Got a Real-World Weapon, Armor or Tactics Question? Mk. XXV

[gkathellar]

They had a better life than the early farmers. However, that was in the good times. In the lean times, when game was hard to find and foraging not very plentiful, they starved. They also routinely practised infanticide to keep their numbers to a manageable level, over and above what must have been pretty high infant mortality.

Pretty much. There were lots of intermediary societies that practiced a mix of the two lifestyles, but in general horticultural and agricultural societies traded the easy life for the ability to accumulate surplus, with all of the advantages that provides. Hunter-gatherers can live very comfortable lives, but they are always at the mercy of the fortunes.

Ok I'll bite .... (hahahahahah ahahahah hahahaha ... ahem, sorry*) what did they eat?

Assuming you're asking about the so called "paleo diet," it's gone through stages. The earliest version was 75% meat, 25% leafy greens, which is completely ridiculous and often unhealthy. Modern spinoffs tend to be slightly more grounded in reality but ignore the ways that virtually all human food staples have been phenomenally altered by selective breeding, as well as the various adaptations by humans to unusual dietary staples (I'm looking at you, lactose tolerance).

If you're asking about actual Paleolithic diets, looking at modern hunter-gatherers and archaeological evidence, indicates a lot of nuts, seeds, fruit, rudimentary grains, and simpler greens; meat was an occasional but important dietary supplement. Very little of this food would have been recognizable, as prior to generations of human cultivation, what are now our staple crops were very different. Maize is sort of the ur-example.

[Kiero]

Also as the settled farmers became more established and successful, for those who remained in the hunter-gatherer lifestyle, a growing proportion of their diet would have been "things we stole from the farmers".

[Epimethee]

Brother Oni, if y may ask, what will be a good translation of the Three Kingdoms Tales in english? I tried a few years ago the main french one and it still is one of my biggest reading frustration. The translator died halfway trough and the new one changed every names. It is hard enough to remember all the charachters like Cao Cao, Cao Pi, Cao Ren and so on but as soon as they became Little Cloud or Crouching Dragon it became unreadable. It was the first book i seriously considered sending back to the publisher as a protest for the stupidity of the édition. I guess Penguin should have a good one if i judge by their great translations from japanese like the Heike or the Genji tales but those are another world entirely. English is my third language, i have to order the books i wish and the Three Kingdoms is obviously a sensible subject. Some input would be greatly appreciated. Many thanks in advance.

So on sedentarisation... Nobody know exactly what happened and theories range from an increase in population leading to the crash of hunting-gathering ressources to the production of alcohol (seriously) to the etablishment of religious center to name only a few. Ethnography established long ago, with the case of the Kwakiutkl of North Western America, that you can produce surplus with an hunting gathering lifestyle. In fact it seem that the social organisation of the Kwakiutl led to their fall and not the availability of ressources.

Some people argue that a place like Göbekli Tepe was build by hunter gatherers, which mean also a lot of surplus and a specialisation that was thought only possible with agriculture a few years ago. It is not yet clear if buildings were a cause or a consequence of sedentarisation.

Of course, living with animals, people start suffering from new diseases and of course also the domestication of plants and beasts mean a lot of work but it is really hard to have some definitive answers on the why of sedentarisation.

A mummy like the famous Ötzi, who was conserved in the ice of the Alps show also the many diseases hunters gatherers could suffer from, like Lyme disease, parasites in the stomach, arsenic poisoning ( maybe he was working with metal) or bad lungs from the smoke of campfires... He even had stones in his kidney, because of the many proteins he was eating. Hardly good publicity for the paleodiet i’m affraid...

[Knaight]

It would be like if at some time in the future you did shows or games about the 20th or 21st Century and every scene was in a favella, a refugee camp, or a shanty town. Sure they do exist, and sure even in the US we had the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl where for a while in the 30's it was fairly widespread... followed by World War II when so much of the world was smashed, broken and burned up. Even today you could go to a War-Torn place like Syria or Congo or a place in extreme economic deprivation like Venezuela or North Korea. So if you looked hard enough you could find that Trope, yes.

But this is hardly a universal or even common condition in most of the world this period, today. The point I'm making is that it wasn't the most common condition in the Middle Ages either, in fact quite to the contrary. The last 300-400 years of the Middle Ages is basically when there was such an incredible surge of culture and technology that "Western" culture went from being roaming barbarians to pulling ahead of the rest of the world.

The modern example is a pretty good example of the phenomena of swinging too far the other way though - neglecting favellas, refugee camps, shanty towns, slums, etc. also provides a very skewed view of modern culture. War torn places aren't quite the exception presented here, and neither is extreme economic deprivation. Close to a third of the world's population doesn't have reliable access to clean water, today. There are rich, industrialized countries which have populations to the tune of 20+% that don't reliably have enough to eat.

