Aussie
Past Moderator
Offline

Joined Nov. 1, 2006 Luke 14:14
Posts: 3265
Melbourne, Australia
Gender:
|
I don't wish to belabour the issue and I also readily admit that I have no experimental evidence to back my points but I would like to make a couple of suggestions:-
1. The fact that tongs and instructions for using them to extract lead glandes have been found fairly much excludes the possibility of hyperbole or errors in translation, ie. lead bullets did penetrate into the bodies of victims. (Perhaps references to the 'molten lead' refers not to glandes melting in flight but to the fact that they were cast.) Of course it is a possibility that these were discharged from bullet shooting crossbows, catapults and the like as well as from slings.
2. Speeds of 250 mph (110m/s) are quoted by Chris Harrison in his introduction on the home page. I don't know his source but such speeds would be maximum, attained by only the absolute best slingers and probably only with smallish projectiles. Techstuf in his demonstration where he penetrates a 'Goliath' cutout made of thick, strong, plywood with a fairly large stone, calculated his stone speed at somewhere around 40 m/s. Speeds of 50 m/s are fairly readily obtained, so whereas even rounded projectiles travelling in excess of 100 m/s would pentrate flesh, such high speeds would not be inevitably required. Bear in mind that kinetic energy varies as the square of the speed, so a projectile moving at 50 m/s has 56% more energy than one of similar mass moving at 40 m/s, and at 100 m/s this goes up by 625%.
3. Lead glandes actually do not leave the pouch any faster than equivalent weight stones but they do retain their velocity better due to their higher density and also their high sectional density, (which is their mass divided by their cross sectional area). They were not truly aerodynamic in the modern aeronautical sense of the word, but they did fly better than stones or shaped clay projectiles. Their high mass concentrated over a small area would create higher local pressure on impact. It is this actual pressure and not the energy itself that causes penetration.
4. Their pointiness or sharpness would probably have been of no consequence when striking something like a heavy shield of bronze or some other dense metal object, but even the relative "sharpness" of pointed lead would aid in penetrating soft substances, ie. human flesh, in the same way as a sharp knife cuts more easily than a dull one.
5. Lastly, it very unlikely to be as simple as, "lead glandes inevitably cause penetrative wounds whilst stones cause only contusions". Quite possibly stones would sometimes penetrate flesh and lead projectiles fail to do so. There a many variables; speed, distance, the place on the body and angle at which the projectile struck, etc. etc.
Regards,
Aussie
|