The first redhead on the horse is Katie Stearns, a modern horse archer who calls herself The Flying Duchess. Here she is again, Mongolian bow in use:

Once upon a time, Episode #119 to be exact, the MythBusters crew approached the “rumor” that shooting arrows from a running horse made them penetrate twice as much. This obviously is not true, though it may have been a bit of a cultural memory from long ago, because a narrow, hardened, bodkin pointed Mongol arrow fired from a Mongol bow launched by some short hairy dude riding a pony ... that arrow will go right through you. Whereas the more knife-like broadpoint European style arrow fired from a less powerful longbow by a standing archer will just go mostly through you. Either way you’re dead, but that MythBusters angle allowed me to post team member Kari Byron’s photo. Yeah, like I need another reason to post pictures of cute redheads. And where did the MythBusters go to learn how to shoot bows from horses? Gosh, they went to visit the Flying Duchess, because she teaches it.

Oh, the status symbol thing: once the horsemen of the Steppes took over China, suddenly it was cool to be an archer if you were at Court. So a bunch of fakers started wearing fancy jade thumb rings. Over the generations the Chinese version of the archery thumb ring lost it’s flattened bill and just became a cylindrical ring. But the Chinese composite bow is nearly identical to the Mongolian bow. And once the Horde took over Europe, well at least the areas where present day Turkey and Hungary are, the Turkish bow became less like the Scythian bow and far more Mongolian in design. As did the Hungarian bow. Because it’s a better weapon. Between China and Turkey is India, and they got in on the act too. Did the Mongols take over India along the way? Yes they did! Was the Moghul Dynasty Mongol derived? Ever hear of this guy called Tamerlane? So that answer is, You Betcha. I’m pretty sure that the two fancy rings pictured are from the Moghul period.

So there you go. A piece of history that has killed thousands and thousands, has been a status symbol, has been turned into jewelry, and is still in use today. And I hate to say it, but I think fuckface Kerry was right about the pronunciation. From what I can dig up, the first Khan there really was “Jing Gis”. But our soldiers never behaved in any way reminiscent of the Horde ... because that would mean killing everyone as fast as possible, and then moving on. Not standing around the same damn rice paddy for a decade, being micromanaged from the other end of the world. That’s the other reason the Horde almost never lost - they never stopped coming. Or going. They never stopped, period. Retreat? Surrender? Coffee break? Nap time? No such terms in their language.

Here’s a pooper-scooper full of links:

http://www.asianart.com/articles/rings/index.html#7

http://www.primitiveways.com/archer%27s_thumb_ring.html

http://mountedarchery.net/equipment/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archer%27s_paradox

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongolian_release#Mongolian_Draw.2C_Mongolian_release

cross section of this kind of bow: http://www.atarn.org/chinese/visible_bow/visible.htm
http://www.atarn.org/chinese/making_chinese_bow/making_bow.htm

http://www.themiddleages.net/life/arrows.html

The bows are held together with fish glue. Fish glue is also known as isinglass. The other kind of isinglass, which can be used to make windows for your Surrey With The Fringe On Top:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mica#Isinglass
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isinglass

And trying to find out what Isinglass was got me started on this whole thing. Song lyrics from Oklahoma! to Isinglass to fish glue to Mongolian bows to Mongolian Releases to archery thumb rings to mounted archers to interesting redheads to Mythbusters. You can still buy fish glue today, though the price varies. It is much stronger than rabbit skin glue. Heck, for composite bows it’s stronger than epoxy. Too bad it isn’t fully waterproof.

http://apps.webcreate.com/ecom/catalog/product_specific.cfm?ClientID=15&ProductID=17576

http://www.ginellames.fr/us/creations/colle/

http://mythbustersresults.com/exploding-bumper

http://anthromuseum.missouri.edu/online/thumbring/thumbring.shtml

http://www.scrappleface.com/?p=1604

video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q81H-V1_gGo

This is a plain one:




These are fancy ones:





They were not originally designed to be jewelry, but they have been status symbols in the past.


They have been around for a very long time.


Once you know what they are, searching for them can lead you to these two impressive redheads:








Yes, that is Kari Byron from Mythbusters.

Hmm, I’m wondering if I should have left that last bit off. That might make this both too easy and too distracting.  Anyway, a correct answer will not just name the object, but describe it’s proper use. References to John F’ing Kerry are optional, in context. Crivens, I just gave out another clue!!

{Sunday night} : Ok, time to get blatant. With this gizmo nearly the entire known world was conquered in just a couple of decades. And the parts that weren’t conquered were scared shitless, because they knew they were powerless against it. Tens, if not hundreds, of thousands died due of it.

Posted by Drew458     on 10/23/2010 at 10:32 AM   
Filed Under: • Fun-Stuff •  
• Comments (11) • Trackbacks(0)  Permalink •  

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