[Kiero]

Aresenic poisoining might suggest working with bronze, since early compounds used arsenic rather than tin.

[Brother Oni]

its intended for a non-historical game so a bit of anachronism is fine but I'm aiming for around 1000 CE give or take a few centuries

The closest dynasty I'm familiar with to your target time is the 13th Century Yuan Dynasty established by the Mongols. There's plenty of resources on Mongol horseback archery, but crossbows would have been mostly used by the Chinese conscripts.

Broadly speaking, Chinese crossbows never reached the borderline insane draw weights of western crossbows, but instead compensated by having a much longer powerstroke (how far the string travels while pushing the bolt). A western crossbow may have a powerstroke of 4-8 inches, while Chinese ones were much longer at around 15-21 inches.

Spoiler: Western crossbow

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Spoiler: Chinese crossbow

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The slightly earlier Song dynasty military treatise, the Wujing Zongyao mentions a number of different crossbows with a quote of "the strongest weapon of China and what the four kinds of barbarians most fear'.
The Chinese also used a variety of 'siege crossbows' or ballista, which are crew served artillery pieces:

Spoiler: Two Bow Ballista

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Spoiler: Triple Bow Ballista

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The Tang dynasty Triple Bow Ballista had a draw weight of 12 stone (~2,000 lbs) and according to the records, could shoot up to 700 paces (~1,000m)

They also used gunpowder to increase the lethality of their siege weapons:

Spoiler: Depiction of an arcuballista with gunpowder charge

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The Chinese also developed firing drills, with the front rank retreating to the back to reload, much like later musketmen. The Song Dynasty image isn't very clear unfortunately, so I've used one from a later Ming Dynasty treatise:

Spoiler: Crossbowmen volley fire, Jun qi tu shuo, ca.1639

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It's not very clear in the above image, but by the time of the Song, they had started using their own versions of belt hooks as spanning devices, but not stirrups (they pushed against the prod with their feet).

Spoiler: Very heavy crossbow or very weak men!

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I'm failing a little bit on finding exact crossbow draw weights in the Song dynasty, but the standard Han era military crossbow is 6 stone, or ~384lbs.

Edit: Completely forgot about the point of the reply. In game mechanics terms, the Chinese crossbow would have the same performance as a western crossbow but at a lesser draw weight and also be harder to use on horseback - the issue is, this level of granularity typically isn't modelled in a system like D&D.

Brother Oni, if y may ask, what will be a good translation of the Three Kingdoms Tales in english? I tried a few years ago the main french one and it still is one of my biggest reading frustration. The translator died halfway trough and the new one changed every names. It is hard enough to remember all the charachters like Cao Cao, Cao Pi, Cao Ren and so on but as soon as they became Little Cloud or Crouching Dragon it became unreadable. It was the first book i seriously considered sending back to the publisher as a protest for the stupidity of the édition. I guess Penguin should have a good one if i judge by their great translations from japanese like the Heike or the Genji tales but those are another world entirely. English is my third language, i have to order the books i wish and the Three Kingdoms is obviously a sensible subject. Some input would be greatly appreciated. Many thanks in advance.

Are you after a good translation of Romance of the Three Kingdoms which is a historical novel or Records of the Three Kingdoms which is a drier, but more fact based chronicle?

I don't have a copy of Records myself, so I can't offer any recommendations.

Romance is the better read as it's essentially a movie version based on true events. My copy of Romance is the unabridged version translated by Moss Roberts and published by Foreign Languages Press, 1991. I'm old so back when I picked it up, the Three Kingdoms wasn't as well known as it is now, so there are better translations - whether you go for an abridged version or not depends on your tolerance on story jumping when an important character shows up as Romance is essentially a written down version of older oral stories. You know in the movie Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon where you get a 40 minute flashback in the middle when Dark Cloud shows up to explain his and Jen's backstory? That happens a lot in the early chapters of my copy of Romance.

A couple of caveats on Romance - the attributed Chinese author, Luo Guanzhong, was a Shu advocate, so the novel is biased towards them. For example, many of the heroic events attributed to Shu officers were in fact performed by Wu officers and Cao Cao is painted in a particularly bad light. Roberts keeps to the Pinyin romanisation of the names (so Cao Cao instead of Ts'ao Ts'ao) and mentions nick names, but generally doesn't use them (and certainly doesn't translate the names to their character meanings like Little Cloud). However note that the Chinese used courtesy names at the time; for example Liu Bei is often called by the more deferential Xuande (his courtesy name) due to aforementioned original author's Shu fanboy-ing.

