this post was submitted on 07 Nov 2023
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There's a badass scene in the book This Immortal where a guy kills another guy with a sling.
Slingers were a separate set of ranged troops for the roman armies.
I can't recall precisely where I read it but what made slingers so deadly was their capacity to aim with precision on very small targets, unlike archers that would generally send arrow volleys in almost a suppression fire mode. A slinger could aim for the head, arms, eyes or joints for cripling or even deadly hits.
Slingers often used lead to create "bullets" by just smelting it over a camp fire, making holes on a patch of sand with the tip of a finger, and pouring the molten metal in. A volley of these small, extremely dense but compact and deadly projectiles would wreck havoc on enemy lines or could be used to target commanders to break the chain of command and demoralize troops.
How in the world was a sling more accurate than a bow? You can hit a bullseye with a barebow from 50 yards away. A sling is whirled around your head and then released. I don't understand how that can be accurate at all, since I've never used a sling, but it seems impossible that it would be more accurate than a bow.
A basic sling should be very consistent and simple. Early bows have a lot of advantages but the mechanical complexity makes them less consistent. 50cm of rope is 50cm of rope, it's gonna throw the same every time as long as you're practiced. Bows are made of natural wood and fibre with all kinds of tensions and inconsistencies, as well as requiring more work to repeat the same action precisely
You still get two-handed control over the plane the arrow takes (before drift) and it's easy to dial in angle and draw length. A sling bullet leaves tangent to a circle spinning at considerable speed and distance. The fact anyone can hit anything with a sling is a testament to the human brain's that-looks-about-right capability to treat tools as extended limbs.
That last sentence pretty much gets it perfectly
I think slings are treated similarly to throwing by the brain, which humans do very well
The same for the bow, when considering we only figured the archer's paradox already in the XX century and demonstrated it when high speed cameras were develope.
A sling shoots forward in a straight line and it only depends on the thrower to give it centripetal force.
Slings are still used today as weapons and effectively. And hunting with one, particularly birds, is an extremely complex exercise.