
Brawny Bones Reveal Medieval Hungarian Warriors Were Accomplished Archers - benbreen
http://www.forbes.com/sites/kristinakillgrove/2015/09/30/brawny-bones-reveal-10th-century-hungarian-warriors-were-accomplished-archers/
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InglorionG
'They discovered that there were lesions apparent in both groups of males,
such as the bony attachment site for the biceps muscle, meaning regardless of
whether the man was an archer or not, he had well-developed upper forearm
muscles. “These common alterations refer to an activity that was widespread
among the whole male population,” Tihanyi and colleagues write, although they
do not know exactly what that activity was.'

Aside from the humorous implication of this paragraph, I wonder what activity
it was. Sword-swinging? Some kind of repetitive work?

Bioarchaeology is so cool.

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zyxley
I would suspect something to do with farming, given that that was the usual
job of the majority of the European population at the time.

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tomcam
Surprisingly, Michael Crichton's book "Timeline" is a gentle introduction to
the state of the art in knowledge about the so-called dark ages, shattering
many of the myths we learned about that era in school. The myth of the
overburdened armor wearer is one of them. Crichton was a first-class
researcher and his bibliographic commentary alone is worth the price of
admission.

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mmanfrin
Timeline is a book I've always held out on the periphery of a list of books I
might want to read; this has pushed it in to the on deck circle. I am a sucker
for well researched and generally-factual historical fiction (Stephen
Pressfield being one of my first favorite authors).

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tribune
Interesting article, but the first sentence bothers me. The "Byzantine Empire"
was the same thing as the Eastern Roman Empire (the latter being its more
proper name anyhow). The 9th and 10th Centuries were actually some of the
Empire's more stable years.

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prodmerc
Interesting article, but why would one assume all Hungarian warriors were
accomplished archers based on one unit/batallion?

It's like saying English warriors were accomplished archers because they found
a group of longbowmen (who also started training from childhood).

Archers were a staple of any medieval army, and obviously they had the best
men grouped together and sent to battle...

