Why did slingers get phased out? Wouldn't a piece of rock traveling at 120km/h be devastating to people even in armour?
Why did slingers get phased out?
Why did slingers get phased out? Wouldn't a piece of rock traveling at 120km/h be devastating to people even in armour?
Oof I've got this crazy shit called "bullets"
Im talking about like pre 14th century obviously.
Slings were used up to and during the advent of firearms.
You're asking why a historical myth that didn't happen, happened.
Bows of that strength also faded in and out of use and were always isolated rather than widespread.
Some cultures, at some times, would invest the massive buy-in of weapons that required years and years of conditioning, and they were sometimes successful.
>I've got this crazy shit called "bullets"
sling projectiles are literally called bullets
>Why did slingers get phased out?
pretty hard to hit things on purpose with them
you would probably find it difficult to get enough slingers to fill your army with unless you had a thousand shepherds to recruit from
though slings were very common weapons in antiquity due to low cost, small ammo size, and actually outranging contemporary bows
there doesnt seem to be a strong consensus on why their use declined despite seemingly outperforming bows in nearly all key categories explanations range from "slingers take a really long time to get good, so anyone raising an army will need to wait years to have enough" to "when slings fell out of tradition for whatever reason, it was too difficult to restart it"
Great post. Very difficult to time the release correctly so too inaccurate for any use except in a battlefield with an array of targets. Pitched battles too uncommon to justify the necessary lifelong training imo
>Pitched battles too uncommon to justify the necessary lifelong training imo
And yet English longbows train for life
I’m trying to imagine a formation of hundreds of slingers of various skill levels all massed together. I think it would be the group version of fricking around with nunchucks or a butterfly knife with regard to friendly fire, and they’d all have to be spaced pretty far apart, and be able to maintain that spacing while manoeuvring to be able to use their weapons. I don’t think training time was a huge issue as things like English longbowmen show that if it was effective then people were happy to invest the time in training. More just that slings are awkward as hell if you have multiple people trying to use them at once.
What I don’t get is why the atlatl wasn’t used more often in battles. It seems like a big boost to throwing javelins for no real downside.
>why the atlatl wasn’t used more often in battles. It seems like a big boost to throwing javelins for no real downside.
i read or heard somewhere that it was simply a forgotten technology except in america and australia. The reason for that is speculative, one explanation is the extinction of large mammals like mammoths in eurasia and they began hunting smaller and more nimble animals and the bow was better suited for this. When the atlatl was rediscovered eventually it was already obsolete.
During the in Europe the atlatl was phased out in favor of a string attached to the javelin shaft called an amentum
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amentum
Average AI response
Oh cool. Yeah I guess that accomplishes pretty much the same thing
You hit the nail on the head as far as spacing and a loose formation. They were incredibaly lethal weapons but bows (and especially xbows later) were much more practical for sieges and anytime a bunch of dudes needed to shoot at some buttholes while they shot back
Ancient girl butt
Those greeks were thicc buddy 🙂
>he didn't see the beard
gay
And archers don't take a long time to train? It probably happened because bows/arrows became handier as the time progressed so slings got phased out.
>And archers don't take a long time to train
They do, but bows are more useful in war, as archers can can fire from cover, and since they can be more closely packed in formation, they are better at mid-range (30-50 yds) combat. Neither are great at close quarters fighting, though the greater density of archers meant that they were still more effective on the battlefield than slingers once shit got real and their axes came out. Slingers made better skirmishers than archers though, which is why they were used in that role for so many millennia.
can you explain what you mean by "skirmishers" thank you
Wiki actually does a not-terrible job for once:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skirmisher
>pretty hard to hit things on purpose with them
>Great post. Very difficult to time the release correctly
Both of you have clearly never used one. You can hit a man sizes target at fifty yards with an afternoon of training.
The movement is very natural, you were literally born to throw shit and that's what you do from a biomechanical standpoint.
>Both of you have clearly never used one
but most historical accounts mention that slings were difficult weapons to master, and most military slingers were professional auxiliary units who were recruited from people who had been slinging since they were kids
there also less obvious reasons why people favoured javelins, bows & xbows: Archers can stand close behind your shieldwall and shoot, slingers cannot do this without the risk of friendly fire. They can also be used on castle walls, slings not so much. With bows you can also hunt animals if needed, this doesnt work well with slings.
