New episode up! We look at the history of the sling in conflict which is arguably the history of humanity itself. You listen to it here:
https://www.podbean.com/ew/pb-vk5gj-1076156

On YouTube here: https://youtu.be/HLgQKhQA0RY

And we'll have a blog post up soon with extra info on the website CatchThisPodcast.com.

Enjoy!

Sorry guys, but I'm gonna dump some probably unwanted advice. First thing I gotta say is I love listening to you guys and I'm so glad that you are doing this. The things I am about to discuss are not meant to bring you down, but hopefully to help improve some stuff for the future. And maybe a few nitpicks (sorry). I might come off as a little harsh, but it's meant with love. I will point out that these are just my opinions and suggestions, don't feel too pressured to take the advice. This is your podcast, you should do it the way you feel is best.

You guys have an issue with history. I think your presentation of it is a little confusing, some of the history you discuss might not have been researched the best, and you leave out an unholy amount of information. All of these issues kind of tie in together, but I'll address them one at a time.

First there were some details that I really liked. I was surprised at the discussion of the battle of Uhud, that was a very good detail and I think was described well enough (as far as I know about it). I think different sources will give different weapons for the one that wounded Muhammad, but I think the sling interpretation is the best and the one I would go with (I might be biased). Another thing that surprised me was Cook's notes on slings, and how it was clear it was an object that he had encountered before. This was new to me, and I thought it was amazing that you actually found the reference in the primary source.

---

Now to the not so great. First is the presentation. I like that you do it in chronological order, but the way you present the topic is jumpy. You guys jump centuries and thousands of miles with each mention. It doesn't really create a great sense of continuity or how widespread it is. I understand this was an introductory and covered the whole world, but I think anything you do in the future should better connect each instance you are discussing. My suggestion for future historical episodes would be to break it up by region. There are multiple ways you could do it, but Europe, Asia (Would largely be focused on West Asia. East Asia and South Asia have sources but might not be enough to have their own episode) Africa, North America, South America, and Oceania. Again, you could organize them differently. I'll get to it in a paragraph or two, but there is enough information out there to do that. The last thing I'll mention for this is that I wouldn't separate conflict, hunting, etc. in any historical episodes. It's all connected.

---

My second issue is kind of nitpicky, but sometimes it feels you didn't research the best. For example, I think Kick talking about Najera said it was between the English and the French. Not quite. I think whenever you are discussing a historical group using it, make sure to know who it was that was using it. I'm sure you have notes, make sure that stuff is in it. You also said that you could find nothing about there being slingers at Najera except for in the picture. There are actually a few references.

(Scroll to bottom of the page, this was a source I found from a thread here on slinging.org)

http://books.google.com/books?id=tSBEAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA372&lpg=PA372&dq=froissart+sl...


(I found this one through google, take some of it with a grain of salt since the guy is not a slinger)

http://warfare.gq/WRG/Middle_Ages_1-89-Castillian_Slinger.htm

The point being that there is a lot more information out there. If you can't find any or even if you think there is nothing there, it's worth asking the community or seeing if it has already been discussed.

This is pretty much irrelevant, but I think the name Vegetius in Classical Latin would be Weh-geh-tee-oos (I don't speak latin, someone correct me if I'm wrong). Not sure when the v sound switched in Vulgar Latin, but it might have been around the 5th century when he lived. I don't know how we should say it in English, maybe just Veh-geh-tee-us (the g is still a hard g). It probably doesn't matter.

---

The third issue is probably the biggest, and that is missed information. Although there is no way of knowing that you are even missing something, it might be a good idea to ask the community. As mentioned earlier, I know this is more of an overview, but you missed so much of the available information out there. While you said the earliest evidence of slingers was from Catalhoyuk around 7,000 BCE, there are stones from the Monte Verde site in Chile and biconicals from the West Coast of North America that might date to around 11,000 BCE. The comment on slings being around for as long as humans have been is probably not correct (we have no evidence and the sling was not known in most of Australia), but we can probably guess the sling was probably around when humans crossed into the Americas. This was all info that was floating around on this site or could be asked about. Even info more recently discussed on slinging.org was overlooked. The chalk biconical sling stones from Northern France are one such detail, that would be a cool thing to note.

