Sling
A throwing weapon made of a braided cord with a pouch in the middle; the oldest surviving slings, from the coast of Peru, are dated to around 2500 BCE.
Quick Facts
About the weapon
The sling is among the oldest throwing weapons. Shaped stones considered sling projectiles appear in the Near East by at least the sixth millennium BCE, in the Pottery Neolithic. The oldest surviving slings come from archaeological sites on the coast of Peru, and radiocarbon dating places them around 2500 BCE. The oldest textual mention is considered to be the biblical Book of Judges, the best known being the story of David and Goliath. An ordinary sling measures 61 to 100 cm. In the middle it has a pouch, usually rhomboid, which grips the projectile when used. One end of the cord has a finger loop, while the other, which the slinger releases at the right moment, ends in a knot or a tab. It was traditionally woven from flax, hemp or wool. The so-called Manchester sling from the Egyptian 12th Dynasty (about 2000-1800 BCE) is made entirely of plant fibre, while in the Inca Empire slings were woven from llama wool. Projectiles ranged from pebbles of 50 g to fist-sized stones over 500 g, as well as lead projectiles, almond-shaped bullets of around 28 g. A projectile thrown in a high arc could travel over 400 m. According to the Guinness World Records, the record is held by David Engvall, who in 1992 threw 477.1 m with a sling 127 cm long. Strabo wrote that slingers from the Balearic Islands trained children from a young age and gave them bread only once they had hit it with a sling. Traditional sling throwing is still practiced on the Balearics today, with regular competitions and leagues. The sling was also known to Polynesian peoples, among them the Māori, Hawaiians and Tongans.
Related weapons
- Variants: Staff sling