Quote:But this does not mean that we should sling light stones if we want to imitate the ancients, nor that the ancients 'usually slung light". The stone "acorns" and the clay biconals are in fact rare, and to be considered huting ammo.
Quite rare? The trusted sources I quoted from express them as being the dominant stuff found. How can anyone know that they are hunting ammo? Please cite your source for this opinion.
Quote:or short-lived solutions or special ammo (as in heated clay bullets); most ancient sling stones were big and heavy, as shown by visual evidence, from the Makron cup (480 BC) to Trajan's column (AD 117),
The Makron cup offers absolutely nothing in the form of proportion. The stone in the sling cradle is about two to three times the size of the stones bouncing out of the bag carried oddly on his arm, which should be free for battle and balance. I wonder if size 15 4E feet were common among ancient slingers as well?
Trajan's Column is the same thing as above. Does anybody on slinging.org sling grapefruit sized stones with a sling shorter than the length of their forearm? Once again the stone in the sling is more than twice the size of the ones in his tunic. In fact that stone is as big as his size 5 6E foot. His toes are long enough to be used for fingers. The handle on his sword doubles as a toothpick once you unscrew the pommel.
Can anyone figure out how the slinger on Trajan's Column reloads his sling, once he lets go of his first shot? His left arm and hand are completely pre-occupied both with a heavy shield in his hand, and in holding those big stones in his tunic from falling out. Have you ever tried to reload your sling without your other hand?
Also, judging by the way his tunic is slung over his arm, balancing the weight out of all those stones, that tunic is either made of lead lined fabric or else those stones are actually really light in weight, and exaggerated in size only for artistic reasons. Because if those are big rocks, the weight of that tunic isn't going to hold them up for a second.
These artistic representations of slingers show little more than that slingers were around at the time of the artist's work, that they slung things they carried in quantity, and that they were in battles. The pictures seem to me to indicate a stylized unfamiliarity with some of the realities of actually using the weapon.
Crude disproportionate artistic pictures are poor evidence of proportion, size, and weight of real world items.
Quote:and by archaeological finds where documented.
Which documented finds?
Quote:Most sling stones, of course, will not show up as such in the evidence.
That's an argument from silence. Actually even natural river stones really stand out when they are found, away from rivers.
I don't doubt that many ancient slingers slung big. But the sources I quoted show stone and clay projectiles in the lower weight ranges as being the dominant finds. Until I am made aware of other finds which show that the above sources are out of date, I have to conclude they aren't.
Quote:For many light projectiles there is still another explanation of the use.
One has not shot them individually. But as Schroot Just for the hunting on birds
if the big advantages have.
The shaped sling projectiles were definitely not shot, which is logically round or else just crude small river stones. There is zero point to taking minutes if not hours and hours to carve a perfectly shaped ovoid out of solid rock, just in order to sling it in the form of shot. Shot achieves its effect through dispersal and quantity, not specially carved shape.
Also, if this were the case then I'm assuming that you'd also expect glandes to be a form of shot, given that they are in the same shape and weight class as the stones?
It's fine if many people on slinging.org like to sling heavy. It is a valid way to sling both historically and for physical reasons. But no modern slinger's preference changes history. I think lighter weight sling projectiles have not been an adequately explored subject among us modern slingers and merely want to point that out.