I think what you are doing wrong is sticking only to the more well known aspects of slinging in slinging circles, besides a couple of the cases I mentioned at the beginning. You definitely need to talk about David and Goliath, the siege of Lachish reliefs, Greek and Roman lead sling bullets, Incan slingers, etc. Those are all very important topics, and I'm not saying in any way to skip over them. I am advising to look for information on the less investigated topics, which is why I suggested earlier to tackle history by region, so you don't have to hit only the most notable topics.

History doesn't even stop at just discussing it's use by region. You could probably do an entire episode on the surviving historical sling designs, like the Peruvian sling (2500 BCE), Lovelock cave sling (1200 BCE), Cortaillod sling (circa 1000 BCE), Egyptian slings (circa 1900 BCE - 800 BCE), etc. and all the ones that have survived through continued use and ethnographic collection. You could probably do a whole episode on historical sling bullets, perhaps two. The history of the sling might seem sparse, but when you take into account the whole world and a lot of searching, there is actually an absurd amount of content to cover.

---

Again, sorry if this critique was too much. I am hoping to be constructive. That brings me to the final thing I want to say. This is pretty much the biggest piece of advice, and what I already mentioned. Use the community! If you are ever wondering if there is more information is out there, ask everyone else. There's of course slinging.org, but we also have discord and stuff like that. There's lots of places to ask. I know I would be willing to help you find whatever you need, and I'm pretty sure that many others would love to help and have information they could contribute. Despite all my criticism, I still learned something new from this podcast. That's why the community is important. You're just 2 people, and this is a massive and spread out topic. With help from the community, there is so much cool stuff you could dig up and include. All you have to do is ask.

Those are all very fair and true assessments and critiques. I hope you realise I am now wanting and expecting this sort of breakdown for all of our future episodes

With this episode, it was going to be impossible to actually cover the history of the sling in conflict because, as we said and all of us here know, the sling has been in almost every conflict. The episode ended up being 40 minutes or so long but we were recording for more than an hour and we simply didn't have time to explore everything there is to say about the topic in one episode. As you said, it's a huge subject and that's why this episode should really be seen as a taster. We jumped around a lot and only lightly touched on subjects, but we wanted to hit both the main events or periods that the sling is known for in more mainstream culture as an overview and then I (I was the one that planned and researched this episode) wanted to explore in slightly more depth the Battle of Uhud because it isn't well known outside of the Muslim world and then I found the Battle of Najera interesting more because of the later illustration than the battle itself. The continuation of the sling being seen as an important battlefield weapon over so many hundreds of years that took pride of place right at the front of the painting, was fascinating to me. Showing slings being used on a battlefield where a lot of the participants are in plate armour, I thought was something new to bring to people and didn't want to get bogged down on the details of another single battle. I'm glad you enjoyed Cook's notes. I found that really cool as well

Our plan in the future is to have maybe single episodes on particular battles where we can go in depth and really show how the sling contributed to those specific situations as well as single regions and cultures. Don't worry, just because something was mentioned in this episode does not mean we are done with it. This was just to entice people in.

With the prehistoric finds, the problem is that it can always be argued that stones were actually used for something else and weren't sling ammo. Catal Hyuk is a good fixed point because it's pretty unambiguous that it's a slinger and is recognised as the earliest depiction of a slinger.  Physical evidence for slinging is the biggest hurdle for tracking it's development. I truly think slings have been around for most of human history and could even have been used by other species of hominid. If they could make cord, it doesn't take much imagination to then make a sling. Of course, the evidence isn't there, but I think it isn't such an outlandish claim.

