Alright Dan, let's just say that the sling is one of mankind's oldest projectile weapons and leave it at that.

well I'm nailing my flag to whenever man settle down and became a herder rather than purely a hunter.
Once you think about it - it just makes sense.

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Well the evidence is pretty strong that people doing the same job in different places will often come up with the same ways of doing things.
And all shepherds need a cheap and reliable way of both herding their animals and fending off predators. They also all would have time on their hands that would have been - at least partly occupied in making cordage and dealing with leather and wool and other materials from the animals.
Sling making is incredibly simple - it has to be I can do it  
So slings developing at multiple points is perfectly logical.

What sets the sling apart from a spear or bow is the length of time it takes for a sling to be of any use to the slinger. And that's where shepherds again come into their own and why it makes sense to rule hunters out.
Need is the main catalyst for innovation. Hunters already had effective easy ways to produce and use weapons.

But once you have a man who's job is to look after animals rather than hunt them. Spears are of little use. You can't direct a herd at distance with a bow and arrow. So at that point in human history a new weapon was required. Cordage and stones were readily available and shepherds would have naturally been using thrown stones anyway.  

Shepherds had the time, materials and need for sling usage.

Nobody else had all three.
All shepherds shared the same needs and skill sets and access to materials.
So multiple points of sling origin make perfect sense. Plus slings were used in cultures on different continents - every one except australia, where herding never took hold.

You can also make almost the same case for arable farming.
Farmers would need an effective way to protect crops, scare birds away, deter larger animals etc.
Slings fit the bill a lot better than bows and spears. 

So what's the oldest evidence of animal shepherding and farming ?
I'd think older than 15,000 years.

I suspect if you find the really early herding cultures, you'll also find the early evidence of sling usage.
Once they can produce their own meat, more static societies develop and people start making pots and decorating things for the longer term and that's where I reckon, you're likely to have the earliest images of slingers.

benkolmer wrote on Sep 8^th, 2012 at 3:53pm:



I think we can all agree on that. It's definitely been around for awhile and I'm sure it came in very handy back in the day.

If the sling use goes beyond written documents, it's very speculative as to it's origen, and your estimates could be dramatically differerent. I'd rather not be contradictory in The Guide. I see no benefit in reading about theoretical sling useage in The Guide. Perhaps it was also used by aliens from differnt universes? There is certanately no shortage of rocks in outer space, and it's so simple, perhaps nomadic primitive alien sheperds used it. But when did they start using slings? We don't have any written recrods of the alien sling useage for many reasons, but hopefully you can see what I'm trying to say here.

It's an unanswerable (worded as is) question.

It's definitely entertaining to discuss on here. But I'd prefer not to publish anything in the guide that we can't confirm without absolute certainty. I don't think new slingers will really mind missing all the Authors bickering about the exact first slinger in The Guide.

When I write, I prefer to write about somthing I know about. I'd prefer if you did the same. There's plenty to say and write about the sling in recent history.

Rereading thread: picture at Çatal Hüyük, makes it 7500 BC. Anything older ?

I will dig out 'Slingstones of Oceania and America', there are lots of biconical stones, no definite proof they are slingstones but they are unlikely to be anything else, in North America quite some time ago. I doubt I can beat 7500 BC though.

I'm sticking to my hypothesis of pre-migration Africa for atlatl and sling.

David Morningstar wrote on Sep 11^th, 2012 at 5:42am:


Atlatl yes - but not slings. If that were the case there would a lot more evidence, there would certainly be cave paintings.

And hunters with atlatls had no need of slings and minimal need for cordage.
Plus if that were the case then the australian aborigenes - one of the oldest offshoots of aryan man, would have had slingshot knowlege - and prior to western contact, they did not.

I tell you it all fits too perfectly to just be something I've made up

Cheers for the index mauro 
That's compact enough to just drop into the guide.

so which non-agrarian cultures DEVELOPED slings.
And bear in mind that once someone has seen a sling in action - ONCE. it's so much easier to understand the potential and make the effort to create your own.

ie: were a warrior/hunter to steal a shepherds sheep and be attacked by a sling. He'd probably start seriously thinking about trying it out.

so there would need to be evidence that the sling developed before any interaction with cultures that already had slings.

And that's going to be very tough I think as non-agrarian cultures tend to leave pretty small documentary footprints in history.

Devolped... That's a good question... But you could make a fairly strong argument that we could never truly pin point where something was developed since, as you mentioned, once you see it once it's easy to copy.  Same with any weapon for that matter.  Even though we know the bow was used concurrently by many cultures, we can never say for sure who developed it first, or for that matter, who developed it without the aid of seeing it somewhere else first.