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I am in China, and very well, I will witness the rise of China
As long as America is less stingy,
China is more free than you think, as long as you are an ordinary person
America is not as free as you think，don't moved other people's cheeses.
I'd like to take an American salary and go to China to spend
Unfortunately, I can't contradict you.
I am not in America. Funny how anyone who is not Chinese in this thread is somehow automatically American. I am actually British. And I am pretty certain that Britain is more free than China. You lot just got a dictator, you know, a Xi Jinping who will probably bring war and suffering to China in the long run.
Perhaps the pain that America has brought us, strategic need
China must be cautious
I think we have too many lessons learned.
This is a war without smoke.
God Bless America,
The history of the 5000 may not be difficult for China
and as for the arabs taking thing with force comes way easier then farming herding and trading aslease at the beginning so they never took things in, in steps by step mode. as for the jew never have had a strong strong hold to developed in to a system, and also they are to fixted on the one god theory just like the people in medieval times.
My first intention if you read at all is to mock the guy calling Greeks superior to Chinese farming plebs i wasn't trying to be serious ROFL that is y i call Athens merchants and Sparta farmers mate you can really pick word out of word out of it's context. if you can call people farmer plebs well merchant mobs is the phrase i'll use on Athens, simple as that. and then you comes in going all nerd raging about technical with numbers and "terminology".
BTW almost ≠ all
Sparta ≠ Spartans
Again, you have no clue what you are talking about.
Historians don't know exactly the # of Greeks at Thermopylae, but both Herodotus and Polybius agree on ~6000 fighting Greeks (Polybius counts the Helots, Herodotus doesn't). You would know this if you had ever read either.
Most of the places I mentioned weren't democracies either. In fact...only Athens was. A Republic is not inherently a democracy.
Medieval lords mostly didn't have slaves working their farms. Serfs are not slaves.
The Arabs were a trading people as early as ~1000BCE. Almost 2000 years before they burst out of Arabia and "took things by force". Even after they did, they made huge amounts of their wealth off trade caravans. And what does Jewish monotheism have to do with their politics (in this context, anyway)?
I don't even know what you are trying to say here your English is so bad.
You came in here using terminology, like "republic", "periokoi" and "helots", and "feudalism" and don't seem to know what any of those words mean.
And yes, Sparta does= Spartans. If you live in Sparta, you are one of 2 things; a Spartiate, or a periokoi that works in Sparta but isn't technically a citizen. Well, or a woman or child, I suppose.
if you would only read a book and think about it's meaning instead of taking it for what it is. you will find Sparta it's more closer to the feudalism system as it's structured.
spartan land owners and professional soildres owns military service to sparta .
nobles land owners and military service to the kings.
the sparta have slave to do their work while they train or what ever they do collect/take "tax" from the slaves .
nobles have serfs to do their work while they do their own thing go to war or what ever. and they collect stuff from the serfs as well as the 1st night thingy on woman, and give military service to the king, ect
pretty similar structure just call different names. eg serfs/helots. Spartans/lords/knights. may be peasent are not slaves but they are pretty similar and treated in the same way
and also for the arab they did not become the ""arabs"" until Muslim united them all .just as greeks did not become greek with out it's culture such as wines and plays... ect. they were just loose trib living in that area until they developed a culture. in the arab's case religion.
I don't need to look these things up. I know them. If you do not, don't use the terms. Peroikoi aren't "free Greeks doing their thing in Sparta", they are the non-Spartan citizens who live around Sparta. They aren't Spartans. That is a very important difference; aside from basically being controlled by Sparta, the Peroikoi live like any other Greek.
And while most of what you said there is correct, there are huge differences in political structures and how kingdoms are run between the Spartans and say medieval French. For instance, it wasn't "Spartan land owners", it was the Spartan state that owned the land, and doled it out to individual Spartan families, with helots tied to these plots of land, but they weren't ever given leave to break this land apart and create vassals. The system of liege/vassalage is what makes feudalism, and that doesn't exist with the Spartans.
Arabs were Arabs long before Islam. They weren't a united people, by any means, but they were speaking (and writing) Arabic, and came from Arabia, and understood themselves as distinctly different from Phoenicians or Egyptians or Persians or Hebrews or any other people in their area. There were tons of little tribes, but they were tribes of Arabs.
Lastly, Greeks were Greeks way way before they had plays, and before they had a whole ton of wine (they grew grapes, but didn't have good wine-making technolofy yet). The Myceneans were Greek. They wrote, we have their writing, they were around ~1600-1200BCE. Hundreds of years before the Greeks as you know them. They used a different writing system, but the language was Greek.
