I am unsure if this type of poll has been on slinging.org before. Probably so. It's always an interesting sort of thing though so let's do a fresh one. Maybe it will be surprising.
Here is a conversion chart if you are unsure of grams but know the ounces.
http://www.metric-conversions.org/weight/grams-to-ounces-table.htmSlinging has always been a diverse activity world wide, where different styles, projectile weights and levels of skill existed in different regions. Yet I have always found it shocking that most sling stones found are considerably lighter than what I believe the average weight used today by the world wide slinging community. They are certainly lighter than my own preferences have been over the years. And this has bothered me for years since I first learned it.
Manfred Korfmann's The Sling As A Weapon, references sling stone weights in the Near East as ranging from 13 grams to 180 grams. Quite a range! I am sure our pole will show the same.
But the range is usually much much narrower than this he states. Usually 20 grams is the bottom threshold and 50 grams the upper threshold for sling stone weight. In different regions average weights were 24 grams. 47 grams at another site. About 25 grams was not just the average weight but the vast majority of stones fell right on this weight, with very few diverging far from it. According to one chart, the vast majority of stones weighed between 24 and 33 grams with most of those weighing about 24 grams. It seems 25 grams is some sort of ancient ideal weight.
I have two questions about this:
1) Why were the ancients so picky about this narrow range of weights in their sling stones? The most plausible explanation to me as to why their stones were of such uniform weight, was because they were trying to obtain high level accuracy with them and a narrow weight range was necessary to do this.
2) Why were these stones so light in weight? I know it has been discussed before and yes ancient people's were a bit smaller then we are so we have to factor that in, but still, isn't 25 grams really light?
I am sure the poll will either bear out question 2 or make it nonsense.
Why did the ancients prefer stones that were so light and uniform in weight? Could this reflect upon the technique they used?