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General >> Project Goliath - The History of The Sling >> Scottish stone balls
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Message started by Douglas on Jun 17th, 2005 at 12:30pm

Title: Scottish stone balls
Post by Douglas on Jun 17th, 2005 at 12:30pm
On another forum I found a link to this site:
http://www.hunterian.gla.ac.uk/collections/museum/online_exhibitions/stones/objects/objects.shtml

"The Carved Stone Balls are distinctly Scottish objects with the majority found in Aberdeenshire. However several have been discovered in Orkney and a few have been found on Skye, Iona, Lewis, Harris and Uist. In addition, some have been uncovered in Ireland and England. The balls are attractive objects and small enough to have been easily carried away."

"The Carved Stone Balls are all very similar in size with an average diameter of 2 3/4" or 70mm. Within this uniformity of size there is a wide range of decoration, some have numerous knobs, others have spirals or incised designs."

They seem a little large for slingshot. Any thoughts?

Title: Re: Scottish stone balls
Post by Douglas_The_Black on Jun 17th, 2005 at 12:45pm
i dont know but the 6th one in the first row looks cool. Maybe they where hand thrown?

Title: Re: Scottish stone balls
Post by MammotHunter on Jun 17th, 2005 at 12:46pm
They seem a bit ornate for slingstones, to be honest. But as for their size, they may be a wee large for an Anglishman, but nae too small for a Scotsman of real size! ;) Don't forget, these are fighters who carry swords the size of a man and toss telephone poles for fun...

Title: Re: Scottish stone balls
Post by Douglas_The_Black on Jun 17th, 2005 at 2:43pm
i  have seen those guys toss those trees around. My little brother was going to make fun of them for wearing kilts but after he saw them toss those trees he thought diffrently.  :)

Title: Re: Scottish stone balls
Post by lobohunter on Jun 17th, 2005 at 4:52pm
Being of scottish desent myself. I think they are wonderful sling stones. If not a bit on the wee side. HaHa!!

Title: Re: Scottish stone balls
Post by cipher20 on Sep 10th, 2006 at 1:12pm
agreed... they'd be perfect for little scottish kids to learn with though.

Title: Re: Scottish stone balls
Post by slingbadger on Sep 11th, 2006 at 11:08am
OK, get ready for some wierdness here. Supposedly, they are representatives of the 5 Platonic Solids ( cube, isocohedron, dodecahedron. tetrahedron and octahedron)  This is out of Sacred Geometry
The were believed to be "perfect" and were a representation of the order of the universe.
 Of course there is no proof that they are those. I have seen people get the proper shapes out of these, but if you look for something to prove your point, you will find it, no matter how far fetched it really is.

Title: Re: Scottish stone balls
Post by Bjärn on Sep 11th, 2006 at 12:41pm
Ooh pretty slingstones!
I be's a Scot too!
I like this one:
http://www.hunterian.gla.ac.uk/collections/museum/online_exhibitions/stones/objects/object4.shtml

Title: Re: Scottish stone balls
Post by Stringman on Sep 11th, 2006 at 7:19pm
Neolithic.  I have some idea about them.  Textiles and cordage were almost certainly used in such times however they took a lot of time to produce.  One can get an idea about just how labour intensive cloth is to produce in low tech ways by seeing how long traditional Indian blankets take.  The next idea is that in such times people moved around more as agriculture couldn't yet support stable centres of population.  If we look at the more recent examples of people with nomadic ways of life we see tent dwellers.  It's doesn't take such a leap of imagination to suppose that cavemen is probably a missnomer.  Yes a cave would be used when handy but mostly our distant ancesters lived in tempory shelters and often tents.  So that is background, cloth was used and it was expensive so one would want to avoid cutting it.  One of the best ways to secure cloth without cutting it is to wrap a stone in it and then tie a rope around just below the stone.   There are two types of kilt, the dress kilt which is the famous sort and the much older type which is basically a huge blamket.  All ancient cultures that I can think of have developed something similar and I see no reason to assume that neandertals, who actully had bigger brain capacities than us, were any exception.  This blanket can be used in many ways, as a garment, shelter, hamock and so on.  I think it likely that these stones were used in this way.  Looking at the patterns the most common sort seems to be perfect for tying  to a rope.  They would also be useful in many other ways; as an improvised mace or bolas, as a weight  I suppose one could also suspend one high over a stone circle and use the rotation of the earth to tell the time but that's silly,  stone circles were a little later anyway.  So I speculate that they were all purpose tools to be used in conjunction with cordage and fabric. As to the differant patterns that could be anything from ritual to familly traditions but as half of them seem to have the simple grooves in the shape of the edges of a cube my guess is that that was the basic utility version.   They arn't too big to be slung but if my tribe had surrounded some enemy tribe and were being held of with slings when the carved balls started coming over I'd assume that we'd be able to charge soon.

Title: Re: Scottish stone balls
Post by Matthias on Sep 12th, 2006 at 1:34pm
Gaming stones? Wooden/stone balls of similar size (human hand sized) have been used by many cultures for bocce/bowling type games, going back a long ways.

Quite a lot of labour goes into one of those! I'd like to try my hand at making some. Neat!

Matthias

Title: Re: Scottish stone balls
Post by SlingWolf on Sep 13th, 2006 at 8:01pm
:o Pretty stones! :o

;D SlingWolf ;D

Title: Re: Scottish stone balls
Post by MammotHunter on Sep 14th, 2006 at 2:54pm
As I said before, I think they're a little ornate to be projectiles that would simply be thrown away and potentially lost after maybe one use, or possibly a handfull of uses. I mean, I was even of two minds about putting in the time to spray paint some really nice rocks that I picked up from a nearby river on the basis that it was a good bit of work for something I was likely to lose,anyway. I did paint them, and I have lost some, but the majority of them remain, not least of all thanks to sometimes more than a half hour spent looking for a single errant shot. To me, they look like game pieces for bocce ball or marbles or a similar type of game, or maybe a symbol of currency for trade or status between tribes and people.

Title: Re: Scottish stone balls
Post by Bjärn on Sep 14th, 2006 at 3:25pm
It could have been a status thing. Like prestige for a warrior.
Not all people from all eras have the same mindset.

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