Northern Skies - Janet! (Page 19 of 21)

You won't know how much I'd like to go! I'll talk to Mr. C and see what happens, but it all depends a lot on what happens at home. There is a chance he's going to commission a project (he designed BTW - poor him, if something turns out to be wrong or not working, he's going to be there to take the flack!) in Kazakstan. If that happens, there is no way I'd be able to do it. But let's see closer to the time (or the time I really need to commit). *crosses fingers*

To add, on the Northern Border the use of long bows survived even longer and only came to an end on the other side of 1600 - (1) because the borderers were really good with the long bow but also (2) the wet weather made the use of muskets really tricky (many hands were lost that way).

Also, the bows and strings could be adapted for someone with a weaker upper body, but this would have been typically for tournaments and such, not combat.

It's very hard to say to what extent women could fight on the border given the general decay and lawlessness, but I think it's a safe assumption to make that they also would've had some sort of preferred weapon to defend themselves. There is no doubt that everyone had to do their bit when the time came, children too.

Add: The upper arms and thumbs/fingers of archers from days were also unnaturally large from all the hours of practising and shooting. I'll need to look it up whether it would the right arm and left hand or the other way around, I'm too lazy today. Sorry. But you get the drift.

Oooh!  You called him a backguard!  I've got shivers up my spine.

I belive a lot of Scotish women learned to fight with swords and spears so their southern neighbors might also have learned as well.

You shoot according to you dominant eye. As most people (about 2/3 of the population) are right eyed, they would lean to shoot right handed. People who are lefted eyed would have to learn left handed which would be difficult if they were right handed.

Weak bows under 70 pounds were not efficient weapons and would only have been used to teach children to shoot.They would not have been able to penetrate any armor and would have had a limited range.

I suspect that most left-eyed people are left-handed.  I'm a southpaw and my eye dominance is mixed: right for reading, left for everything else.  I suspect a lot of lefties have such mixed dominance, and that this contributes greatly to the poor handwriting southpaws are famous for.  We have to learn twice, once with the left eye for the letterforms, and again with the right eye for writing from language.

(Since I started learning shorthand later in life, I was able to observe the process while learning to write all over again.  See my book covers.)

I don't know. 33% of any population is left eyed but only 10% of any population is left handed. I don't think there can be much of a correlation. My sister is left handed and right eyed and the archery instructor implied that that was common for left handers to be right eyed and have to shoot right handed.

I do know there is so genetics involved (left handedness tends to run in families) so maybe eye dominance does to? If that is so then maybe a particular family could have both a lot of left handers and a lot of left eye dominance? I don't know much about biology so many I shouldn't speculate...

I shoot right-handed too, now that you mention it. Okay, I bat and shoot with my right hand, everything else, left ...

I have no idea how the statistics are collected so I couldn't say on the accuasy of them.

I do know that a lot of people assume that because they are right handed they must be right eyed, and are shocked when they find out they are actually left eyed! My husband is right handed and left eyed. So for archery he needs a left handed bow. But cameras are different. He has no problem taking pictures with his right eye.

Oh, archeologists can identify trained longbow archers by changes both in arm bones and in the spine, which takes on a permanent bend in the direction to which it is so long twisted and in which it is so long stressed.

Great conversation. No comments. I've never thought about being right or left eye dominant. Intriguing.

So I could cover one eye with an eyepatch and memorize pirate songs, switch to the eye and sing it better? Brings new meaning to talk like a pirate day.

On a more serious note, could I read faster and retain more if I excluded one eye? Gonna have to try.

Try reading with both eyes. Now that's weird! Going back to just reading without thinking which eye(s) I'm using.