from the book  1491, by Charles Mann.

  " The Inka heated stones in campfires until they were red hot, wrapped them in pitched soaked cotton, and hurled them at there targets. the cotton caught fire in mid-air. In a sudden onslaught the sky would rain burning missles. In 1536, the Inka used these missles to burn spanish occupied Qosqo to the ground."

    Seperated by continents, yet they had similar ideas to European slingers.

wow, to catch on fire midair you'd have to have really good timing.

Hey thats really interesting.. thanks!

How did they keep their slings from catching on fire? :o

Hellfire asked about the spelling of Inka in a duplicate thread that I removed (sorry Hellfire, but this version had three responses :)): Both Inca and Inka are used, though Inca seems to be mst commmon these days and in American literature.

Matthias

I suppose the slingers would have to be pretty fast to not have the slings catch fire. It doesn't say.
 What I want to know is why didn't the cotton catch fire whenit was wrapped around the rock?

ha, and more importantly, how did they not cath themselves on fire  :o

I think pitch can catch fire only when in liquid state, thus the stone must liquify it first, giving you few seconds for a fast cast without much windup. Anyone knows which style Incas used for these? I would guess overhand, but dunno...

it might have been the style that it seems david used against goliath for a fast cast

Stenny, based on numberous burns on my forearm, pitch can burn in a solid state also.

I would think this would be a pretty effective weapon against buildings. Perhaps the cotton was soaked like a slowmatch so it would only burn when it got hot enough.

I wonder how the hot rocks were transported to a battle site. Building a fire to heat the rocks would take time and give away ones position.Toting around a bunch of hot rocks doesn't sound like a sound battlefield tactic.

In a siege building a fire where you need it can be done.
And in mountainus areas it might be posible to position your fire above what is going to be the battlefield.

Willeke

All the book says is that they launched after 2 or 3 swings. My bet would be overhead, to keep the sling away from sensitive body parts. :o

I would think ANY body part would be sensitive to a red hot rock! :o

But if the cotton was soaked like a "slowmatch" or something similar, and only ignited when it got hotter.....
Then... How did they make it hot enough??
The stone would rapidly lose it`s heat once removed from the fire...
If pitch soaked cotton was indeed wrapped around "red hot" stones, what was the mechanism for it to "burst into flame in mid-air"??
Also, that whole thing about red-hot stones seems pretty strange to me..

It makes for decent fantasies, and interesting "what-if's" but very little else..

Something tells me it`s time for us all to get our heads out of the skies, grab a handful of dirt, and snort it like a motherf*... *coughs*

Rocks can get really hot and stay that way for awhile. Look at how rocks are used for the Native American sweat lodge. Those rocks get red hot and could be kept that way long enough to hurl at a target. Wrapping it in flammable/inflammable  material would be very tricky though.

As far as i know, rocks don`t get red hot... If rocks got red hot, you`d have lava/magma..
Yes, true that rocks are used in sweatlodges and suchlike, but also, as far as i know, they do have intermissions in the sweatlodge proceedings, so as to refill with more hot stones.
Also, it`s the steam that is essential in a sweatlodge, not the hot rocks..
And, as far as i know.. (God.. I do use that phrase alot, now don`t i?) Rocks might hold their temperature for about 5-10 minutes, before they get noticeably colder..
True, this would be long enough for the incas to lob them at an enemy... But, if i was the inca... I think i`d just make some sort of clay vessel, fill it with pitch or oil and set fire to it... Like a primitive molotov cocktail...
Cause they did have the technology.
What they might not have had, was the theory..

But again.. All this makes great "what if's", but not too great... "Oh yeah!! That`ll definately work.. Let`s try it!!"...

Time to get real? I guess not... *sigh*

I never believed the efficiency of hot rocks till I met people cooking with hot rocks. It turns out that one golfball sized rock can get a bigish pot, several liters, to the boil and once hot, a second rock will keep it boiling hot for quite a while.

If left to the air, rather than dumped in water, they stay hot for a long time. At first more than hot enough to do damage.
And you only need a small fire to get the rocks hot and keep them heating till needed. Other than water, they keep getting hotter as long as they are in the fire.

Willeke

and any way it hurts to get hit by a rock no matter how hot it is :)

but i aggree with aarya and i think a clay pot, with something in it would be better.

