Curious Aardvark wrote on Aug 4
th, 2020 at 11:15am:
If you permanently attach a cord to a dart - it just makes it a LOT easier for the enemy to throw back at you !
Stop thinking our ancestors were stupid.
If you thought of it, so did they
That's exactly why I thought there must be more to the plumbata than contemporary understanding, as I'm convinced they would have found a more effective way of throwing them.
I also cannot see that by adding a string it makes it any easier to throw back. I actually think the opposite as when the dart lands in a dense formation it's more likely to be stood on, along with the fact that there is not enough room to swing it around to throw it back. The darts are also barbed, and so if it were slung with a string, the added force is going to make it much more likely that the barbed tip is going to stick into something (to the point where it cannot be pulled out).