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And volume/volume of fire. One can't carry that many javelins, nor have that many on the baggage train
Maybe that's because it's allegedly a thing about pilum, quite special javelin, not all javelins?
Pilum does not stand out in any way from other javelins, apart from its design that prevents reuse.
Both of these are arguments in favor of arrows in general, but we see a clear difference between classical and medieval warfare, which requires a more specific argument. For the post-medieval period that would be the introduction of firearms making shields much less useful and thus the shield-disabling function of javelins superfluous. I don't see an equivalent change between the classical and the medieval period. Shields remained in use, were still mostly made of wood, were still vulnerable to being weighed down by javelins.
English longbows were an improvement over earlier bows but their arrows wouldn't weigh down a shield the way a javelin does. Your suggestion about cavalry strikes me as more likely. It's not a technical innovation but the prevalence of various arms used by the opponent logically leads to a different mix of weapons in response. Maybe the decisive factor was that cavalry speed made it harder to aim javelins at their shields? Or perhaps spears or arrows to the horse were a more effective response?
Me too. Not in the sense of it not happening, but in the sense of it happening enough to be more than the occasional nuisance.
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It's from "De re Militari" by Vegetius
https://web.archive.org/web/2021050...talattic.org/home/war/vegetius/index.php#b118
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In Spain Javelins been a thing during medieval times. Spanish Knights wielded them.
Also in early medieval times throwing spears been important everywhere.
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Regarding Javelins there is a big difference between a throwing spear and a Roman Pilum. A Pilum is designed to bend and stick with its soft tip and is barely useless in melee. (Altough it had a hard metal piece on the other side of the shaft)
Also a smaller version of the Javelin was quite common in medieval times, the dart which has roughly the lenght of an arrow.
Also a smaller version of the Javelin was quite common in medieval times, the dart which has roughly the lenght of an arrow.
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I think it depends on the bow you use. Basic bows are not comparable to a good compound bow or a longbow.
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You don't see many infantry with javelins in Europe after about 1400. And that's about the same time when virtually everryone has given up using shields in battle - men-at-arms in plate armour didn't use them, infantry very often used two-handed weapons so didn't use them, missile troops wiht bow or crossbow weren't using them.... About the only place you'd see something like a shield was with the pavise, and with that it's not something you're trying to hold when you're fighting but to provide covere against missiles. Having a javelin stuck in doesn't matter when it's propped up in front of people or being moved to another place entirely.
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https://firearmslaw.duke.edu/2021/1...dex-reconstruction-regulation-and-enforcement A Jav was an inferior weapon at casualty infliction.
Rate of fire, jav is slower, range jav is lower, munitions carried, javs is lower ( numidian cav used a leather harness/quiver to carry more javs so could fire more javs than a Velite had )
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Good point. Basically all the weapons come to need two hands, plus the power of weapons increases to the point where armor is effective only for protection at long range and for glancing blows, or if it is heavy and expensive. Being mobile means either staying on horseback or being lightly armored, and wielding a weapon means abandoning the shield.
The metallurgy that improves armor also improves crossbows, and developments in compound bows and longbows make bows a lot more useful than a javelin. Roman and earlier period bows are maybe less useful than pila, slingers and such because the bows (at least the non-compound types) don't have a lot of power.
I suspect javelins might require less training and have decent rate of fire but limited ammunition, while bows develop much longer ranges, greater power and penetration, and archers can carry dozens of arrows. If you're going to stick with javelins then you have to be able to survive the arrows and bolts while you close to throwing range and I think that usually doesn't work well.
Bows deliver good kinetic energy/joules of energy, at a long distance, a hand thrown missile generate more kinetic energy in joules but only at a very short range and rapidly drops of over range, example a roman light and heavy Pila have different mass but same acceleration and have different kinetic properties at different ranges for pentration of defensive equipment. Improvement in metallurgy meant hand thrown weapons diminished in comparative effectiveness.
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What you do/find for yourself, is construct a QJM https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/36719841.pdf and/or https://www.amazon.co.uk/Numbers-prediction-war-history-evaluate/dp/0672521318 or its more modern version from the Dupoy peeps https://www.amazon.co.uk/War-Number...03-4249-a84d-ec509aa3b2cf&ref_=aufs_ap_sc_dsk to give you your answer.
Ancient armies were in general a gigantic mass levy of farmers who brought to battle whatever equipment they could afford to buy themselves; Medieval armies consisted of a core of warrior elites and their men supplemented by professional mercenaries and a smaller levy, all with much more expensive armour. If your army is smaller and more professionalised and more heavily armed and armoured, you might as well pay some of it to train with the bow, rather than chuck sticks at the enemy. Whereas if you have a mass of untrained peasants with little equipment, having some of them chuck sticks at the enemy's mass of untrained peasants with little equipment makes a lot of sense. E.g. the Roman velites were the poorest class of fighting-age men who couldn't afford to own or train with much more than javelins.
So the answer to OP would be that archery is a skill and no ancient state was going to bother to train its entire mass peasant levy as archers, but they could easily augment their army by having a bunch of their poorest levies chuck sticks (and then charge in with knives if they run out of sticks), even if these men wouldn't be incredibly effective on its own.
This is also why slings completely disappeared in Medieval warfare.
So the answer to OP would be that archery is a skill and no ancient state was going to bother to train its entire mass peasant levy as archers, but they could easily augment their army by having a bunch of their poorest levies chuck sticks (and then charge in with knives if they run out of sticks), even if these men wouldn't be incredibly effective on its own.
This is also why slings completely disappeared in Medieval warfare.
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