Edit 2: If you're having problems keeping track of all the major characters, then may I suggest getting hold of one of the Dynasty Warrior games? I would recommend DW7 as that stays fairly close to the events of the novels and includes the rise of the Jin Dynasty post Three Kingdoms, but is a bit too old now.

[The Jack]

Archers getting disproportionately big draw arms.
How widespread was that, how common was that, and how much disproportion are we talking here?

Just seems to me that it'd be better to work on both arms, for balance and general purpose.

[Beleriphon]

Archers getting disproportionately big draw arms.
How widespread was that, how common was that, and how much disproportion are we talking here?

Just seems to me that it'd be better to work on both arms, for balance and general purpose.

Previous discussions lead me to understand something in the range of visibly larger bone mass on human remains, so its outside of the margin of error for calculations, but somebody else would have t provide the percentages.

[Brother Oni]

Archers getting disproportionately big draw arms.
How widespread was that, how common was that, and how much disproportion are we talking here?

Just seems to me that it'd be better to work on both arms, for balance and general purpose.

It's a bit of a falsehood, based on a beginner's misunderstanding of how you should draw a bow. You don't use your arms to take the main weight - you use your back. Skeletons of (presumed) archers from the Mary Rose show RSIs and adaptions (deformity in the upper spine, shoulder blade formation and bone ridges in the left shoulder socket) due to the high draw weight of their bows; link.

Spoiler: Archer's skeleton from the Mary Rose

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Studies of modern high draw weight archers show preferential muscle development in their drawing side, but not to the degree that it's outwardly noticeable, unless they're sub 10% body fat or similar.

It's also not especially easy to shoot accurately with your non-dominant hand/eye and medieval archers have more important things to focus on when training like killing the enemy before they get within stabbing range than perfect body symmetry and uniform muscle development.

That said, English archers body shapes tended to be more uniform as from what I understand, they bend their bows (they hold the arrow close to their anchor points, push the bow out with their left hand then reach full extension with their backs), rather than the classic 'hold your bow out in front of you and pull the string and arrow back to your anchor points' you see in modern target archery.

[awa]

The closest dynasty I'm familiar with to your target time is the 13th Century Yuan Dynasty established by the Mongols. There's plenty of resources on Mongol horseback archery, but crossbows would have been mostly used by the Chinese conscripts.

so assuming I'm understanding it correctly while they are a little different in how they do it they basically function the same.
Did they use anything as heavy as an Arbalest?

[Brother Oni]

so assuming I'm understanding it correctly while they are a little different in how they do it they basically function the same.
Did they use anything as heavy as an Arbalest?

I'm not 100% sure what the difference between an arbalest and a crossbow is. From looking at various resources, an arbalest is a late 12th Century steel prod crossbow, with such a high draw weight that it required a windlass or cranequin mechanical aid to span.

Chinese crossbows used a composite prod, which allowed for greater energy storage and more efficient energy transfer. From this forum thread:

Heaviest standard 8 stone Han crossbow power = 4902 inch lbs * 60% efficiency = 2941 inch lbs = 332 Joules
Typical 6 stone strength Han crossbow's power = 3676.5 inch pounds * 60% efficiency = 2206 inch lbs = 249 Joules
Andreas Bichler's 1200 lb composite crossbow = 4488 inch lbs * 39.04% efficiency = 1752.3 inch lbs = 198 Joules
Tod Todeschini's 1250 lb steel crossbow = 4062.5 inch lbs * 30.5% efficiency = 1239 inch lbs = 140 Joules

For reference, a Heavy Song dynasty bow made to pierce armor outputted 156 Joules.

The article notes that Han crossbows efficiency was arbitrarily set to 60% as that's mid-way between the efficiencies of composite bows and composite prods with a short powerstroke. This was confirmed with crossbow maker Andreas Bichler, who noted that long power strokes improve the efficiency and composite crossbows tend to have higher potential energy than steel crossbows of the same draw weight.

So technically speaking, the Chinese didn't use anything as big as an arbalest as the crossbows they were using already (out)performed an arbalest.

[Epimethee]

Kiero : good point ! Ötzi was from roughly 3000 BEC so the chalcolithic era. He had a cooper axe but i cannot say if he allready worked with bronze.

Brother Oni: thank you! Fun fact, i played Dynasty Warrior VII in my time and it was great. I‘m not so young myself... I agree with your take on it as it was my main entry to this period. After playing it i was really looking forward to read the sources. You can understand how disapointed i was by the stupid work of the translator. I have nothing against choices as long as they are followed trough.
I’m more interrested in the romance yet. It was the book i tried ten years ago.
Thanks also for the clarifications and warning ! I’m used to historical romance but you have to get the conventions of the time and place. It could take some pages for a casual reader.

