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Women slingers (Read 11509 times)
bernardz
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Women slingers
Oct 16th, 2012 at 1:20am
 
Any accounts of women being used as slingers in ancient or medieval times?
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Jaegoor
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Re: Women slingers
Reply #1 - Oct 16th, 2012 at 5:16am
 
I know no pictures from the Middle Ages.

However, there are reports which women catapults served.

From the antiquity there are pictures

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Dan
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Re: Women slingers
Reply #2 - Oct 16th, 2012 at 9:48am
 
I would think it's be kinda hard to use a sling in a kitchen...  Huh

JK. AFAIK, women were more support personal than front line warriors.

They might have slung as a fun thing with their family or something, but I highly doubt any would be professionals.
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I was pretty good at slinging like 10 years ago.
 
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Bill Skinner
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Re: Women slingers
Reply #3 - Oct 16th, 2012 at 9:27pm
 
There were female shepards, so there were female slingers.
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Re: Women slingers
Reply #4 - Oct 16th, 2012 at 9:57pm
 
Yeah, and the notion of "professionals" in a modern sense when related to slingers, well, dubious at best.  As for frontline warriors, that's another matter entirely, and all evidence shows that women served with their slings in Peru in the forts there.  They were herders, same as the men, so they knew their way around a sling.  They would have been used in the defense of the forts from invading forces.  This is a common warfare experience for pre-modern women, one we see mirrored in medieval castle defenses in Europe and Asia, and in all sorts of different primitive warfare contexts.  When people come to burn your house down, you don't cower, you pick up a weapon and fight back.  The notion that women couldn't or didn't engage in such behavior is rooted in horribly sexist Victorian mores, not in historical fact.
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Re: Women slingers
Reply #5 - Oct 17th, 2012 at 1:53am
 
Sarmatian women were fighting alongside with men.What's known,they were mostly cavalry,and horse archers.
In earlier times they might have used slings also..
I guess many times,women were more likely to roll clay balls with the children and men were slinging the dried\fired clay ammo.Also they might have more often supply their man with baskets of stones,clay,then do actual slinging.
That's what i would imagine. During a fight there are less active activities,besides fighting,that needs to be done,women and children often took up those,during history.
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Dan
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Re: Women slingers
Reply #6 - Oct 17th, 2012 at 9:23am
 
jlasud wrote on Oct 17th, 2012 at 1:53am:
Sarmatian women were fighting alongside with men.What's known,they were mostly cavalry,and horse archers.
In earlier times they might have used slings also..
I guess many times,women were more likely to roll clay balls with the children and men were slinging the dried\fired clay ammo.Also they might have more often supply their man with baskets of stones,clay,then do actual slinging.
That's what i would imagine. During a fight there are less active activities,besides fighting,that needs to be done,women and children often took up those,during history.



That's kind what I was picturing too. In todays U.S. army there's somethinglike 10 support personal for every 1 soldier. I'd imagine you'd need similar ratios back then.
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I was pretty good at slinging like 10 years ago.
 
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Atlatlista
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Re: Women slingers
Reply #7 - Oct 17th, 2012 at 9:51am
 
Dan wrote on Oct 17th, 2012 at 9:23am:
jlasud wrote on Oct 17th, 2012 at 1:53am:
Sarmatian women were fighting alongside with men.What's known,they were mostly cavalry,and horse archers.
In earlier times they might have used slings also..
I guess many times,women were more likely to roll clay balls with the children and men were slinging the dried\fired clay ammo.Also they might have more often supply their man with baskets of stones,clay,then do actual slinging.
That's what i would imagine. During a fight there are less active activities,besides fighting,that needs to be done,women and children often took up those,during history.



That's kind what I was picturing too. In todays U.S. army there's somethinglike 10 support personal for every 1 soldier. I'd imagine you'd need similar ratios back then.


