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Concept
Sling (weapon)
Summary
A sling is a projectile weapon typically used to throw a blunt projectile such as a stone, clay, or lead "sling-bullet". It is also known as the shepherd's sling or slingshot (in British English). Someone who specializes in using slings is called a slinger.
A sling has a small cradle or pouch in the middle of two retention cords. A projectile is placed in the pouch. There is a loop on the end of one side of the retention cords. Depending on the design of the sling, either the middle finger or the wrist is placed through a loop on the end of one cord, and a tab at the end of the other cord is placed between the thumb and forefinger. The sling is swung in an arc, and the tab released at a precise moment. This action releases the projectile to fly to the target. By its double-pendulum kinetics, the sling enables stones (or spears) to be thrown much further than they could be by hand alone.
The sling is inexpensive and easy to build. Historically it has been used for hunting game and in combat. Today the sling is of interest as a wilderness survival tool and an improvised weapon.
The sling is an ancient weapon known to Neolithic peoples around the Mediterranean, but is likely to be much older. It is possible that the sling was invented during the Upper Palaeolithic at a time when new technologies such as the spear-thrower and the bow and arrow were beginning to emerge.
In Australia, the woomera has the same mechanical dynamics as the sling, transducing rotational movement into linear projection, although it is not known whether this was an independent invention or not.
Whereas stones and clay objects thought by many archaeologists to be sling-bullets are common finds in the archaeological record, slings themselves are rare. This is both because a sling's materials are biodegradable and because slings were lower-status weapons, rarely preserved in a wealthy person's grave.
The oldest-known surviving slings—radiocarbon dated to 2500 BC—were recovered from South American archaeological sites on the coast of Peru.
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