[gkathellar]

That said, English archers body shapes tended to be more uniform as from what I understand, they bend their bows (they hold the arrow close to their anchor points, push the bow out with their left hand then reach full extension with their backs), rather than the classic 'hold your bow out in front of you and pull the string and arrow back to your anchor points' you see in modern target archery.

On that note, wasn't there an old, "French archers draw the bow, English archers bend it," truism?

[awa]

I'm not 100% sure what the difference between an arbalest and a crossbow is. From looking at various resources, an arbalest is a late 12th Century steel prod crossbow, with such a high draw weight that it required a windlass or cranequin mechanical aid to span.

Chinese crossbows used a composite prod, which allowed for greater energy storage and more efficient energy transfer. From this forum thread:

Heaviest standard 8 stone Han crossbow power = 4902 inch lbs * 60% efficiency = 2941 inch lbs = 332 Joules
Typical 6 stone strength Han crossbow's power = 3676.5 inch pounds * 60% efficiency = 2206 inch lbs = 249 Joules
Andreas Bichler's 1200 lb composite crossbow = 4488 inch lbs * 39.04% efficiency = 1752.3 inch lbs = 198 Joules
Tod Todeschini's 1250 lb steel crossbow = 4062.5 inch lbs * 30.5% efficiency = 1239 inch lbs = 140 Joules

For reference, a Heavy Song dynasty bow made to pierce armor outputted 156 Joules.

The article notes that Han crossbows efficiency was arbitrarily set to 60% as that's mid-way between the efficiencies of composite bows and composite prods with a short powerstroke. This was confirmed with crossbow maker Andreas Bichler, who noted that long power strokes improve the efficiency and composite crossbows tend to have higher potential energy than steel crossbows of the same draw weight.

So technically speaking, the Chinese didn't use anything as big as an arbalest as the crossbows they were using already (out)performed an arbalest.

thanks that's very helpful

[Brother Oni]

Thanks also for the clarifications and warning ! I’m used to historical romance but you have to get the conventions of the time and place. It could take some pages for a casual reader.

Actually because of its oral roots, each chapter is fairly self contained with a cliff hanger for the next chapter (hey, oral storytellers need a hook to get repeat customers ), so a casual reader getting through a chapter or two at a time is perfectly do-able.

On that note, wasn't there an old, "French archers draw the bow, English archers bend it," truism?

I believe so, but I've seen multiple methods of 'authentic' English archery techniques (bending, regular drawing, sky drawing, rocking back and forth while sky drawing then loosing and more esoteric ones to put it mildly), so take the truism as a rule of thumb rather than an absolute.

[Kiero]

There was a conversation upthread which was about how ancient skirmishers were "trained". Philip II of Makedon dual-trained his phalangites:

Unlike a spear, which retains some utility in single combat, a pike is essentially useless outside a compact phalanx. The formation, in both senses of the word, of the Macedonian phalanx, gave Philip an infantry force that was capable of standing up to Greek hoplites in open battle. If it was to retain any strategic utility however, its men needed to be able to fight outside the confines of the phalanx. As with most peoples living in an area surrounded by hills, the traditional Macedonian weapon was the javelin. Philip ensured that his men were trained in the use of both weapons, and carried whichever was the most appropriate for the occasion, so that his infantry could fulfill the role of both hoplite and peltast as need be. When marching through broken country, javelins were carried: Polyainos relates how when Onomarchos' Phokian's ambushed Philip's men, they were able to fight back at a distance. Similarly, a pike was of little use when assaulting a city, when troops had to climb ladders up walls and inside seige towers, so the javelin was carried in this situation as well.

Philip's brutally efficient training programme, backed by his autocratic royal power, ensured his men lived up to his expectations. Training men to use two sorts of weapons with equal facility is no easy task, and very few other classes of warriors over the millenia have ever attained such dexterity; the few that readily spring to mind are mostly aristocratic steppe horsemen accustomed to both lance and bow. Training his men to use two weapons that required a completely different formation to fight with, a rigid pike phalanx against the loose order required to hurl javelins, made the achievment all the more outstanding, especially given the inclusive nature of his reforms - it was the entire national levy that was so trained, and not just a picked elite. The result was that not only could Philip eventually come to count on troops as good as any opposition could field, but he would have numbers of his side as well.

Source.

Or perhaps more accurately, most of the men he was recruiting already knew how to hunt with the javelin, so alongside teaching them how to fight in the phalanx, they were also trained in how to skirmish with the javelin. It gave his armies incredible tactical flexibility when he could simply detail as many of his main infantry to instead fight as skirmishers as he wanted to. I'd imagine a dual-trained phalangite was going to be sturdier in melee than your average psiloi who didn't want to close at all.

