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• When was the crossbow invented how to#

These are used for hunting wild beasts, and are about two feet long. "The larger arrows have an iron head, something like the sharp barbs of a harpoon. They have to sit on their haunches, and apply both feet to the middle of the bow, while they pull with all their strength on the string to bend it back. They are good marksmen with their bows, which require great strength to bend. But the merest puncture kills inevitably. The handle of the bow is ingeniously split, and by a little peg, which acts as a trigger, the bow-string is disengaged, and, as the spring is very strong, sends the arrow to a great distance, and light as it is, with great force. To prevent this they use a kind of sticky gum, a lump of which is kept on the underside of the bow, and with which a small spot in the groove is lightly rubbed.

The arrows are so light that they would blow away if they were simply laid in the groove of the bow.

When was the crossbow invented how to#

These are only slender harmless reeds, a foot long, whose sharpened ends are dipped into a deadly vegetable poison, which these people know how to make. "Among the crowd today I saw men armed with crossbows, from which are shot either iron-headed arrows, or the little insignificant looking but really most deadly, poison-tipped arrows. Walker, who eventually gave it to General Pitt Rivers.ĭu Chaillu's account, Explorations & Adventures in Equatorial Africa (1861), describes his encounter with these weapons and those who made and used them: It then came into the hands of du Chaillu's fellow explorer, Robert Bruce N.

This crossbow was collected by the explorer and gorilla-hunter, Paul du Chaillu in the 1850s. Its acquisition in the mid 19th century also featured, on a wider scale, in a study on hitherto relatively unknown region and peoples in equatorial Africa. This crossbow played a central part in anthropologists' understanding of the spread and development of crossbows. It has a rare and archaic 'split stock' trigger mechanism and was used with either iron-headed or poisoned arrows.

This wooden crossbow was used by the Fang and Mpongwe peoples of Gabon in west-central Africa. Part of the Pitt Rivers Museum Founding Collection.