Prehistoric Sling

Origins

No one knows when the sling was invented, because a sling is made of plant fiber, sinew, hair or leather and almost never survives. Its projectiles do. Rounded stones and fired or sun-dried clay balls, found by the thousand at Neolithic settlements across the Near East and southeastern Europe, have been read as sling ammunition, though some may have had other uses. The oldest surviving slings are two found in the tomb of Tutankhamun in Egypt, around 1325 BC, and dry caves in the American West, such as Lovelock Cave in Nevada, have preserved slings of plaited fiber that are thousands of years old. The weapon was invented independently in many parts of the world, from the Andes to the Pacific islands, which is a measure of how simple and how effective it is.

Design & Construction

A sling is a pouch, or cradle, with a cord on each side. One cord ends in a loop fixed around a finger; the other is held between finger and thumb. The slinger places a stone in the pouch, swings it — overhead, underarm or in a single whirl — and releases the free cord at the right moment, so that the stone flies out at a speed far beyond that of a hand throw. The longer arm the sling gives the thrower is the whole secret. Ammunition ranged from river pebbles to carefully shaped clay balls and, from the Bronze Age and especially in the Greek and Roman world, cast lead bullets, often almond-shaped and sometimes inscribed with a unit's name or a taunt for the enemy. Experiments have found that a skilled slinger can throw a stone well over a hundred meters, with enough energy at shorter ranges to break bone.

Combat Use

The sling was a hunting and herding tool long before it was a weapon of war — shepherds used it to drive off predators, as in the story of David and Goliath. In the Bronze Age it became a weapon of armies: Assyrian reliefs show slingers in the ranks beside the archers with the Assyrian Composite Bow, and in the classical world the slingers of Rhodes and the Balearic Islands were famous mercenaries whose lead bullets outranged many archers. Lead sling shot has been recovered from Roman battlefields, including Kalkriese, the site of the Battle of Teutoburg Forest. Against armored men with shields such as the Greek Aspis or Roman Scutum the sling was less decisive, but it could stun and wound through helmets.

Legacy

The sling never disappeared. Medieval armies still used staff slings to throw stones and fire-pots, and Andean and Pacific peoples used slings in war into the colonial era. It remains a symbol of the weak against the strong. With the Atlatl and the Holmegaard Bow, it was one of the prehistoric inventions that let people strike from a distance, and it is still made and used by herders in parts of the world today.