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I laughed. It was true that the long bow is a weapon of peasants, who make and use them, sometimes with great efficiency. That fact, in itself, that the long bow is a peasant weapon, would make many Goreans, particularly those not familiar with the bow, look down upon it. Gorean warriors, generally drawn from the cities, are warriors by blood, by caste; moreover, they are High caste; the peasants, isolated in their narrow fields and villages, are Low caste; indeed, the Peasant is regarded, by those of the cities, as being little more than an ignoble brute, ignorant and superstitious, venal and vicious, a grubber in the dirt, a plodding animal, an ill-tempered beast, something at best cunning and treacherous; and yet I knew that in each dirt-floored cone of straw that served as the dwelling place of a peasant and his family, there was, by the fire hole, a Home Stone; the peasants themselves, though regarded as the lowest caste on all Gor by most Goreans, call themselves proudly the ox on which the Home Stone rests, and I think their saying is true. Peasants, incidentally, are seldom, except in emergencies, utilized in the armed forces of a city; this is a further reason why their weapon, the long bow, is less known in the cities, and among warriors, than it deserves to be. The Gorean, to my mind, is often, though not always, bound by historical accidents and cultural traditions, which are then often rationalized into a semblance of plausibility. For example, I had even heard arguments to the effect that peasants used the long bow only because they lacked the manufacturing capability to produce crossbows, as though they could not have traded their goods or sold animals to obtain crossbows, if they wished. - (Raiders of Gor, Chapter )