I had just deleted a message I would post... them, after a few minutes, I read the message posted by Hobb... and I noticed we had the same idea! "slings in literature" would be nice! I know some books which has been written by wellknown writers in spanish but that had been translated into english, who mentions the sling throwing use as a weapon in the Peruvian Andes... we will have to contact the editors, ask their permission to cite the works, and them make a link to the historical information...
Chris and Mithras has a background in history... I am getting a degree in history too (mine is in Education) so, we could search for primary fonts... this will be much easy if we research the sling uses in Greece and Rome, but in societies who didn't developed the written use of their languages,we would use pictorical sources...
this is an ambitious project, but if we could do serious historical research, we will contribute not only for the history of weaponry, but maybe for history in general... I have contacts with a goup of University teachers and researches of Ancient Rome and greece, from Brasil, Portugal and Spain, and if I send them a message - we are in a newsgrops about this societies' cultures - I would get preciousless information about primary sources in greek and in latin... the guys from the Balearic Association have a lot of historical and (?) maybe archaelogical information about the use of slings in the Balearic Islands...I lived in Peru and still have good contacts there, I know spanish, and could get information about historical uses in the Andes... Hondero, Foner,Vicente and the other guys who know spanish could work together...
We can't forgget that there are some societies devoted to the serious study of ancient weapons too, and some of them are on the web, so we could contact them... they could indicate us some bilbiography...
Of course, I can't write so easilyin english, but I have a close frien d who is US citizen, lhe has been living and working in NBevada for many years, and has excellent background both in english - of course - and in humanities, so he could correct my written mistakes...
Just tell me if you agree or not about the necessity to do a rigorous historical research...