Thats why every culture used bows&xbows when they had the ressources and knowledge to do so.
>They can also be used on castle walls, slings not so much.
Nah, slings work fine from a walltop. Some of our best collections of slingstones and especially leaden sling bullets come from the fields outside towns that faced major sieges. But you are correct about battlefield formations. Slingers basically >have< to fire in loose skirmishing formations to get enough space to wind up, and can't volley from trenches or deeper formations the way archers can. Bows get better concentrations of firepower, have massive defensive advantages, similar firing rates, and are much more accurate/controllable despite the dramatically increased cost and time required for manufacture.
It takes several years to make even a self-bow. Composite bows are vastly more labor-intensive and take a couple years to assemble, plus they explosively delaminate if you handle them wrong. Arrow lumber is a lot easier to season (and grow, it's usually shit trees that grow in swamps) but the process still takes at least a year from the time you cut down the tree. People don't put in that kind of work on a tool unless it's effective.
Poor and rural people kept slings alive for millennia after they were obsolete as a military weapon for the same reason they carry shitty pocket pistols and Saturday Night Specials today. They'll still kill a motherfricker (more importantly, they'll frighten off or kill a predator..), and they're incredibly cheap in weight, space, production time, and materials compared to the benefit of being armed. Even if you have to practice constantly to gitgud that practice isn't hard or expensive.
Another reason peasants used slings ourside of war was because it was something to do. Like if you didn't have anything particularly important to do, you'd stand in your field like a living scarecrow and try to bonk birds that came to eat your crops.
>slings work fine from a walltop
that sounds cool and all, but a castle wall isn't just a hypothetical wall top, we have lots and lots of actual examples extant today, and in none of them would slings work worth a damn.
>volleyfire
That was literally not a thing.
What do you mean by volleyfire?
>Wouldn't a piece of rock traveling at 120km/h be devastating to people even in armour?
Honestly no if you're talking steel plate. Mail obviously it would still cause injuries but even just mail over thick clothing without significant padding early medieval style takes a lot of sting out of impacts. I'd be interested to see slings vs various copper alloys (bronze) to see if they deform on impact to a significantly greater degree, wondering if a significant deformation might debilitate or kill someone through a bronze helmet
You don't need to deform a helmet to knock them out.
there is stuff under the armor other than flesh.
I don't think a little bit of padding matters much when a 500g rock traveling at 120km/h hits you square in the head.
that's because it wouldn't be going that fast and likely would be a glancing hit. slingers take an enormous amount of space around them to work, but you thought they were point blank weapons, I'm sure.
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Some data
>actually I mean 500 grams at 90kph.
you are fricking pathetic, delete your homosexual thread you brainlet dipshit.
Not the same person.
Put yr plate on and hold still while i chuck rocks at you bro. I may not pierce the armor but you better believe you aint gonna be no perky pink pussy lips afterwards
>t. has never heard of a shield
Slingers were used in combat until muzzle loaders became common. Sometimes even later. They fought right alongside archers in the Middle Ages
I'm guessing military weapons advanced towards having to have less training to use. Weapons got easier to use (but more advanced in construction). sling > bow > crossbow > musket
Slings were weapons you had to practice since young age, and were part of a daily occupation - shepherds chasing away or killing wolves from a distance.
>I'm guessing military weapons advanced towards having to have less training to use. Weapons got easier to use (but more advanced in construction). sling > bow > crossbow > musket
Funny thing in this row military training and time of service only increased
nor military training mouth breathing peasant pressed into service > weekend warrior training peasant pressed into training > years of service mercenary > 30 years of service professional automation stepping in unison with precision of metronome
The default stance of the Prussian infantryman in battle was with arm shouldered, the men lined up so as to have elbows touching between each file, and an arm’s length between each rank (or a space of about 2 feet by 2 feet 2 inches). This kept the formation tight, but gave the men enough space to operate within. when marching, the weapon would often be supported, either by crossing the left arm round the stock behind the hammer, or by sinking the weapon down, rendering the left arm straight.