Of course alot depends on what type of rock it is. I work with soapstone, and can confirm that it can indeed be heated until it is red hot with no change to the stone. It also takes forever to cool down.
 The vikings would take slabs of it on their ships, build a rough hearth, and have a fire on their ships. The rock never scorch the wood.
 So rocks can indeed be quite hot

can anyone get out there and try it?

i will do no such thing and try something as insane as that  :o lol

but that wasn't what i came for.. the inca would have had the idea of using the clay pots but euhm have you Seen an inca pot those things where a: very nice b:really expensive i know for a fact that teracotta (wich means baked clay) was the most expansive thing in china for a while (anyone ever hear of the teracotta warriors?) so i don't think they where gonna lob em twards there enemies

never the less red hot rocks do seem to be a little dificult to wrap in a pitch drenched cloth

lets just say i have no idea how they did it

that was the nice clay that they made pots out of. Just your run of the mill unfired clay would not cost that much. :)

I wonder if the hot rock would be like an ember and the cotton would flame up when oxygen was introduced at force?  Have you ever made a fire using flint and steel, or using friction?  You can get a spark, or get it to smolder a bit, but it does'nt flame up untill you blow on it.

If they used the cotton thick enough it would blanket the heat (like a pot holder) long enough to possibly sling.   Only a thought.

and the oxygen be supplied by the air flowing over it as it hurled towards its target?

That was the idea.

true i guess your right the normal pots wouldn't be That nice but still why else bother with red hot stones  :-/

And clay has to be dug out where there is/used to be flowing water which left to right kind of sediment.
Rocks are more readily available in mountain country, esp if you are not too concerned about the shapes, but can also be found on the flat country a distance away from the high lands.
If you happen to be in country with next to no rocks, you can still rough form your clay and heat that in the campfire. It might even get hot enough to do damage.

Willeke

wrote on Feb 2^nd, 2006 at 3:38pm:

" The Inka heated stones in campfires until they were red hot, wrapped them in pitched soaked cotton,

I can imagine this may have been a night time siege, or early morning.  Rocks will glow red in the dim light, but doubtful that you could see this in daylight, or that they could get an average fire hot enough to make a rock appear to glow red in the light.  Guessing that the pitch soaked cotton was a way to bind the cotton to itself around the rock long enough to be carried through the air to its point of impact.  could possibly stick to what it hits if it let go of the rock at the time of impact.  Flaming marsh mellow theory.  Still sticking with the idea that the air flow would ignite a smoldering ember created by the glowing rock.

 Possible??

this is first on my to-do  list when summer roles around.
to test the theory, how about laying the cotton on a bed of hot rocks, wait a short while then blow on them with the 'blow' end of a shop vac?

anyhow, whats the most effective way to ignite the pitch in a clay pot? (prefferably upon hitting its target rather than inside the sling)

First thing I would test out would be the pitch and cotton.

One thing...
Do we know for a fact that the incas had cotton?
Most of the peruvian clothing nowadays is made from llama/alpaca wool.
If they only had wool, it would be futile wrapping it around a hot stone, as wool=hair.. And hair doesn`t burn.. Just smells foul..

And if the incas didn`t have cotton... Well....

What do you know-it-all's figure they used then?  :P :P

Linen or hemp.  more than one type of flammable plant out there. ::)

or maybe jute...  ;D

how about bark?

Never heard of any bark used for fabric.   Hemp, flax, jute can be broken down into fibers that then can be twisted (or spun) into string.  

I think the thin inner bark of most trees can do that too. I have never tryed so i dont know.

I'm sure you could, I know very little of such things, just was thinking of other plant products that may have been mistaken as cotton.

Stones and ceramic can be heated red hot in a camp fire.Ceramic,quite easily,stones,harder.
They store a LOT of heat and preserve it for a very long time. A 10 second  flight,especially if they're wrapped in cotton,they would lose very little heat,and arrive almost just as hot.Dense stones are better at storing more heat.
If you would take a piece of cotton,add a small amount of pitch on top,than take a hot\red hot stone\ceramic from the fire with wooden clamps,place it on the cotton patch placed on the sling pouch,the melt pitch should glue the cotton unto the stone,than sling it away. They should burst into flames as they travel fast through the air and get a lot of oxygen.
Another method would be to have the cotton patch on the ground,place the hot rock,roll it with the clamps so the cotton patch would cover all around the stone,than put the patched stone with the clamps into the pouch,than sling away.
The sling pouch could be wetted to not catch fire,and the pitch not stick unto it. The pitch should be a small amount to not pour out of the patch unto the sling pouch.
During a siege they would have camp fires anyways,and sieges are not done in a hurry and IMO it's absolutely possible to do this.
I'll have to try this one night...