Take your own advice and read a book. Many books, preferably.
I'd like to point out that Greek gastraphetes was probably mostly used in a larger version as a siege engine. The actual infantry weapon gastraphetes was a cumbersome and hard to aim version of a crossbow (check out the youtube recreations and testing). And the loading mechanism (pushing it against your chest/belly) doesn't seem like it has a high draw weight either so it was likely much weaker than ancient Chinese or medieval crossbows. It wasn't mass produced and probably wasn't that effective considering that design was used only for a short time and soon died out.
On the other hand, the Warring States/Qin era crossbows was produced by the thousands and were produced to precise engineer specs that allowed interchangeability in parts. These crossbows were reloaded with both hands and sometimes lying on the ground - so they had a decently high draw weight (300+ lb) combined with very long power stroke that made it roughly comparable to 1000 lb draw weight (but lower powerstroke) medieval-era European crossbows in power.
They would easily punch through linothorax (as linothorax are punctured by much lower draw-weight bows as depicted in literature and drawings) and also go through bronze armor. The question is would they go through the small shields of the phalangites AND their linothorax armor AND go deep enough into flesh. Either way, they would badly wound, if not outright kill phalangite soldiers if it nails their shields into their hands or bypasses the shield.
The Qin/Warring States would have a huge advantage in ranged combat.
The Macedonians would have a cavalry advantage due to their longer exposure with Persian horsemen.
The bread and butter of both armies however, would be pikemen and long polearms.
We don't actually know how strong a gastraphetes would have been, but from accounts of their use, they could fire a very long way (meaning probably quite high draw weight, at least compared to bows of the time). The design was used for a few hundred years, just not in large numbers, probably because it wouldn't have gotten through both shield and armor, but worked just fine against enemies like the Persians and Illyrians who didn't have the same level of defense.
Chinese crossbows made it up to 300+#, but at this time that seems unlikely as anywhere near the average of these bows. The difference in power stroke would definitely make a fair difference on power, but I don't think it is 700# of draw difference.
I think you are giving Chinese crossbows of this era far too much credit. They were powerful and incredibly useful, no doubt, but the numbers you are throwing out seem to have been pulled out your ass (or come from later weapons, and applied here). And piercing bronze armor seems iffy; punching a hole into it, and going through the metal a tiny bit seems reasonable, but simply punching through seems unlikely.
I think you are giving Chinese crossbows too little credit here.
First, there is basically little written text of the gastraphetes besides a few mentions of a few mercenaries using it and basically no archeological evidence. The fact that it needs to be reloaded by pushing it against your belly/chest makes it very awkward and difficult to reload - and it is doubtful you can have any meaningful higher draw weight with such a metbod. Compared to most Greek bows at the time, it certainly would've been better, but most Greek bows have a short range and lower power anyways. For example, even the famed Cretan archers were outranged by Persian bows.
In "Echols the Ancient Slinger", the book states: "...the Persian archers had a longer range than the Cretan archers, and(iii. 4. 17) that the Cretans were able to make use of the Persian arrows pickedup on the field..."
https://www.scribd.com/document/373527062/Echols-the-Ancient-Slinger
What we do know is that it wasn't widespread (it was likely relegated to a niche weapon given how little it is mentioned) and the design was abandoned as the Romans went with larger torsion siege engines (replacing the siege gastraphetes) and went with a completely different trigger & reloading design by the late Roman era and middle ages.
Second, going through bronze armor iosn't hard to do. Bronze armor during the bronze age was rathger thin hammered sheets of bronze. We know these are thin because the curiass was supposedly quite light (under 10 lb) from what I've read. In tests by Skallagrim, higher draw weight European crossbows and modern 200 lb crossbows have no problem easily punching through steel riveted chainmail and going several inches into the target undernearth.
Third, a 300 lb draw weight isn't that unusual for crossbows of the Qin/Warring States to Han Dynasty periods. These crossbows are drawn with bow hands and the heaviet versions are drawn while lying on the ground with leg muscles. If an English longbowmelan or Mongol bowman can draw 160-180 lb bows with one hand on the string, then you can double the draw weight when using both hands and/or using your keg muscles to pull.