Infantrymen marched in lockstep, each pace being by the end of Frederick II's reign being 28 German inches long. each step was done by carrying the foot directly in front, keeping the knees straight, the foot remaining almost parallel to the ground and facing a bit outwards. Balance was maintained on the other leg in the process. The result was a steady pace, with a slight pause halfway through. This style of marching was the one adopted by most armies during and after the war, and is in some way reminiscent of the modern slow march used to this day by the British army of today – though much simpler in nature.
the rate of march varied, according to circumstances and time, but as per Frederick's instructions in 1747, a Prussian regiment could be expected to sustain a march between 70 and 75 steps a minute, with the advance starting at 90-95 steps a minute. a quick march of 120 steps a minute was used for wheeling and deploying. These were no regulated by drum, as it was expected that the rates would be imprinted in the soldier's mind.
>Infantrymen marched in lockstep, each pace being by the end of Frederick II's reign being 28 German inches long. each step was done by carrying the foot directly in front, keeping the knees straight, the foot remaining almost parallel to the ground and facing a bit outwards. Balance was maintained on the other leg in the process. The result was a steady pace, with a slight pause halfway through
Mass formation for the onagers.
>Slings were weapons you had to practice since young age
This is a myth. A couple of months practice is enough to git gud.
Not hit a moving target on horseback good, some slingers were better than others. If your goal is to hit massed formations any old guy will do the trick.
That's why I wrote gud instead of expert. Sure, some Balearic shepherds might be able to put a running wolf's eye out at 100 paces but you just need yourself and the legion's middle ranks to fling lead downrange effectively.
Syrian guerrillas launch improvised grenades and munitions with elastic bands. Making a grenade is not expensive or complicated, other Syrian rebels are launching them with a shotgun device like Che invented for guerrillas.
The sling is still used but the stone is traded for an explosive, they have catapult/trebuchet even for this. Guerrillas are required to improvise using resources available, which is why those small drone weapons exist.
Palestinian kid throws rock at occupation tank. People throw rocks at protests and at occupation soldiers on guard and patrol.
wrong kind of sling moron. read the thread
Finns did the same during Winter war apparently.
Slingers require a mass formation for maximum effectiveness but also a lot of space for proper use, leading to all the issues of a loose formation in battle. Also, despite technically only needing to pick up rocks from the ground, all archaeological evidence points to dedicated ammo production, either lead, fired clay, or worked stone, in armies that used slingers.
Makes sense.You need an uniform projectile to achieve consistent groupings.
You don't need consistent grouping when firing at a massive formation.
That's the same philosophy of early firearms.
In a pinch they mold thumbs in lead by poking and casting. Alternatively pick rocks in the hundreds and sort them.
I read the romans did this (and of course they drew dicks all over it), and iirc they could also use sand that they heated and did some fancy science hippy shit to
logistics > performance
more or less already explained already but boils down to that for a lot of military strategy.
It's less that they got phased out and more that becoming a good slinger is extremely difficult--much harder than becoming a good archer. The best slingers in history were probably the ones from the Balearic Islands. They were among the most sought-after mercenaries of the ancient world, and the main reason they were as good as they were is because they started training in slings as soon as they could stand up and hold one.
You never chucked rocks at squirrels as a kid? Like another anon said its not some super special ninja shit to get gud at slinging. I made a shitty one years ago to kill pests cause i was too cheap to buy a bb gun and after a few weeks i was knocking those frickers outta trees out to maybe 30 yards
Bows and crossbows are better.
I imagine that at least some of the reason is that they're difficult/impossible to use from inside of or on top of castle walls and other fortifications, while that's no problem for bows and crossbows. That and that it's probably more difficult to train people with
Regardless, they were used in some capacity all the way up until guns
Guns
Slings should be legal for self defense in Europe. Send those fricking Syrians back to Africa.
>Wouldn't a piece of rock traveling at 120km/h be devastating to people even in armour?
yes, in fact, Romans had a military medical manual for treating sling bullet wounds and even a separate tool for extraction.
Romans used lead sling bullets. rock is not dense.
You can build a sling this afternoon.
Build a sling? All I have are shoelaces.
It takes a lot of skill and practise, for the same amount of training you can have bowmen with a longer range, increased lethality and better armour penetration.
I have a theory, but it may be dumb, so more well read people should feel free to correct me.
