Most important technologies from history.

[Dachs]

So many of the ancient civilizations collapsed because of over-use of the soil, especially in the middle east where the soil could become very salty.

Like what?

 

[sophie]

Some people have said that early bows were near useless for battle, and that until the creating of the Recurve bow or Horn bow archers would have been a mostly pointless addition to an army. Does anyone know any more about that subject? Because I've read things that say that, but other sources that are less supportive.

Spoiler :

I think these guys would like to have a word with you.

 

[TomYo689]

There are 2 bows and the rest have pole arms.

Not necessarily bows in particular but other missiles weapons had common use too

 

[sophie]

There are 2 bows and the rest have pole arms.

Not necessarily bows in particular but other missiles weapons had common use too

It's medieval art. Just the fact that they bothered to put the longbowmen in the foreground demonstrates their relevance.

 

[Phrossack]

Longbows were useful but are at least as overrated as katanas. They can't actually kill fully armored knights except with a lucky hit at close range with a heavy arrow, but then most enemies weren't fully armored knights.

 

[sophie]

Longbows were useful but are at least as overrated as katanas. They can't actually kill fully armored knights except with a lucky hit at close range with a heavy arrow, but then most enemies weren't fully armored knights.

Overrated? Yes. Still substantial parts of the English army in the 14th century? Also yes. Not horn/recurve bows? Also also yes.

 

[Phrossack]

Overrated? Yes. Still substantial parts of the English army in the 14th century? Also yes. Not horn/recurve bows? Also also yes.

Yeah, I know, I just have this reflex that triggers whenever someone praises the English longbow.

 

[Masada]

Yeah, I know, I just have this reflex that triggers whenever someone praises the English Welsh longbow.

Fixed.

 

[Phrossack]

Fixed.

It's also called the English longbow, and in any case the Welsh often made their bows of elm rather than yew. But anyway.

 

[ace99]

Condoms and birth control pills which gave people relatively reliable control over procreation for the first time regardless of Romans using laserpicum or whatnot.

 

[Lord Baal]

Condoms and birth control pills which gave people relatively reliable control over procreation for the first time regardless of Romans using laserpicum or whatnot.

Anyone who thinks birth control pills are reliable has never had a teenage girlfriend suddenly announce a pregnancy. Wait, what? Ignore that.

 

[ace99]

Check yo condoms son.

 

[Ajidica]

To answer the OP, I would say steam power. Steam Power gave us the Industrial Revolution and radically changed how we live.

 

[classical_hero]

Condoms and birth control pills which gave people relatively reliable control over procreation for the first time regardless of Romans using laserpicum or whatnot.

Absolute rubbish. They have never stopped the overall rate of pregnancies.

The most important invention is clearly the printing press. Allowing books to be spread more rapidly than before allowing the freer dissemination of knowledge than before.

 

[ace99]

Absolute rubbish. They have never stopped the overall rate of pregnancies.

What does that have to do with what I said?

 

[Domen]

Language.

 

[Masada]

It's also called the English longbow, and in any case the Welsh often made their bows of elm rather than yew. But anyway.

Anglocentrist.

Absolute rubbish. They have never stopped the overall rate of pregnancies.

Sorta. Access to birth control doesn't always translate into a fall into a fall in the total number of babies born at the individual level. A mother might want three babies and the average number of babies born to mothers sans birth control could still be three. But at larger geographies the effect is almost always a reduction in the total number of babies born because birth control by its very nature reduces the fertile portion of a women's life. For example, a 30 year old whose only just stopped taking birth control pills might be productively fertile for another 5 years and during that time could reasonably expect to have 2 babies during that period while a 20 year old who never took birth control has 15 years of fertility left and could reasonably expect to have say 6 babies during that time.[1] There's a lot of other demographic effects acting on women who take birth control. But that's the simplest one that doesn't require an essay length response on my part and I think answers the question nicely.

[1] These figures are fairly arbitrary but at least pass the common sense test. (A few months to conceive; 9 to carry to term; and a year or more to 'cool off').

 

[Pickledtezcat]

There are 2 bows and the rest have pole arms.

Not necessarily bows in particular but other missiles weapons had common use too

Well some of what I've read over the years has suggested that the bow during ancient times was less popular than the sling, indeed, good old wikipedia has this to say:

Modern authorities vary widely in their estimates of the effective range of ancient weapons and of course bows and arrows could also have been used to produce a long-range arcing trajectory, but ancient writers repeatedly stress the sling's advantage of range. The sling was light to carry and cheap to produce; ammunition in the form of stones was readily available and often to be found near the site of battle. The ranges the sling could achieve with molded lead glandes was only topped by the strong composite bow or, centuries later, the heavy English longbow, both at massively greater cost.

And the picture posted above features both longbowmen, and you'll notice that one of the combatants is a slinger. It seems that the sling was favored over the bow because many levy troops were already proficient in it's use (from hunting) and it was an effective weapon against un-armoured enemies.

The same wikipedia article on the sling mentions the staff sling, which sounds intriguing. Like a mini trebuchet it was used to hurl rocks (and later grenades, or even molotov cocktails) in siege situations. That's a weapon I'd like to see in a game, but perhaps it would be best reserved as a single attack animation in siege situations.

