the weight is not prohibitive for a hand sling.
Use a wrist strap and that would be an easy thing to throw.

And against an opponent in armour  - oh yeah !

Kick wrote on Feb 26^th, 2021 at 12:09pm:


Geez. No offense, but you guys are doing a lot of speculation. I'm just going to guess that the simplest answer is probably the best one.

Was it ammo for a mysterious siege weapon that shoots giant glandes with some mechanism to make it spin, and that no one has found any other trace of? That doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me.

Was the dent in the side from a spade? Maybe I'm just pointing out the obvious, but I think that dent might be from the fact that it's a projectile and it probably hit something hard.

Unless we get evidence of otherwise, it would make sense that it is exactly what it looks like.

And I can't believe I have to say this, but let's be real. This is slinging.org, who here hasn't wanted to sling around a big ass lead sling bullet? I can't speak for the ancients, but I can only imagine that at least some of them felt the same way.

Im a relatively weak slinger and can sling an 800 gram stone 1 handed 100 meters with very little practice with a long sling. (Its been close to 8 years the last I can remember throwing with a sling greater than 24 inches.) Imagine what a strong trained slinging warrior could do with that? It would obliterate anything it hit.

Kick wrote on Feb 27^th, 2021 at 5:55am:


I don't think in this case that we can completely draw from modern data. If it was exposed to the elements for a couple thousand years, it might have had such a gash expanded. There are sling bullets that are missing chunks, this one might be different because of its extreme size. I also don't think anyone ever tested such a large bullet, and it might be that it hit a pretty uneven surface.

Hirtius wrote on Feb 26^th, 2021 at 7:13pm:

There is far more lost to history than that which survives to be apart of our 'knowledge' today. It is often the case that only prolific, widespread technologies are the one's we get to know about. There is no doubt in my mind that such things were experimented with, even if they didn't turn out to be as practical as other designs. As an extreme example, practically none of us would have thought such things as the Antikythera mechanism could have even existed until it was found. We are hardly talking about 'high' technology required for a device to chuck a chunk of lead in a slightly alternative manner. 

For those they are interested in false archeology :

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiara_of_Saitaferne

True, it could be faked. But why? I would imagine many fakes are made for some financial gain or some other sort of purpose like prestige. By the way, the tiara of Saitaferne mentioned earlier had great value but wasn't even intended to be a fake.

This object, we can probably say with confidence that it is a sling bullet. To go back to the earlier question, why would someone fake it?

The general public doesn't really give a crap about slings, so this probably isn't to impress them. Despite the prevalence of the sling throughout the world, slings and sling ammunition are really ever on display in any museum or anything.

This probably won't impress too many archaeologists or historians either. As we probably all know, archaeologists in many cases even forget slinging is a thing.  Thankfully in the cases of Greek and Roman lead bullets, they get identified easily since they are fairly common. However, they aren't prestigious finds. Sometimes bullets have messages on the sides that spark interest, but this bullet doesn't even do that. The inscription is essentially unintelligible.

The only thing remarkable is its size. While impressive, its an object that most people don't care about, and it doesn't give any monumental insight. Who would gain from faking this? Theres no money or prestige in it.

One last and most important thing is that Tombelaine also mentioned that there is no record of it, besides that it was obtained in Greece in 1865. That's true. However, most artifacts before modern archaeology in the early/mid 1900s weren't tracked and documented in their original context. Archaeology was often a hobby of rich people taking souvenirs. For this to have little to no documentation is actually quite normal.

I never said that it's a fake.
I'm saying there's some evidence missing that it's real.
Is there another specimen ? Is there a text of the period ? Has the object been dated ? Three times no !
So the hypothesis that it's a false, is not to be excluded.
If someone can answer yes to only one question, then this slingstone will be true.
For now, your opinions, (interesting by the way), are built on sand. Keep a cool head, don't believe what may be wrong.