Notable that this practise wasn't continued after his death, the Makedonian phalanx became less flexible and single-role with Alexander and his successors.

[Epimethee]

On a totally unrelated note, i was reading recently this great paper from «*antiquity*», the archeological publication of Cambridge university, about a massacre in V century Sweden.
This is really a mysterious site: the inhabitant of the place were killed including small children but as yet no woman was found. A lot of jewellery was discovered, like golden brooches, coins from across Europe and pearls, but allmost no weapon which is really strange. This seem to exclude a plundering operation but raise a lot of question about what happened there.
Also, according to a Guardian article, local warned the archeologist about digging there.

The potential story hooks are many for any DM but it is also an Highlight on an interesting time, the years after the fall of Rome in the neighbouring regions of the Empire.

Enjoy!

[Epimethee]

This Double posting was necessary to share the link with you:

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journ...3B50D4BF96560E

[Spamotron]

This Double posting was necessary to share the link with you:

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journ...3B50D4BF96560E

Fascinating that it appears that all the weapons were taken but valuables were left behind.

Snowblizz this is pretty much your wheelhouse. Do you have thoughts?

[Galloglaich]

Fascinating that it appears that all the weapons were taken but valuables were left behind.

Snowblizz this is pretty much your wheelhouse. Do you have thoughts?

And Tobtor, he should know a bit about this unless I'm very wrong!

G

[snowblizz]

And Tobtor, he should know a bit about this unless I'm very wrong!

G

Yes Tobtor's your guy. He is in the field.

I'm just well read (broadly and shallowly) layman. I'm better at the 17th century +- a bit.

I actually read about that one recently in a popular history magazine. I'll have to read the article see what it says. In general the period before "Viking" age is neither well researched or well known in Scandinavia. E.g. there's a village close to Lund that seems to have been a major, massive for Scandinavian circumstances, site for around 1000 years before around the middle ages (so basically 0-1000ad ) and nationstate forming, the royal power seems to create Lund as an alternative and later usurping town. This place, I forget the name is largely unexplored despite clearly been an important regional centre and likely seat of a powerful chieften or king.

We need Tobtor to dig more in the ground is what I'm saying.

[Epimethee]

I’m also no specialist, just an eager reader, but there is an explanation alluded to un the article: the weapon could have been taken to make an offering.
Why only the weapons? They offer no more but the lack of plundering seem to point to political turmoil more than a raiding group. But as yet only a few houses were excavated. So more questions will surely follow...

On the offering, it is for me quite interesting because, were it possible to connect a deposit of weapons with this site, it could go a Long way to prove the ritual meaning of this kind of deposit.

Of course it started for me with a book, precisely «*Les Armes dans les eaux*» ( Weapons in the Water), who aim to explore systematically every hypothesis about those deposit. It is a serious colaborative effort between archeologist, medievist, anthropologist and bronze and iron age specialist. It was published with the collaboration of the Latenium, the La Tène museum.

The book is really illuminating about the interpretation of archeological sources. The Ritual use of those deposit is far more accepted in Scandinavia than in France. The french archeology tend to be really descriptive. But in this case it tend to show that there is no really proven explanationfor the real reasons of so many deposit of weapons and more specifically swords. La Tène for example was interpreted as an offering site, a military station, the result of a tsunami on the Thielle river... Many deposits were also connected with historical battle, or pseudo-historical, on more or less solid ground, like thestory of the Rauracians in the Jura mountains. The explanations haven’t really changed since thé XIX century but shift a bit from generation to generation.

Even the classical sources who describe the cult of water don’t mention the offering of weapons. The medieval Texts are disputable. And in any case the content of such offering is unclear. A funeral rite? But there is no connection between those kind of deposit and the known funeral rite of the time. A rite of victory? There is as yet no clear answer, just many hypothesis. So connectiing this place with a deposit could be really interesting.

And of course, proving that a kind of ritual existed in V century Sweden does not mean that it was the case around Europe, as much as one fight of Cu Chulainn does not implie a eitual value for every river fight.

[VoxRationis]

Spoiler: Archer's skeleton from the Mary Rose

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Wow, that's a very deep rib cage. I'm more used to seeing that on Neanderthal skeletons than those of modern humans.

[Brother Oni]

Wow, that's a very deep rib cage. I'm more used to seeing that on Neanderthal skeletons than those of modern humans.

From the articles around the excavation, the archers were the elite of the English army at the time, so were well fed and well trained. It's not surprisingly that they were all big beefy lads.

[wolflance]

It's not very clear in the above image, but by the time of the Song, they had started using their own versions of belt hooks as spanning devices, but not stirrups (they pushed against the prod with their feet).

Spoiler: Very heavy crossbow or very weak men!