A sling and it's ammunition needs, at most, 2 guys who can put out maybe 2 or 3 slings and (I'm literally just guessing based on an expert doing things 3x faster than me) 20 lead bullets per day. Now the actual bows may have a higher investment, in that they require more time and expertise to make well, but all the other parts can be done by more people, with less skill, in greater numbers. I suspect the transition to bows may simply be a function of developing more complex urban centres; places where artisans can collect multiple apprentices and multi-skilled labourers to work under them in a single place with a greater material investment, but lower time investment per item. The armies you see with the greatest concentrations of slingers have large auxiliaries or levies drawn from sprawling and broadly-inhabited countryside, where the population doesn't necessarily consist of thousands of shepherds, but the population density relative to agricultural output doesn't allow for 5 guys in a village to spend their days making bows and arrows, but they can spare one guy making all the slings and bullets.
Another huge factor is hitting a guy in the arm, leg or chest with a sling doesn't put him out of the fight.
Hit him with an arrow and even a non-lethal hit it pretty likely to removed him from the fight and ultimately prove fatal in a time before antibiotics.
A hit to the leg or arm could absolutely break it. There is a reason the sling was incredibly prolific among both peasants and professional mercernaries, it was effective.
This is my personal experience from being hit in the shoulder by a bullet made from lead by my older brother, who I would characterise as a proficient, if mediocre slinger, from a range of around 80m: It was incredibly painful, left a huge bruise, rendered moving my arm stiff and painful for a full 48 hours, but did no lasting damage. If it was life and death, I would have been able to fight for at least a limited time the next day. I can't imagine a falling bullet, with most of its energy expended during flight over a much longer distance, would have had a considerably worse effect on similar bodyparts.
I would argue no one at the time considered most slingers to be capable of causing wide swathes of maiming blows from a distance for two reasons: First, slingers of all kinds formed large groups, aimed toward an equivalent area and harassed the enemy with accurate overarm shots, before retreating and releasing underarm. They released underarm to give themselves better range, but also because they rain down, somewhat inaccurately, on unprotected/unsuspecting ranks to deliver crippling or killing blows to the head. If they were able to break bones at those ranges, then they would have released overhand and skimmed formations, as they did as skirmishers at close range. They would have been able to inflict such devastation that they would have formed an ancient version of a gunline, releasing bullets like artillerists skimming cannon balls across ranks. Second, the commendation of particularly accurate slingers is treated as a novelty. Balearic Islanders would have been conscripted from childhood and treated like Numidian cavalry; forcibly taken to train and equip others to swell their ranks. Instead, they were only valuable during a time when they outmatched bows and could be exploited to the best of their ability, but then immediately became a footnote in history, replaced in mercenary armies by generic slingers from anywhere else, in smaller numbers.
>This is my personal experience from being hit in the shoulder by a bullet made from lead by my older brother
Uh, why?
you never have a brother?
He was teaching me to sling and, being a kid, I just walked straight out from behind a building right in front of the target range, as his bullet was in flight.
This is really the same issue. We don't know what conditions or battlefield positions these wounds were delivered under. Based on my, admittedly, practically worthless anecdote and attestations by both ancient and more modern commanders who saw slingers fight, I would argue most of those wounds would have been delivered at close range, then fewer, but more deadly, blows to the skull and delicate areas made at longer range. The tried, true and classic rotation of skirmish and harassment, then fallback to underarm slinging was a universal human invention, seen by practically every empire in the known world. I certainly think it's possible for long-range, underarm releases to wound with strikes to the body, but not with the consistency of arrows (bringing this back to the orginal point). With one more reference to
I would say the mention of wooden spears, matching the Carthaginian accompaniment for slingers and Hannibal's noted admiration of them, offers more evidence for the slinger's greatest wounding potential to be at close range as skirmishers, dropping off sharply once they could no longer deliver direct strikes.
All in all, I would argue the reason slingers fell out of popular use quickly, but then managed a very long service life as minor auxiliaries is this. While the sling's lethality out-matched bows for much of antiquity and even beyond, once bowmaking technology grew to match their skirmishing potential, then their overall range with arcing volley, the wounding potential of arrows was greater on average, forcing any commander who could access that technology to prioritise them over slingers in their budget. I would also like the mention
for the issue of spacing and formation, as well as
for the economic complexity factor.
>It takes several years to make even a self-bow.
As someone who has made many, this is not true. The only part of making a bow that takes a significant amount of time is curing the staves, which can take 6 months to a year if you don't dry it using other means. After a stave is dry, a skilled and practice bowyer can finish a bow in a day or two, or even quicker considering these men literally made bows for their livelihood and took apprenticeships.