On the subject of the longbow:

Longbows were useful but are at least as overrated as katanas. They can't actually kill fully armored knights except with a lucky hit at close range with a heavy arrow, but then most enemies weren't fully armored knights.

I saw a tv show about 10 years ago, similar to mythbusters, but on the BBC where they tried out a longbow and a crossbow against period plate armour and they were both able to penetrate at quite long range, however, even if we ignore that point (and I wasn't fully convinced, because the armour was attached to a wooden post, not to a man, and there were no underlaying soft padding layers to spead the force of the hit), there's still the fact that the horses of the period were not fully armoured. You don't need to kill the rider if you can kill the horse.

On the other hand, when we look carefully at one of the most prominenet victories of Longbow over Armoured knights, the battle of Agincourt we are told that the French knights...

unable to outflank the longbowmen (because of the encroaching woodland) and unable to charge through the forest of sharpened stakes that protected the archers.

It seems here that the knights dismounted and attacked on foot, but the muddy terrain and flanking woodland again helped the English archers and they were able to finish off the tired french fighters with mallets and rocks. it seems that the Longbow wasa fearsome weapon, in the right situation, but I wouldn't want to field a whole army of longbowmen hoping that it's going to rain.

On another note, The Chinese stated that massed crossbows were the most effective weapon against light unarmoured cavalry (a precursor to the infantry square of Napoleonic warfare perhaps), but these cavalry were horse archers and light cavalry and so were not armoured.

Overall the impression I get about archery in warfare matches that stated here (again wikipedia but I'm sure you can find a similar quote elsewhere):

During the Middle Ages, archery in warfare was not as prevalent and dominant in Western Europe as popular myth sometimes dictates. Archers were quite often the lowest-paid soldiers in an army or were conscripted from the peasantry. This was due to the cheap nature of the bow and arrow, as compared to the expense needed to equip a professional man-at-arms with good armour and a sword. Professional archers required a lifetime of training and expensive bows to be effective, and were thus generally rare in Europe (see English longbow). The bow was seldom used to decide battles and often viewed as a "lower class weapon" or as a toy, by the nobility. However, among the Vikings, even royalty such as Magnus Barelegs* used archery effectively, and the Muslims used archery, presumably also in their numerous raiding expeditions all over the Western European seaboard, in the 9th and 10th centuries.

*Magnus Barelegs. hahaha what a great name.

 

[Domen]

You don't need to kill the rider if you can kill the horse.

But battle horses were extremely hardy animals - one arrow is not going to kill such a horse or stop it (a wounded horse can still fight, as long as its leg bones are intact - there are numerous sources which confirm that even horses with multiple wounds - sometimes mortal ones - continued to carry their riders).

A rain of arrows is not going to stop a cavalry charge by itself, even if relatively many horses are hit and wounded by those arrows.

However, archers were by no means useless in Medieval European warfare. They were very useful, not just in Norman and British warfare.

According to German chronicler Thietmar (born 975, died 1018), during the Polish-German wars of late 10th and early 11th centuries, Poles used archers in great numbers and to great effect. And although recurve & double-recurve bows were also used in Early Medieval Poland, flatbows were more common.

So claiming that flatbows - especially longbows - were useless as weapons, is wrong.

And the idea that 100% of Medieval troops had full plate armour covering their entire body - is also wrong, even for late Middle Ages.

It is true that bow was quickly replaced by crossbow in most of Medieval Europe - but perhaps more due to the fact that a crossbow required much less practice or training to be efficiently used in combat than a bow, rather than due to undisputed superiority in combat efficiency of a crosbow (which was not the case).

It is also a myth that every crossbow could easily penetrate plate armour. Just like with bows, for majority of crossbows it was problematic. It always depended on many factors - including for example quality and thickness of a particular armour, as well as features of a particular crossbow or bow.

 

[Phrossack]

Modern armor tests are rarely accurate at all, especially with mail, and above all whenever they're done on a TV show. They fudge numbers, use historically inaccurate bows, arrows, and armor, shoot from point-blank range, and in general are unprofessional.

The following is a rant about mail.

Spoiler :

Many of the techniques of armor-making have been lost, especially with mail. Much of it is butted (i.e. no rivets), which is virtually useless against thrusts. The mail that is riveted is usually low-quality Indian stuff with punched rather than drifted rivets, and the rivets aren't centered, and the material's wrong, and they forget the 10 or 20 layers of padding beneath the mail. The Ayyubid nobleman Usama ibn Munqidh once jumped his horse over a hedge and lanced a Frank in the side so hard he nearly fell off his saddle sideways and had his helmet knocked off. Usama later learned that the Frank was unhurt. He also thought he lanced clean through another knight and killed him, only to learn that, again, the knight survived. There are accounts of crusaders looking like hedgehogs from all the arrows sticking out of their armor, and yet they still moved undisturbed. And mail, despite being pricey, was very heavily used for thousands of years all across the Old World. Clearly, it was good stuff.