We have been mostly hitting the well known stuff first because in a lot of ways we aren't making the podcast for you guys Of course we are still making it for slingers, but we are seeing the podcast as a great way to get new people into slinging. Unfortunately that does mean we have to go over ground that is very old and well known to most longer term slingers, but will be entirely new information for a lot of people. I think we forget because we're so into this interest how little "outsiders" know. The sheer number of people that don't realise you have to let go of one end shows the sling just doesn't have the cultural impact it once did so we have some work to get those people even halfway to our understanding. Right now we are trying to balance information that is new to outsiders, but known to slingers and information that is new to both outsiders and slingers. We need to have balance so as not to put off new people by getting into nitty gritty subjects that only interests us lot and that requires a little bit of background in slinging to understand.

Please please don't apologise! This is exactly the feedback we want. We want this to be the number 1 slinging podcast because of quality in addition to being the only one in existence With using the community we will try to do that more. I think we have been wanting to build that hype and surprise people by having a big reveal. Maybe announcing ahead of time and specifically asking for contributions would be a better way forward. We have another episode "in the can" that I need to get around to editing, but the one after that is yet to be planned (or decided upon I think) so we might well make a post calling for input pretty soon.

We are constantly wanting to improve this (I've been using my new microphone and listening to these "older" episodes is frankly painful now ) and strive to make something for this community and to expand the community as much as we can. This is still early days really and we are wanting this to continue... well, indefinitely. We have more than a year and half's worth of topics we want to cover if we are sticking to once a month-ish which for now is suiting our schedules best. We are truly in this for the long haul

Really though, thank you so much for your comment! Truly this podcast is a group project. It might be myself and Nooc that have "put it together" but Mersa, Morphy, IronGoober and Ryan have all been there with help, advice and encouragement and we would never have come together without the forum and without the slinging community so this baby is all of ours

It's great to listen to! I agree with points others here made, there are some nitpicks you could fix, but I hope to see or more accurately hear more of it.
  I think you should some time include hussite slingers, those are hard to find info on, but were the most famous czech slingers! When people see me slinging here they recognise it as hussite sling(husitský prak).

czechslinger1.0 wrote on Jul 12^th, 2021 at 4:08pm:

If you know of any sources about them or if there is anything you might be able to find that we wouldn't be able to, send it on over! The great thing with slinging is just how widespread it is so showing that off with lots of different places represented would be great.

The book that I’m always referencing is “ Slings & Slingstones: The Forgotten Weapons of Oceania and the Americas” by Gigi and Robert York. It’s THE book on historical slinging. The book focuses not on slinging as a whole, but in Oceania, South America, and North America. Although it doesn’t cover everywhere, there’s a lot of incredible info in there. It’s a bit expensive but worth every penny.

Oddly, the Monte Verde stones are only mentioned in passing. It also doesn’t have much about the Peruvian sling from 2500 BCE either (I can’t even find a picture of it, but I think there is a picture in a book on Peruvian braiding). And although you weren’t asking about this, it is sadly before the research on Peruvian lead bullets came out. There are also many other things it misses, because it covers so much ground.

However, it covers a lot of other crucial topics. This is where you will find all the info about west coast biconicals (some perhaps dating to the time of the Monte Verde site). There’s also some information about biconicals from Venezuela and Argentina/Paraguay. The lack of the Peruvian sling is disappointing, but it still has the Lovelock cave sling and biconicals (1200 BCE). It might seem like a short book, but it’s impossible to mention all of the stuff it covers.

Other than that book, in depth information about slings and slingstones is in short supply. Academic studies are either vague or only cover one instance, so otherwise you gotta take it case by case.

Oh believe me there's a lot of umming and erring (almost entirely me) I'm just getting better at editing it out  Next up is Sport. That's been recorded and I'm starting the edit... soon. I really need to get to it. After that... we haven't decided for sure but we are thinking Hunting/Survival. We absolutely recognise it can be a controversial subject, but it's a subject that deserves coverage and can be talked about productively. I won't go into opinions of the ethics right now (will be talked about in the episode), but if anyone has any sources for historical depictions or accounts of hunting with a sling, that would be greatly appreciated and you will be credited.

Curious Aardvark wrote on Jul 19^th, 2021 at 8:32am:

Don't worry S'Clash is mentioned