First , does that mean the ' barbarians that fought barbarians ' were also using crossbows I thought steppe warriors were all about the horse archer ? The crossbows would have been for essentially the shock troops the archer corps the regular Joe Schmoe who ' d been conscripted into the border army for one reason or another . The heavy infantry was consitered elite a welltrained fighting corps . The steppe archers would have been the ultraelite cavalry force of the day but indeed just about the only thing to really force an enemy steppe rider force to do anything but take pot shots and ride around your infantry all day . But a massed crossbolt volley was said to be the single most effective counter to a stepperider charge . they just couldn ' t , y ' know , go chasing the survivors down . They needed cavalry for that . Second , how did the use of these mass crossbow warriors compare in effectiveness to other technologiesstrategies at the same time elsewhere ? What I ' m really asking here is why other cultures didn ' t use mass crossbows , or why China didn ' t adopt techniques from elsewhere ? Like , surely one was superior ? Different cultures are different . The Achemaenid Persians loved massed arrow fire remember that whole fight in the shade Herodotus line ? In fact , just about every major state that had regular military conflict with the steppelanders developed rather similar strategies to countering them pepper them with death from as far away as possible . As to why the Chukonu and the like didn ' t make their way across the silk road ? It would have been a matter of national security . The Chinese were willing to put people to death for trying to smuggle out silk worms and paper for more than a thousand years . their prime military breakthrough we can guess would have been a bit harder to hide and a bit higher up the inspection chain when leaving the empire .