Actually, in the book, "War Before Civilization" by Lawrence Keeley, a professor of anthropology/archaeology, he addresses the support personnel aspect of things.  In truly prehistoric warfare, IE before major civilizations developed, the level of support personnel is practically non-existent.  Every warrior is a self-sufficient entity and the armies have no supply trains or ways of maintaining themselves in the field beyond short raids, due to their lack of economic sophistication.  Only later, as we start to see civilizations growing, do we get supply trains and the ability to carry on extended campaigns.

Even so, earlier warfare required far fewer logistics and support personnel than does modern warfare.  It's a figure that has been consistently increasing as the technological complexity of our weapons systems and transportation systems have gone up.  The closest thing I can find to a support system in prehistoric warfare is the use of women on the frontlines of some Papua New Guinean battles.  They would wander around the battlefield picking up arrows that had been shot to resupply their warriors who were doing the shooting.  For whatever reason, the men didn't shoot them.  I guess it was against the rules in that context, though sparing women and children is by no means a typical feature of warfare there or elsewhere.

Anyway, it's helpful to think of it as a continuum.  The more economically organized a society is, and the greater their technological complexity, the more support staff you can expect.  This is a cool way of looking at it too, as it isn't necessarily chronological.  The armies of Rome, for example, under such a rubric, would be expected to have a greater proportion of support staff than those of the Norse, or of Early and even High Medieval Europe.  Since this is what we in fact see, I think the model holds.
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Pikåru
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Re: Women slingers
Reply #8 - Oct 17th, 2012 at 11:56am
 
Dan wrote on Oct 16th, 2012 at 9:48am:
I would think it's be kinda hard to use a sling in a kitchen...  Huh


Oh Dan...
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Re: Women slingers
Reply #9 - Oct 17th, 2012 at 4:19pm
 
Quote:
Dan wrote on Oct 16th, 2012 at 9:48am:
I would think it's be kinda hard to use a sling in a kitchen...  Huh


Oh Dan...



Yeah I couldn't resist that one. Again, note the JK after the joke. Women from those anceint cultures were way tougher than most men today. And as Bill said, if there were female shepeards (which there were) there were female slingers.

Atlatlista, I was kinda thinking that with the more advanced and technical armies you'd require a lot more support personel. It's cool that someone actually wrote a book on it. I could see female slingers for agricultral purpose like scaring away birds from crops or tending sheep. But I kind of thought of things such as hunting and warefare as male dominated activites in ancient times. It might have varied culture to culture though, IDK.
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I was pretty good at slinging like 10 years ago.
 
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Masiakasaurus
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Re: Women slingers
Reply #10 - Oct 17th, 2012 at 4:34pm
 
Quote:
Dan wrote on Oct 16th, 2012 at 9:48am:
I would think it's be kinda hard to use a sling in a kitchen...  Huh


Oh Dan...

I'm guessing you're not about to call him wise for his years, again? Grin

Anecdotally, I remember being told of a law enacted in early medieval Ireland barring women from serving as warriors. This, if true, implies the presence of women beforehand OR pre Victorian sexism that only was codified at that point.
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Pikåru wrote on Nov 19th, 2013 at 6:59pm:
Massi - WTF? It's called a sling. You use it to throw rocks farther and faster than you could otherwise. That's all. 
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Dan
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Re: Women slingers
Reply #11 - Oct 17th, 2012 at 4:50pm
 
Masiakasaurus wrote on Oct 17th, 2012 at 4:34pm:
Quote:
Dan wrote on Oct 16th, 2012 at 9:48am:
I would think it's be kinda hard to use a sling in a kitchen...  Huh


Oh Dan...

I'm guessing you're not about to call him wise for his years, again? Grin



That's probably all he could type before he fell on the floor laughing.  Wink

I still have common sense, sometimes it's just necesary to have a little humor to break my normal stoic persona. 

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I was pretty good at slinging like 10 years ago.
 
