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[[underline]] Chapter XIII. [[/underline]] 278.

of having been used in combat.  For it had been considerably bent, as if by the shock of impact against some relatively solid body; yet its point had not been blunted at all, being still quite as sharp as those of its fellows.
Such a condition might just conceivably have resulted from the arrowpoint encountering a bone not too deeply overlaid by the softer bodily tissues.  It appeared to me, however, far more likely to have been produced by striking against hide armor, tough enough to check penetration and cause bending of the point, yet sufficiently yielding to prevent its being blunted.  And it was precisely such armor (no doubt resembling somewhat the "buffcoats" of the 17th century in Europe) that the ancient Chinese warriors wore throughout their country's Bronze Age; though about the close of the latter, toward the end of the 1st millennium B.C., apparently in response to the introduction of weapons of greater penetrating power, the practice arose of sewing scales of copper or bronze to the leather backing. [[superscript]] (252) [[/superscript]]
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[[superscript]] (252) [[/superscript]] On this point [[underline]] cf. [[/underline]] page 152 and note 156.
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[[underline]] Bronze Points of Lances or Darts. [[/underline]]
Among our finds in the antique-shops of Kuei-hua Ch'eng were a very few objects which the dealers rather loosely termed "knives", but which, as already noted^[[,]] [[strikethrough]] (page 272), [[/strikethrough]] can hardly have been anything else than the bronze points of lances or perhaps javelins.  Their discovery, particularly in the attendant circumstances, seemed to throw additional light on the military equipment of the ancient Chinese and of their foes the Hsiung-nu during the closing period of their Bronze Age.
That very effective weapon the compound or reflex bow (on the latter see page 124 and note 111) was by no means the only arm used by the