And also, FWIW, in the southeastern US and up the Mississippi River valley, thepre European contact peoples' clothing was made of the inner bark of the Red Mulberry tree.  They would pound it for fibers, twist the fibers into thread and then hand weave the threads into cloth.  Judging by the impression on fiber marked pottery shards that I have found, it could vary from pretty good cloth to about like burlap, depending on how skilled and how much time the weaver wanted to spend making it.  How flamable it would be, I don't have a clue, but mulberry is an oily wood, so I suspect it would burn very hot once it ignited in flight.  But the knowledge and technology were there to make bark cloth.

When I fire my clay glandes, I can toss the red hot glande in a bucket of water, pull it out with my bare hand and hold it for a few seconds, the water will evaporate and the glande will get hot and I will have to drop it.  If you heat up a rock or clay glande, you will have much more than just a few seconds to wrap it in whatever you wrap it in, you are talking C600+ degrees, it won't cool that fast.

What about soaking a sling in water, coating in fresh mud/clay, or some other not flammable substance, sound like some testing may be in order

To make fire you need three things heat fuel and air when the rock was heated there is your heat then the cotton in the pitch is the fuel when slung the air that was passing over it was enough to make it burst in to flames take away any one of the three then you would not have the fire bomb

Bill Skinner wrote on Aug 26^th, 2012 at 9:20am:

And also, FWIW, in the southeastern US and up the Mississippi River valley, thepre European contact peoples' clothing was made of the inner bark of the Red Mulberry tree.  They would pound it for fibers, twist the fibers into thread and then hand weave the threads into cloth.  Judging by the impression on fiber marked pottery shards that I have found, it could vary from pretty good cloth to about like burlap, depending on how skilled and how much time the weaver wanted to spend making it.  How flamable it would be, I don't have a clue, but mulberry is an oily wood, so I suspect it would burn very hot once it ignited in flight.  But the knowledge and technology were there to make bark cloth. When I fire my clay glandes, I can toss the red hot glande in a bucket of water, pull it out with my bare hand and hold it for a few seconds, the water will evaporate and the glande will get hot and I will have to drop it.  If you heat up a rock or clay glande, you will have much more than just a few seconds to wrap it in whatever you wrap it in, you are talking C600+ degrees, it won't cool that fast.

Not familiar with red mulberry,but i would bet,that any dry fiber,slightly soaked in melt pitch and a ~800C stone\clay heating it,plus the  200 km wind blowing on it,would make it burn. And yes it's very possible to get 800C in a big campfire. Pottery gets fully fired at 900-1000 C So it was possible way back then.

ghost0311-8541 wrote on Aug 26^th, 2012 at 10:40pm:

To make fire you need three things heat fuel and air when the rock was heated there is your heat then the cotton in the pitch is the fuel when slung the air that was passing over it was enough to make it burst in to flames take away any one of the three then you would not have the fire bomb

Yep,pretty much.Although without the hot stone,to keep things real hot,the burning pitch,oil,gas or most flam.mat. would go out from the strong wind.

You are right about the temps, I was being conservative.  And I have made pottery in a fire, I just don't do it this time of year, it's too hot to be standing around a fire...

Yea,i knew that,we've talked ceramics before too,a few times ;)

the sling probably wouldn't need anything special doing to it.

Leather doesn't burn easy and if the pouch is insulated by a pad with pitch on top. It's probably not even going to get that hot.

