Fun Fact Friday
Happy Friday/Saturday Everyone!
This week’s topic: Medieval English Longbowmen
If you put increased stress on your body your muscles will grow and your bones will become more dense. English longbowmen are known to have deformed skeletons because of this.
If you look closely to the skeleton you can see that the hands rest at different levels. Specifically the right shoulder (the side you pull from) sits higher that the left side.
These archers needed 160lbs — 200lbs of force to be able to pull on their longbows (modern bows require roughly 50lbs). These archers would start their training as children and the constant stress put on the one side of their bodies caused them to have over-developed shoulder/back muscles effecting their skeletal structure. You can’t really see it in the picture but this skeleton’s shoulders are very hunched over. Some people have argued that the left hand (holding the longbow) is bigger because of the force required to hold the bow.
Additional fun fact: Films often show young men/peasants being conscripted to be soldiers but most didn’t become archers. These recruits didn’t have the training or money to be longbowmen. This meant that most archers in service were professional soldiers.
*if you’re interested in learning about how important these bowmen were to the English/logistics behind being a longbowman I recommend watching this 5min video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NWtoLSk_11k&ab_channel=SimpleHistory
Hope you learned something new!
Have a good weekend!
Sources:
https://kriii.com/english-bowmen/
https://nerdist.com/article/archers-body-change-lifetime-muscle/