Show

Chinese did have stirrup before belt-hook - particularly popular during Song Dynasty. Also, the earliest finds of repeating crossbow dates to Warring States.

BTW I was also in that forum.

so I'm trying to find out about Asian crossbows particularly in the region of Tibet and Nepal if anyone knows that specific but ill settle for china
how much they were used and how they compared to bows in ability/ penetration and what have you.
I'm interested in both the repeating kind and the regular kind.

I don't think crossbow was all that common in the regions (Nepal/Tibet) you mentioned.

[snowblizz]

I guess the shorter more succinct version of all this is that in the high to late medieval period Sweden seemed to still have a lot of what you might call "yeomen" independent farmers, who were peasants, more or less (according to Feudal law anyway) but not necessarily so poor. Not serfs either.

As I always say, feudalism never really got a foothold in Sweden. It arrived late (like everything else, including civilization), and other ways of organising a country got popular beofre we got a reall good feudal state going. The nationstate of Sweden was built on a rather clean slate when it comes to local powers and privillages. Nobility isn't established formally until the late 13th century, and is still a fairly fluid class until the 16th (as in you can get in by showing up in horse and armour). Guilds are basically nonexistent until the 14th and actually are formed as much by the state wanting to control economic activity as anything else. Take Finland e.g., it's not until the 1600s when the Swedish crown starts to put in an effort to actually control the populace. Beyond a few medieaval castle there's not much of a crown prescence.

But Sweden was definitely poor. That's a thread you can follow all through history up to the 1800s. I got a book on Swedish economic history at home I was gonna take some stuff out of. It's grim reading. Kings lament the deplorable state of their finances and subjects (neither are as good as what their colleagues down south have). The nobles are barely better than robber barons. The state and kings (and the occasional queen) also spend considerable effort to try and (re-)populate areas, developing the economy, manufacture and trade. Everything is difficult, communications are challenging, you can't effectively farm anywhere, there are no easily exploitable resources of high value. The list is long. Frankly one starts to wonder why anyone wanted to live there. Basically the period 1000-1700 in the economic history filed under "subsistence farming mainly".

Sweden didn't seem to have a lot of nobles or a lot of serfs. it was mostly rural and had few towns - but it was also integrated with the trade network of the urban economy of the Northern coast of the Baltic. In fact Sweden was an important part of building the Hanse.

This is often left out of Hanseatic histories which tend to be somewhat German-centric and often leave out the (IMO very important) Swedish contribution. That's one of the reasons why I'm being so forceful in pointing it out.

Well it was integrated in the way that what little trade Sweden provided the Hanse controlled it all. I've never seen Sweden described as anything but a "subject" to the Hanse. The League controlled the trade, and German merchants tended to control what few towns there are. In Stockholm the rules said half the council had to be Swedes, otherwise the Germans would be running the town. The League would often dictate the terms of trade to Sweden. It's also the main source of capital, e.g. when the eventual King Gustav financed his rebellion.

The Swedish view, as I learnt it in school, you may disagree, am just providing what I was taught. The Hanseatic League used Sweden as a source of rawmaterials and place to sell other's goods. The Leagues merchants were powerful palyers in the few towns, and would ruthlessly guard their privilliges, e.g. in trade. Basically a monopoly on Swedish trade. Sweden's position towards the Hanse has basically been described as subservient.
There's a touch of the national romantic in there, am sure. I will point out however that the main difference today between the Swedish and Danish languages is that Swedish has much more German loanwords for everyday things. Even English(!) has a Scandinavian rootword for "window", Swedish uses a German derivative, "fönster". German influences on medieaval Sweden was large.

But trade only lightly touched most of Sweden, there wasn't a lot of surplus to trade anyway, mainly the iron from the region close to Stockholm since that could be shipped out on the rivers and lakes. Later on copper becomes a big thing. In both cases the state was also heavily involved, in part to try and improve the output but also controlling one of the few things generating currency. What I was saying though was that unlike most European places (it seems) you don't depend on trade as much and have a deep division of labour in the economy. Except for the Bergslagen region, where you have iron and copper, as well as good transport, waterways and lakes. It is mentioned as a special case even of IIRC the only places that would import basic foodstaples instead of trying to be selfsufficient. Other than that there's really not regions specialising in different stuff.

Sweden was largely rural, with only a few towns (Stockholm and Wisby on Gotland being the only two of real significance) and yet, it was not so poor. The Scania market - an area in what is now Southern Sweden on the Oresund but at the time contested between Sweden, German towns and Denmark, was the birthplace of the Hanseatic League.