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Atlatlista
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Re: Women slingers
Reply #12 - Oct 18th, 2012 at 9:29am
 
Masiakasaurus wrote on Oct 17th, 2012 at 4:34pm:
Quote:
Dan wrote on Oct 16th, 2012 at 9:48am:
I would think it's be kinda hard to use a sling in a kitchen...  Huh


Oh Dan...

I'm guessing you're not about to call him wise for his years, again? Grin

Anecdotally, I remember being told of a law enacted in early medieval Ireland barring women from serving as warriors. This, if true, implies the presence of women beforehand OR pre Victorian sexism that only was codified at that point.


Yeah, from the historian's standpoint, it implies there was a problem that the society felt needed addressing.  Women rarely engaged in warfare from a pre-modern standpoint for a whole host of reasons, some of which was based on sexism, and some of which was based on actual physical necessity/evolutionary pressures.  Most men, I think, assume there were no warrior women before (or very few of them) because women aren't physically capable of military service in the same capacity men are.  I think the actual truth lies closer to the idea that war was not beneficial for women in pre-modern societies.

To look back at Keeley's book, he mentions that in many of the most war-like societies, women stood to gain nothing from warfare.  War was fought to obtain land, to redress grievances in an era lacking modern judicial systems and treaties, and to obtain captives - usually women.  So, women stood to gain nothing from female captives.  They stood to lose a great deal because they themselves might be ripped out of their homes and enslaved or forced to become the "wives" of the conquering band or tribe.  The same holds true economically.  They tended to be the ones caring for the crops, and the crops could easily be burned or destroyed by enemies.  So their primary source of income and food security would also be put at risk.  This doesn't even account for child rearing, which was a huge portion of a pre-modern woman's job (and which is probably more directly the reason she wasn't the "hunter" in pre-modern human societies).  Having children around makes fighting wars very difficult, and it also heightens the risk, as the offspring are put into serious jeopardy.  So, for the most part, pre-modern women despised war, and didn't tend to participate in it.

That having been said, these things varied across cultures.  Tlingit women were expected to steer the war canoes of raiding parties.  Peruvian women, as I mentioned before, would have been expected to join in the defenses of hilltop forts, and women in medieval cultures tended to be the ones who kept up castle defenses as well.
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Re: Women slingers
Reply #13 - Oct 18th, 2012 at 11:15am
 
Masiakasaurus wrote on Oct 17th, 2012 at 4:34pm:
Quote:
Dan wrote on Oct 16th, 2012 at 9:48am:
I would think it's be kinda hard to use a sling in a kitchen...  Huh


Oh Dan...

I'm guessing you're not about to call him wise for his years, again? Grin 


Dan's a smart kid, no doubt there but as you know knowledge is not wisdom and like with all people young and old we sometimes find our foot lodged solidly in our own mouths. Not a dig on Dan at all, he's a good kid but it's a little like the parable of the old bull and the young bull.
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I sling. Therefore I am. Tano' Hu I Islan Guahan. http://itanohu.blogspot.com
 
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Re: Women slingers
Reply #14 - Oct 18th, 2012 at 4:12pm
 
Quote:
Masiakasaurus wrote on Oct 17th, 2012 at 4:34pm:
Quote:
Dan wrote on Oct 16th, 2012 at 9:48am:
I would think it's be kinda hard to use a sling in a kitchen...  Huh


Oh Dan...

I'm guessing you're not about to call him wise for his years, again? Grin  


Dan's a smart kid, no doubt there but as you know knowledge is not wisdom and like with all people young and old we sometimes find our foot lodged solidly in our own mouths. Not a dig on Dan at all, he's a good kid but it's a little like the parable of the old bull and the young bull.  



Never heard that parable before so I googled it. It's a good lesson... kind of a weird delivery.
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« Last Edit: Oct 21st, 2012 at 1:34pm by Dan »  

I was pretty good at slinging like 10 years ago.
 
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