don't they they're what 500 years old well nearly but what fascinates me is they're bending away from the string the reverse curve shows that these are reflex bows their arms Bend away from the Archer When unstrung allowing the bow to be put under greater strength when the string is attached meaning they can be shorter but still retain the same draw weight as their fulllength counterparts perfect for the confined spaces of a ship but not all of the bows were found stored in boxes a handful were discovered loose suggesting they might have been in use only seconds before the merry Rose sank this by difference are some of the ones that were found loose as opposed to they they fell out of chest perhaps on the upper deck and you can see immediately the different coloration and some of them are actually damaged that was obviously broken and we've glued it back together again but that bend there is um probably where within compression within the sediments this looks like it was strung this this one has has was was strung with the string when the ship went down it wasn't that's a strong boat you know this was probably in the hand of an Archer at the time the ship went down amazingly nearly 500 years later the Maker's Marks the signature of The Men Who crafted these bows for Henry VII are still clearly visible oh yeah can you see yes so the edge little little points been put in there's yeah there's a maker Mark there the boo maybe the merry Rose bows provide incredible evidence of the true role of archery in chuda Warfare when I started to make bows most of the literature that described the English Longbow based opinions on Victorian Target bows which are our toys by comparison to these bows it was only when this weight of evidence turned up it was undeniable here was a light on on true medieval Archer it's amazing well the merry Rose is amazing because you've got things these these weapons that were used out of wood next to the newest bronze guns that were you know the last one was cast in 1543 and and it was you know with huge expense to produce to throw to to cast three tons of of metal molten metal and cast these guns and here we have SIMPLE sticks I mean it's fantastic to see what an incredible collection 11,000 years in the making this is where our story of archery [Music] ends this has been an Incredible Journey For Me somewhat emotional I didn't know how it would feel to string my bow after an absence of 20 years I didn't even know if the bow would survive but it has and it's reminded me that I really should use it more often and then there's the history seeing those incredible longbows recovered from the merry Rose 500 years old and yet they look as though they were made yesterday or the Mesolithic archery from North Yorkshire Britain's first ushering of archery in the UK the Longbow has a special significance within our folklore it's part of our national character I've not found anything like that anywhere else in the world thanks for watching this video on the history Hit YouTube channel you can subscribe right here to make sure you don't miss any of our great films that are coming out or if you are a true history fan check out our special dedicated History Channel History hit. 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Channel: History Hit

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Keywords: history hit, history hit youtube, history hit tv, history hit documentary, history hits channel, history hit dan snow, english longbow, history hit ww2, ray mears survival, ray mears bushcraft, history hit ray mears, ray mears history hit, ray mears history, ray mears northern wilderness, ray mears extreme survival, ray mears knife, ray mears world of survival, ray mears bushcraft knife, ray mears uk survival

Id: 8hKokL1PdC4

Length: 66min 10sec (3970 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 22 2024