Considering the Scania market lay in Denmark back then I stand by what I said. There was no Swedish contesting, it was Danish through and through. The Swedish wiki about the Scania market has no mention of Sweden at all in fact. Nor does the English one for that matter, not sure where you get that.
Even Gotland was effectively Danish from 1361-1645 (it had been Swedish for only 80 years before that). So one of 3 "Swedish" towns with a citywall has not been very Swedish. Ignoring the fact that German merchants were the main power in Visby anyway.

Wisby on Gotland was also one of the most important trading cities in Northern Europe until it got sacked by the King of Denmark.

When do you purport that happened? When Valdemar Atterdag conqured Gotland after the Battle of Visby he specifically did not sack Visby, but instead taxed it (under duress but still) and confirmed it's privilleges.

They were also, by the 14th Century, producing very well wrought, highly sophisticated iron and steel goods like firearms and cannon, mysteriously emerging from within their deep forests.

Sweden also had significant and well developed mining industries in regions like Dalarna.

It's not exactly mysteriosuly emerging from the deep forests. That's actually *how* it was even possible. Unlike much of the rest of Sweden the southernmost part of Dalarna was connected to a series of lakes and waterways cutting deep into the land. Stockholm is placed at the end, or start, of these waterways, which of course is one reason it's the capital. Compared to other parts of the country it was rather well communicated. Just to contrast this. The *northern* part of Dalarna was a frontier settlement area still in the 1800s. Says something about how difficult communications are outside the areas you can reach by water.

The economic benefit of this industry was rather concentrated to the area where the iron was mined and the crown however.

Sweden also (more or less peacefully) conquered or annexed Finland from whence they got a lot of valuable trade (and they managed some trading centers in Finland too). And Swedish traders traded silk road goods with the Russians (whom they also frequently fought).

May have to challenge you on that one too. The valuable trade Sweden got form Finalnd was in fact the Russian trade and Swedish control was mainly focused on the coastal regions since sailing meant you hugged the coast. It's telling that it's not until the peace of 1323 anyone bothers to figure out where the border between Sweden and Russia actually lies a couple of hundred kms away from the coast. It's true that they traded with the Russians and thorugh them a bit more widely but it was very much small scale and had very little direct impact in generating economic surpluses. The Russian trade was highly contested with the Hanse, Novgorod, Danish and others.

My point is none of this trade approached what the Hanse brought in, let alone compared to anything on the Mediterranean.

Sweden spent the better part of 3 centuries trying to take control of the trade towards Russia and we are way past medieaval times when they are starting to make any inroads on that. The high point being the late 1600s, quickly follwoed by a collapse of Sweden as a great power in the early 1700s.

Swedes living on the Baltic coasts also seemed to be closely linked to some of the rather prosperous Baltic pirate groups like the Likedeelers and Victual Brothers.

So while poor and rural to a large extent, I wouldn't call them as poor as say Norway, certainly. Sweden was kind of unique in the middle ages and quite interesting. They did not jump into Feudalism the way Denmark did but did not wallow or suffer in poverty quite as badly as the poor Norwegians did, and they had a hand in the development of the Hanse.

G

I stand by that poor. Obviously places like Norway (Norway wasn't a country until 1905 anyway), Iceland (alsoa Danish dependency... hmmm... makes ya think don't it ) probably Ireland can compete, I didn't say the poorest country period. But do note that still in the 1800s Sweden was per capita one of the poorest countries in Europe. I guess one can argue that during it's heyday in the 1600s it was richer than in the 1800s, but again, if you read about the sorry state of most rural areas during the long wars in the 1600s the whole "poor poor country" does come thorugh.

[snowblizz]

I’m also no specialist, just an eager reader, but there is an explanation alluded to un the article: the weapon could have been taken to make an offering.
Why only the weapons? They offer no more but the lack of plundering seem to point to political turmoil more than a raiding group. But as yet only a few houses were excavated. So more questions will surely follow...

Read through the article now but as said am not expert and can't really say anything with sureity.

I'll note the abscence of women to me strongly suggests they were probably forcibly removed. When they say the place was not looted I'd disagree, women were valuable commodities and more easily transported than livestock. E.g. in boats.

The lack of weapons could mean the military compenent was absent, fighting invaders or already killed in battle. The people at the fort clearly are civilians left behind. I don't think they'd have looted weapons and left more valuable things behind. Though it's not clear to me they've not looted valuables and whats left are what got left in a hurry.

One scenario is that the "menfolk" are away with the weapons and that this is a raid against unsuspecting soft targets. That would explain why it's not thoroughly looted, the perptrators simply didn't have the time to do more than take the most easily accessible things. Women and as much wealth as could be carried off on them (like the jewelry and such they'd already worn or was easily presentable).

As noted, it's curious noone came back to bury the people. Clearly a large blow to the locality.