Furthermore, as a stave is literally just a 6 foot and a bit piece of wood wider and thicker than the bow you intend to make, I firmly believe bowyers stored good quality staves well in advance, removing the time to wait and allowing for mostly constant production of bows.
wrong anon
There's so much variation as for this to be meaningless.
>shot towers on work for birdshot
They were casting .53 from a tower in Philly (iirc) during the Revolutionary War.
>They were casting .53 from a tower in Philly (iirc) during the Revolutionary War
No they weren't. They were using regular shot molds.
Surface tesnion alone meant they were't casting shot that large. No to mention the war happened before the invention of the shot tower.
Your anecdote is worthless. We know from the Spanish that Incan slingers could kill horses and in the Canaries 80% of the Spanish force was killed by Gaunches armed with slings and wooden spears at Acentejo.
>if mediocre slinger, from a range of around 80m: It was incredibly painful, left a huge bruise, rendered moving my arm stiff and painful for a full 48 hours, but did no lasting damage.
slings break bone and cut arteries, you need battlefield surgery to remove the bullets
You can make hundreds of lead bullets in an hour, lead is very easy to work with. Either pour it into clay moulds then break the molds, or fill a huge clay tray with lead, or form them like musket shot in a vice.
You can also throw clay balls, or stones, some stone being much easier to work.
No the sling phased out because professional militaries and industrialisation means widespread armour and formation fighting. Skirmishers had to get better weapons, and many skirmishers ended up fighting on horse with lances or on foot with bows.
>Either pour it into clay moulds then break the molds, or fill a huge clay tray with lead, or form them like musket shot in a vice.
>You can also throw clay balls, or stones, some stone being much easier to work.
Even easier method for lead shot: drop it from the top of a tower into water
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shot_tower
Only works for birdshot.
Clay molds for lead bullets are a known archaelogical find. Pretty simple to use a ladle and make the bullets at night.
I meant traditional methods. Obviously industrial spinners can make hundreds slings and thousands of bullets a day, so it would have been a pointless point of contention had I meant otherwise. All those methods require existing industry, which the people who were recruited as slingers from small villages, did not possess in such great quantities that they'd spend them on making sling ammunition. Melting and casting bullets in ashen earth was common in areas with lead, but the traditional method for most of the planet was chipping and grinding stone. A mercenary slinger in antiquity might have been able to have a bronze mould vice made, but it would be an incredible expense, and the rest aren't achievable around a campfire on the march.
>Why did slingers get phased out?
I don't know, probably for no reason at all.
Hi OP, are you unfamiliar with the concept of arcing volleys
Hollywood shit. Spamming arrows in an arc is a huge waste of resources. I doubt each archer has enough arrows to last a battle, much less an entire campaign if they did that shit.
>I doubt each archer has enough arrows to last a battle
Mongols and Parthians and whatnot could stockpile tons of arrows for whittling down the enemy and would proceed with just that unless they were faced with missile superiority
Firing arrows back and forward was a very real thing
>Spamming arrows in an arc is a huge waste of resources
Unless you're using rocks, aiming at a whole enemy formation, intend mostly to frick with them.
a skirmisher
>armour
it takes too much skill. crossbows require little skill in comparison and a 70 IQ biden voter can be trained to use one in about a day
Crossbows are very difficult to manufacture if your metallurgy is poor. Fire very slowly, limited range when firing volleys. They were used in smaller scale fights, by knights, and by castle defenders because 3 might share a single firing port.
Slings aren't hard to use at the level where you're massing fire. Hard to hit a rabbit with, but easy to lob into a crowd of a hundred men over and over
People invented these things called "bows" which are easier to use, easier to train, easier to aim.
Slings fricking annihilated bows throughout history except for when those bows were so massive that they, too, required years of practice to use.
Bows are hard to carry especially when arrows are considered, whereas even someone in heavy armour could pocket a plumbata or sling.
Bows also have serious issues in wet weather, and you can carry far more stones than you can carry arrows.
You know they had bullet firing balista, and bullet firing crossbows right into the late middle ages for exactly these reasons.
Slingers were the dominant force for more than a thousand years, driving the adoption of heavy bronze armour.
Phased out because a few hoplites charged your mass of 300 slingers, who at close range were more likely to hit one another. Slingers scatter, even less concentration of fire, get run down and massacred.
Massed Slings were used regularly right into the age of gunpowder.
It's probably already been said but I can't imagine what using them in formation would be like, it seems extremely dangerous to swing them around in close proximity with others