that's like asking in 2000 years which team played the best football today. PR will play a bigger role than actual skill.
Benjamites: (they used aimbot)
Quote: the Benjamites, mentioned in the Book of Judges, could “sling stones at a an hair-breadth and not miss.”
Achaeans:(greater accuracy , distance ,power than balearics)
Quote:Livy (38.29.3-8, tr. Evan T. Sage) refers to the inhabitants of three Greek cities on the northern coast of the Peloponnesus as expert slingers:
“A hundred slingers were recruited from Aegium and Patrae and Dymae. These peoples were trained from boyhood, in accordance with a tradition of the race, in hurling with a sling at the open sea the round stones which, mingled with sand, generally strew the coasts. In consequence they use this weapon at longer range, with greater accuracy, and with more powerful effect than the Balearic slinger. Moreover, the sling is not composed of a single strap, like those of the Baleares and other peoples, but the bullet-carrier is triple, strengthened with numerous seams, that the missile may not fly out at random, from the pliancy of the strap at the moment of discharge, but seated firmly while being whirled, may be shot out as if from a bow-string. Having been trained to shoot through rings of moderate circumference from long distances, they would wound not merely the heads of their enemies but any part of the face at which they might have aimed. These slings prevented the Sameans from making sallies so frequently or so boldly, to such an extent that they begged the Achaeans to withdraw for a while and in quiet to watch them fighting with the Roman outguards.”
Balears: (massive stones, armour breakers, persistent training and tradition)
Quote:DIODORUS SICULUS, Book XIX.109. wrote:
“The Battle of Eknomos, Sicily, 311 B.C.But when Hamilcar saw that his men were being overpowered and that the Greeks in constantly increasing number were making their way into the camp, he brought up his slingers, who came from the Balearic Islands and numbered at least a thousand. By hurling a shower of great stones, they wounded many and even killed not a few of those who were attacking, and they shattered the defensive armour of most of them. For these men, who are accustomed to sling stones weighing a mina, contribute a great deal toward victory in battle, since from childhood they practice constantly with the sling. In this way they drove the Greeks from the camp and defeated them.Their equipment for fighting consists of three slings, and of these they keep one around the head, another around the belly, and the third in the hands. In the business of war they hurl much larger stones than do any other slingers, and with such force that the missile seems to have been shot, as it were, from a catapult; consequently, in their assaults upon walled cities, they strike the defenders on the battlements and disable them, and in pitched battles they crush both shields and helmets and every kind of protective armour. And they are so accurate in their aim that in the majority of cases they never miss the target before them. The reason for this is the continual practice which they get from childhood, in that their mothers compel them, while still young boys, to use the sling continually; for there is set up before them as a target a piece of bread fastened to a stake, and the novice is not permitted to eat until he has hit the bread, whereupon he takes it from his mother with her permission and devours it.”
Rhodians: (effective against persians, great range )
Quote:XENOPHON, Anabasis book 3 section
[33.3.17] For the latter have only a short range because the stones that are used in them are as large as the hand can hold; the Rhodians, however, are versed also in the art of slinging leaden bullets.
[3.4.15] But when the Rhodian slingers and the bowmen, posted at intervals here and there, sent back an answering volley, and not a man among them missed his mark (for even if he had been very eager to do so, it would not have been easy),1 then Tissaphernes withdrew out of range with all speed, and the other battalions followed his example.
Andean slinger: (critical hits and KOs)
Quote:During the Spanish conquest of the Aztec empire in the 15th century, an observer recorded that an Andean slinger could shatter Spanish swords or kill a horse in a single hit (Kormann, 1973; Wise, 1980)
The invention of the sling is attributed by Pliny to the Phoenicians, by Vegetius to the Baleares, (who were Phoenician colonists,) and by Strabo to the Aetolians.