I can only recall one movie in which I saw a sling being used; "Princess Mononoke".
Unfortunately, it was only one slinger who knocked one of the protagonists out (rock to the head). the slinger wasn't in the shot for more than 3 seconds or so. 

Stargate SG-1 the tv series has slingers in the Minoan episode.

"10 000" BC has no slings> But it has a lot of other stupid stuff .

The book "Kings Mirror", a Norwegian book from around the year 1200, suggest (if I remember it correctly)that the kings men should practice with, or at least try, the sling and the staff sling.
timann

Aussie wrote on Sep 21^st, 2009 at 6:16pm:


Because the soldiers would have to swing, instead of pointing in a straight line? Just guessing.

When a sling can send a .690" round ball at 900-1000fps(typical musket velociety) then I'll believe that a staff sling would be better then a musket, until then I'll stick with the musket. That being said, if you can't get a musket a sling would be better then chuckin' rocks with your bare hands, a lot better. 

In "Alexander" slingers are very shown during the battle at Gaugamela, when they come out from the spaces between the Makedonian phalanxes and Persían cavalry. But that scene is very short.

funda iucunda

TN.Frank wrote on Sep 22^nd, 2009 at 2:12pm:


You and mrboss have missed my point. Sure the musket ball would be travelling a lot faster and have more energy. But smoothbore muskets were notoriously inaccurate. Remember the expression, "Don't fire until you see the whites of their eyes." How far would that be; 20 metres or so. The staff slingers would be hitting their marks from 100metres away and slinging their stones at twice the rate that the musketeers could reload their weapons. Accuracy and rate of fire would be more important than mere power.

I bow to your superior knowledge of the musket's capability. Of course all of this is purely theoretical as no such battle has probably ever occurred in history. However if a company of staff slingers and a company of musketmen of the Napoleonic era were to face off on open ground I don't think the odds would be nearly as much in favour of the musketmen as people would generally think.

Some time ago we had a lively discussion here on the relative merits of slingers v archers. One of the opinions was that archers replaced slingers because of the inordinate time required to train effective slingers. Another factor which go against the slingers is that they require a lot more individual space than archers who can stand shoulder to shoulder and bring very concentrated fire to bear on an enemy position.

Subsequently several members have been experimenting with staff slings and have generally found that the learning curve for staff slinging is much quicker with reasonable accuracy attainable in a single learning session. Also though it may not shoot as far as the hand sling it also appears that larger rocks can be launched more easily. With only an overhead sweeping motion I surmise that a company of trained staff slingers could stand much closer together than ordinary slingers and have the same advantage of concentrated fire enjoyed by the archers as well as the major advantage of being trained much more quickly than either archers or ordinary slingers. I asked our historically minded members whether staff slingers were ever used that way in open warfare. The use of the staff sling in siege and naval warfare is generally wll documented.

Hence the musing whether such staff slingers could hold their own against smoothbore firearms. I suspect the musketmen would be horrified when fist sized rocks started raining down on them when they were still too far away to reliably return the fire. But perhaps the alleged inaccuracy of these old guns has been overstated. Softball sized groups at 100m is impressive with any weapon, rifled or smoothbore.