Welcome to the list.
Couple of points that I disagree with you with.
Main one is on the overhand release.
Unfortunately we as a species tend to think in a linear fashion. Closest point is a straight line sort of thing.
Underhand has a lot going for it in a military sense in the same manner that the modern miltaries still use indirect artillery fire or plunging small arms fire.
At least in the ancient Greek tradition where the close packed spear and shield armed and Bronze armored hoplite is concerned. with the double pointed spears used then, close order manuver was extremely inportant. If one moved wrong in a battle formation one ran a very real risk of being accidentaly injured by your fellow hoplites. Another issue was the Greek helmets of the day defintely restricted vision to that which was most important to the hoplite, namely straight ahead. Again this is similar to the vision that we see even today in modern armored vechicle combat.
The underhand throw is idealy adapted to striking from above to where the tightly packed hoplite would not have much of an active defense against it, You can't see it coming and if you did, in order to defend against it you run the very real risk of injuring your fellow hoplites or yourself by your defensive movement creating gaps in the rank. Now by reading some of the basic tactics of this time period one of the duties of the slinger was to supress other missle armed troops and to exploit openings in the ranks of the opossing side. Another possiblity is that the helments MAY have been designed to offer deflect stabbing attacks from the front and not offer so much protection from the top. but I will admit that this is pure conjecture on my part.
There is a book I have at the house about ancient greek infantry warfare. It doesn't have much to say about the slingers but it definately desribes all the pros and cons of tactics and equipment of the day and how the individual hoplites acted both before and after battle. As soon as I get home I will post it here for further reading.
Another problem is that slingers don't have to be very tightly packed in order to fulfill thier mission requirements in this context. Due to thier lack of panolpy don't have to worry about thier movements causing difficulties to thier fellow slingers. We do not know what styles were used by ancient military slingers, they could have very well used more than one style depending on the circumstance. so even then the horizontal throw could have been used depending on the circumstance.
Another factor to take into consideration is siege warfare which the greeks and romans also used. This could take another set of slinging skills that were not commonly used in the field battles.
As has been alredy pointed out most slings would definately outrange most other military missle weapons being used at the time. Now as we get into eras where the archery technolgy becomes more efficent then the sling starts losing it's military importance. ( Ala Middle ages after say 14th centry).
Ammunition in a military context was held to tight standards, with each military defining those standards. (This is the topic of a research paper I am working on in my off-time). One of the reasons why stones tended to be used in a more civil setting ( Greco-Roman era) but in military conflict glandes were used that the manufacture of glandes can be held to much tighter standards. Earlier than this and yes stones were the military ammunition of choice, but amazingly each find/cache of stones are remarkably similar to each other. But only more research will tell.
Ok I gotta go back to work now. I will continue this at a later time today.
Marc Adkins
Gunsonwheels wrote on Mar 21
st, 2007 at 7:05pm:
I have been throwing with a sling since I was about eight years old. I am now sixty-three. I still enjoy casting enough stones to bring back both the accuracy and power which I feel is inherent to slings and slinging... if a person knows a viable technique for throwing with the sling. After over fifty years of throwing, study of articles on the sling, watching movies depicting throwing and the application of what I feel is some plain common sense, I came to the following:
Throwing techniques to “shoot” a sling have been lost and are, in all probability, largely unknown in our modern world.
Any technique which exposes the thrower to the enemy’s spears, arrows and stones during an extended (anything over a couple seconds) twirling of a sling from an erect position is not militarily sound and likely not what the ancients used.
Any technique which is not naturally complementary with an over-hand throwing motion is also not likely what those armies used. There is a reason modern baseball pitchers both use the body motions they do to throw and do so accurately at velocities of 90-100 MPH.
The physics of extending the length of an arm by 24-30 inches which throws at say 90 MPH without a sling should yield projectile velocities in excess of 200 MPH.
Projectile mass and shape, if held consistent like arrow spine in archery, contributes to both the accuracy and range of slinging.
What techniques are known in the .org which meet the above criteria???
George N