Date: Western Han Dynasty    Material: bronze

The crucial part of the crossbow is behind the wooden arm. The outer casing of it is called Guo, and the Ya in Guo holds the strings. On top of the Guo is the sighting device and below the Ya is the trigger. Invented in the Warring States period, continuous improvement and innovation were made about the crossbow afterwards. There are scales on the sighting device of this crossbow so that the user can aim at targets from different distances and improve the hit rate. It’s unearthed in Shucheng county, Anhui province.