Since I'm not a history scholar I am free to guess. I don't see it as inconceivable that it was an outside raid for slaves and any easily portable wealth. These went on back and for over the Baltic during this time. It's even on the right side of the island for it. It's not even farfetched that the "menfolk" were of on a similar adventure that went badly. Maybe the raiders knew where they were going.. payback is a female dog...

[awa]

I don't think crossbow was all that common in the regions (Nepal/Tibet) you mentioned.

I could not find much information myself one way or another but while the setting is inspired by the Himalayas its not intended to be historical accurate, and they are being invaded by a china analogue anyway so I wanted to put it on the equipment list even if they mostly show up in npc hands.

[Epimethee]

Read through the article now but as said am not expert and can't really say anything with sureity.

I'll note the abscence of women to me strongly suggests they were probably forcibly removed. When they say the place was not looted I'd disagree, women were valuable commodities and more easily transported than livestock. E.g. in boats.

The lack of weapons could mean the military compenent was absent, fighting invaders or already killed in battle. The people at the fort clearly are civilians left behind. I don't think they'd have looted weapons and left more valuable things behind. Though it's not clear to me they've not looted valuables and whats left are what got left in a hurry.

One scenario is that the "menfolk" are away with the weapons and that this is a raid against unsuspecting soft targets. That would explain why it's not thoroughly looted, the perptrators simply didn't have the time to do more than take the most easily accessible things. Women and as much wealth as could be carried off on them (like the jewelry and such they'd already worn or was easily presentable).

As noted, it's curious noone came back to bury the people. Clearly a large blow to the locality.

Since I'm not a history scholar I am free to guess. I don't see it as inconceivable that it was an outside raid for slaves and any easily portable wealth. These went on back and for over the Baltic during this time. It's even on the right side of the island for it. It's not even farfetched that the "menfolk" were of on a similar adventure that went badly. Maybe the raiders knew where they were going.. payback is a female dog...

Yeah, I think even the most learned scholar can only guess yet. They are to many unknown factors.
You raise some very valid points. Anyway i can live with more than one hypothesis. I think it is generally better to test and disprove different explanations than to choose one a try feverishly to prove it.

So with your permission let me propose some counter-arguments. (Based mainly on the article.)

My interpretation of the «*Demography of the massacred*» (p.431) is that every age group include what you rightly call menfolk, i.e. adult warriors. I may be mistaken but only a few remains are explicitly described and they are chosen in my opinion to put the emphasis on the slaughter. I don’t think it is representative of the demographic of the remains found .
Of course, 26 peoples is a little sample but i’m sure a lack of male adult would have been mentioned. The lack of women is clearly stated.

We agree on the value of women. Sorry if that sound awfull, i mean of course that in such a situation women could be treated as valuables commodities. My opinion is also at this point that they were taken away. But i don’t think a slavers raid explain the known circumstances.

Even if the killers had limited time, the jewellery, and some pieces are fairly precious, were not hidden but worn by the massacred. I won’t dwell on the economics of slavery but i’m sure that capturing a living human being take more time and effort than securing a gilded brooche on a corpse. I won‘t sound offending but i could also argue about the economics of taking a child to slavery. In an even more cynical tone, i‘m wondering what it means if someone took the time to kill the babies. It make sense only if you wish to annihiliate a population.
Even the fact that meat was found in the houses sound strange in the case of a raiding party.
In any case a raiding party has little incentive to perform a massacre. They will of course kill some peoples but their main goal is the wealth.
More digging may clear this point, offering a better distribution of the demography of the town.

On the lack of weapon, i understand the place s being of military value. Even with your Interpretation of the demography, I cannot imagine that no warrior was left behind and that no weapon was in stock. Metal detection seem to confirm their rarity and the point remain unclear.

But the main argument is that the place seem frozen in time. I think it is the biggest clue of a total destruction of the society that lived here.
Even if the menfolk were away, they would have done something about the deads as soon as they were back. Im unifamiliar with the funerary rites of the time but i‘m sure you would not let your family rot.
Ok, i can see desesperate warriors swearing not to bury their deads before taking revenge. You can’t escape the years of Roleplaying...

I think the state of the place could point to something more akin to a political conflict. If the extent of the massacre is proved, his intentionality is more plausible.
You need some reasons to plan a massacre. It this case it erased a relatively prosperous city. I would really like to know more about the region at the time and other comparable places.

In any case, such a discovery is great: it let use discuss some very epic and evocative stories. In the meantime the archeologist will certainly learn a lot about the daily life of the place.

[Mr Beer]

I'll note the abscence of women to me strongly suggests they were probably forcibly removed. When they say the place was not looted I'd disagree, women were valuable commodities and more easily transported than livestock. E.g. in boats.

This was my immediate thought as well.