It's not like you're going to hang around before the throw :-)

I do love all these ancient incendiaries. Just goes to show ingenuity has no relation to technology level :-)  

Curious Aardvark wrote on Aug 27^th, 2012 at 11:14am:

the sling probably wouldn't need anything special doing to it. Leather doesn't burn easy and if the pouch is insulated by a pad with pitch on top. It's probably not even going to get that hot. It's not like you're going to hang around before the throw :-) I do love all these ancient incendiaries. Just goes to show ingenuity has no relation to technology level :-)

Totally agree

So i tried all this.Lit a campfire,fired a bunch of clay balls.
I had some pitch in a shoe polish metal box,and heated it near the fire.This is where i skrewed up.
I was preparing something else and suddenly observed that my pitch already caught on fire :D
Covered the box,set off the fire,but from experience,i know that pitch that get caught on fire and burns for several seconds,isn't as sticky and flammable as before,of course.
Poured the remaining pitch which proved to be of insufficient quantity and quality on a piece of cotton wool.
Took out a ~65g clay ball that was slightly red glowing in the dark.It light cherry red,but easily visible in the night.
It could have been hotter,just didn't wanted to mess to much with it...
Put the red ball on the pitched cotton and started to wrap it.Now it was clear that the pitch isn't enough and not sticky enough.
The pitch and cotton was smoking quite a bit but no flame. Molten pitch maybe can't even glue the cotton unto it.
The clay ball may have a too smooth surface for all this..
The ~1cm thick cotton padding was insulating the clay ball VERY good.I could handle the whole thing with my bare hands,although it was hot.
The cotton didn't stick,tried to roll the whole ball in one piece,to stay together,which didn't seem like it would,put it in a leather pouched sling,and slung it away.
It flew away with some smoke,the patch blew off after a few meters falling down smoldering.The clay ball flew into the dark invisibly.
After this,I took out another ball,tried to tie some dried grass unto it with hemp string,without success.
Then i pushed the dried grass on top of the reddish clay ball,some smoke,no ignition.
CONCLUSION: the clay\stone has to be heated as hot as possible,glowing red,orange\white,first hand pitch to be used,maybe the cotton has to be tied on.Stones may be a better option,than clay,because it can store more heat,for longer.
I'll try this more,sometime :)

Just be carefull if you are heating river rocks because they can explode on you.  ;)

Yea,i know..not just river rocks,the mountain rocks round here are often layered.Those often crack,explode.
I know one type that's quite popular here,that resists good to heating (types of andezit),though i'll be careful. Mostly this is why i used clay balls,as i know more about firing clay,than stone.

This is consistent with the TV version, they had a disposable cloth pad to protect the sling pouch, no pitch or other materials, just a hot stone.

A cotton pad gives plenty of insulation to be able to sling hot stones.

yep.... another idea- wrap the rock in pitch soaked cotten mixed with gasoline.... it'll probably catch in a little over a millisecond..

When I blacken a pot, I pull it out of the fire or the kiln and put it in a pile of green leaves or green grass.  The pots are glowing bright red.  The vegatation will smoke heavily for several minutes and as it dries out, it will burst into flame.  It has to be green or at least wet because dry vegatation will catch fire almost instantly.  

I think the cotton is to protect the sling, I don't think you got the gland hot enough, I think the heat of the gland is what catches things on fire.

Most definitely Bill.As i wrote,the clay ball was glowing dull ish cherry red. That's far from glowing orange\white.

That's probably, what, about 600C?  I don't think you need to get them much hotter, try putting one in a pile of dry grass or leaves and see if it catches fire, if it does, start throwing them.  Most of the Incas' buildings had thatch for a roof, so that would work.

Yep,probably it was around 600 C , max 700C i think. At 800-1000 they glow orange-white.
As i wrote, i've also wrapped some dried grass around a red hot clay ball,and it was smoking,but didn't caught fire. Again it was clay and not hot enough.
I'll try this more when i'll get to melt bronze..then i'll have a good setup to make them really hot. I didn't wanted to stay up for too long and burn a bunch of wood just to heat up a couple of clay balls...

Sounds like me when I fire pots, I try to time it so the pots reach the correct temps after dark.  That way, I can tell if they are hot enough.  But it's not a lot of fun standing around a large fire on a hot, muggy night fighting mosquitoes.

I want to know who was the poor guy who was handling messy pitch soaked combustible cloth and red hot stones, putting them together to be thrown before the catch fire.  

It almost sounds like an impossible feat.

Who among us is going to do a little hands-on research to find out?

Well,jlasud did,and he will do it some more ;)

Need video.

I still would like to see the redhot stones, pitch rags, slinging and fire burst in mid-air.

This is cool.