The PBS Nova documentary "Emperor's Ghost Army" talks about the Qin crossbow. British military historian Mike Loades talks the power achieved by its draw weight and long power stroke, and about how it was not surpassed until the heaviest of European mechanical aided crossbows during the middle ages. He draws a 200 something pound modern compound lever crossbow standing up and uses it to test the bronze crossbow bolts. Here is the video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=raC2k40VK78&list=PL0vElQlMrCZxuhcw09G42tTjQ-x-auegW&index=4&t=0s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XgY5rtV2wDg&list=PL0vElQlMrCZxuhcw09G42tTjQ-x-auegW&index=5&t=1947s
Hackneyscribe around several forums talks about the draw weight of ancient Han crossbows where he translated some texts. I believe he has a link or source for his translations in one of his posts. In this thread, he is saying the typical Han crossbow was 387 lb, and with its long powerstroke, makes it comparable to a 1000lb winch drawn crossbow. He also speculates that the heaviest Han crossbow, with 516 lb draw weight, was slightly more powerful than a medieval 1250 lb winch drawn steel crossbow.
http://historum.com/asian-history/131303-han-dynasty-crossbow-ii.html
We don't have much writing on the gastraphetes, but the writing we have is pretty solid, with an explanation of construction and a nice little diagram.
There is a inventory list from the late Han that lists a whole bunch of weapons, including crossbows above 400#, it was certainly doable, I just don't think that was the usual at this time. The list ranges from ~200# to ~400#, but I think the overwhelming majority would have been on the lower end.
There are mentions of later dynasties (Tang and Song, quite awhile later) using different wood for the stock, and slightly different technique, all of which were able to bring the power of the bows up. Probably no more than bringing all of the crossbows up to that higher end of ~400#, but I could be wrong, they might have later gotten them up much more powerful.
First, there is basically little written text of the gastraphetes besides a few mentions of a few mercenaries using it and basically no archeological evidence. The fact that it needs to be reloaded by pushing it against your belly/chest makes it very awkward and difficult to reload - and it is doubtful you can have any meaningful higher draw weight with such a metbod. Compared to most Greek bows at the time, it certainly would've been better, but most Greek bows have a short range and lower power anyways. For example, even the famed Cretan archers were outranged by Persian bows.
In "Echols the Ancient Slinger", the book states: "...the Persian archers had a longer range than the Cretan archers, and(iii. 4. 17) that the Cretans were able to make use of the Persian arrows pickedup on the field..."
https://www.scribd.com/document/373527062/Echols-the-Ancient-Slinger
What we do know is that it wasn't widespread (it was likely relegated to a niche weapon given how little it is mentioned) and the design was abandoned as the Romans went with larger torsion siege engines (replacing the siege gastraphetes) and went with a completely different trigger & reloading design by the late Roman era and middle ages.
Second, going through bronze armor iosn't hard to do. Bronze armor during the bronze age was rathger thin hammered sheets of bronze. We know these are thin because the curiass was supposedly quite light (under 10 lb) from what I've read. In tests by Skallagrim, higher draw weight European crossbows and modern 200 lb crossbows have no problem easily punching through steel riveted chainmail and going several inches into the target undernearth.
Third, a 300 lb draw weight isn't that unusual for crossbows of the Qin/Warring States to Han Dynasty periods. These crossbows are drawn with bow hands and the heaviet versions are drawn while lying on the ground with leg muscles. If an English longbowmelan or Mongol bowman can draw 160-180 lb bows with one hand on the string, then you can double the draw weight when using both hands and/or using your keg muscles to pull.
The PBS Nova documentary "Emperor's Ghost Army" talks about the Qin crossbow. British military historian Mike Loades talks the power achieved by its draw weight and long power stroke, and about how it was not surpassed until the heaviest of European mechanical aided crossbows during the middle ages. He draws a 200 something pound modern compound lever crossbow standing up and uses it to test the bronze crossbow bolts. Here is the video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=raC2k40VK78&list=PL0vElQlMrCZxuhcw09G42tTjQ-x-auegW&index=4&t=0s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XgY5rtV2wDg&list=PL0vElQlMrCZxuhcw09G42tTjQ-x-auegW&index=5&t=1947s
Hackneyscribe around several forums talks about the draw weight of ancient Han crossbows where he translated some texts. I believe he has a link or source for his translations in one of his posts. In this thread, he is saying the typical Han crossbow was 387 lb, and with its long powerstroke, makes it comparable to a 1000lb winch drawn crossbow. He also speculates that the heaviest Han crossbow, with 516 lb draw weight, was slightly more powerful than a medieval 1250 lb winch drawn steel crossbow.
http://historum.com/asian-history/131303-han-dynasty-crossbow-ii.html