What did the first crossbow look like?
I never realized how a lot of you were history fans or at least wanted to be history buffs. But, among the most asked articles I've received was a piece on the roots and background of the crossbow. I've always been a bit of a history geek, so I knew some of this. However, to make this as detailed as I could, I spent several weeks in profound search looking for everything I could find on the history of this potent weapon. Origins in East Asia We do not know precisely who invented the handheld crossbow, but we know that it originated in East Asia. The earliest signs of crossbows in early China and neighboring lands point to at least the 6th Century BC, and Sir Joseph Needham states in his Science and Civilisation in China that it is not possible to determine precisely which of the East Asian peoples invented the weapon. When you have a look at the linguistic origins of the term, it derives from outside China by their then neighbors, that were often hired as m...