A crossbow is a bow with a handle and a release device. The ancient people in China vividly called the handle of crossbow "arm". The crossbow arms are all made of wood, which is very long. The front end of the crossbow is combined with the middle of the bow, just like holding a bow in a human hand. The difference is that when people open their bows, they are vertical, while crossbows are horizontal and horizontal. There is a release device at the back of the crossbow arm, which can buckle the opened bowstring and control the rebound of the bowstring. China ancients called it "machine". The top surface of the crossbow arm is engraved with an arrow path, which is a long arrow slot similar to the shape of an arrow shaft for placing arrows. This is the basic structure of the crossbow.

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The ancients brilliantly summed it up as: "the arm is horizontal and the pivot is fixed by the machine." Its usual usage is: firstly, draw the bowstring, fasten it with the crossbow machine, then hold the crossbow arm with the left hand, put the arrow on the sagittal diameter, then hold the crossbow arm with the left hand, fasten the crossbow machine with the right hand, and aim to launch.

It can be seen that the biggest difference between a crossbow and a bow is that the bow is completely manipulated by human hands, and it can be issued when it is full, and it cannot be held for a long time. Crossbow relies on a set of mechanical devices to realize the separation of stretching and launching, which can keep the stretched bowstring for a long time and delay the launching.

If the bow is worldwide, then the crossbow has a strong oriental color. The earliest record of crossbows can only be found in China's ancient books, and China is undoubtedly the most widely used and longest-lasting area in the world. So people discuss the origin of crossbows and pay more attention to China or East Asia.

The invention time of crossbow is still a mystery, but with the help of ethnological data, we can know the more primitive form.

The Oroqen people in the mountainous area of Xing 'an League outside the northeast of China still used bows (or ground arrows) to hunt until the middle of the 20th century. The local language called it "Alana", which means the bow and arrow on the ground. The method is to fix a wooden arm on the ground, with the front end of the wooden arm facing the bow, put a short stick behind the wooden arm and grab the open bowstring. The arrow lies flat on the top of the wooden arm, with the tail end facing the bowstring. Put a long rope around the stick, pull it in the direction of the arrow, and then tie it to a distant branch, about 1 m from the ground. When the beast walking in the forest trips over the guide rope, it will touch another stick, causing the rope to retract and shoot at the beast.

Similar hunting methods can be found in many other ethnic groups in remote areas of China, such as Ewenki in the northeast, Miao, Yao, Dai, Lahu, Naxi and Dulong in the southwest. However, in many ethnic groups, the ground bow has developed into a ground crossbow, and its supporting arm has been fixedly connected with the bow.

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Hani, Dulong, Jingpo, Hu and other southwest ethnic minorities also widely use crossbows for hunting. Their crossbows are made in the same way. They all use wood as their arms. A single bow made of bamboo or wood is installed at the front end of the wood, and a sagittal path is carved on the arm surface, and a transverse notch is dug on the arm surface behind the sagittal path to clamp the strings. Machines generally come in two forms.

One is the upturned type. Hollow out the chord groove, install a short movable lever, use bamboo shaft pin, mostly made of bone. When the bowstring is stuck in the chord groove, the front end of this small bone block is pressed under the chord and the rear end is higher than the arm surface. As long as the back end is pressed by hand, the front end naturally rises, the string is squeezed out of the string groove, and the string is retracted. The wooden arm of some crossbows is very narrow, and the movable lever is installed on one side of the wooden arm instead of digging holes in the chord groove.

The second is sagging. Dig the whole chord groove through, install the movable rod vertically in the hole, hang its end under the arm, and pull back, and the bowstring will be squeezed out of the chord groove. These hand crossbows usually use a single bow and only have a simple trigger mechanism, which is customarily called "wooden crossbow" or "bamboo crossbow" according to the material of the crossbow. Take Dulong's hand-held crossbow as an example. There are large, medium and small crossbows, the big one is 1 10 cm, the range is 150 m, the middle arm is 90 cm, the range is 100 m, and the forearm is 65 cm. The arrow is 30-40 cm long.

In order to kill prey more effectively, ethnic minorities in southwest China also generally put poison on crossbows. Their habit of using crossbows has been recorded since ancient times, as early as 2000 years ago. Later, it was repeatedly described in the literature of past dynasties, and it was also reflected in the traveler's travels and anthropological investigation reports in modern times. Today, the custom of shooting crossbows still exists among the ethnic minorities in this area, but the application of hunting is less and less, and it has generally become a fixed item in sports competitions and regular national sports meetings.

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All these provide some enlightenment for discussing the origin of crossbows. Perhaps, this weapon is closely related to the hunting life in the ancient jungle. Because hunting in the jungle, it is especially necessary to stretch the string to ambush, which will inevitably prompt people to solve the problem of long-term stretching and delaying the opening of the bow. It is also a proof that the ancient people in China used the crossbow as a special weapon for "dangerous people" in charge of mountain forests.

Some researchers trace the appearance of China crossbow back to the Neolithic Age, and think that some small long bone fragments unearthed from Yangshao, Longshan and Qijia cultural sites are similar in shape to the bone trigger on the crossbow held by southwest ethnic minorities, and may be the same object.

Some scholars believe that crossbows may have been invented by ethnic minorities around China, while in East Asia, the early spread of crossbows may have spread from the periphery to the center. This inference depends entirely on today's ethnological materials, obviously ignoring that the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River and even the middle and lower reaches of the Yellow River were also densely forested, haunted by wild animals, mixed tribes and popular hunting thousands of years ago.

Primitive crossbows still exist among ethnic minorities in remote areas today only because their living environment and lifestyle have remained relatively primitive for a long time.

However, perhaps we should consider the origin of crossbows in the Yangtze River basin and its south as a whole, including Southeast Asia. Because the ecological and cultural environment of this vast area is very close in history, all its indigenous people have the habit of using crossbows, but some areas have developed rapidly and the habit of using crossbows has gradually disappeared, while some areas have developed late and the habit of using crossbows still exists today.