Slings are believed to be one of the oldest weapons on Earth. Their popularity predates the bow and arrow and even the thrown spear, and though slings have been used by almost every civilization in history, one thing has continued to puzzle archaeologists: why would Romans put holes in their sling stones?
All over Europe, historians have encountered sling bullets with very purposeful holes bored into them. Some are made of lead, some are ceramic, but it doesn’t really seem to make sense.
“They are ballistically inferior.” -archaeologist John Reid
One prevailing theory was that the holes would be filled with poison, but as Reid points out, the bullets would then have almost no chance of effectively hitting or harming the enemy.
Eventually, the light bulb went off, and Reid theorizes the slings were purposefully holed in order to make sound when thrown. Listen:
Most of these bullets have been found in Northwest Europe and dated to periods of Roman invasion. Scientists believe the whistling sling stones were used to scare their enemies and keep them pinned down as Roman soldiers advanced to engage in close combat. It was a distraction.
The sling has probably participated in more wars than any other weapon. Simple to build and requiring few materials, the sling wasn’t just easy to make; it was easy to use.
Slings weren’t just for war though; they were even more common as a hunting tool used by the wealthy and poor alike. Two slings were even interred with King Tut so that he might hunt in the afterlife.
In 401 b.c. a Greek army was thoroughly trounced by Artaxerxes II’s Persian army whose slings fired farther than the Greek’s javelins could be thrown.
Though the sling itself is simple, the ammunition can make all the difference. Shortly after the Greek’s defeat, a company of soldiers from Rhodes began making lead sling bullets. This denser ammunition was much more easily thrown, and could travel twice as far as the rock-hurling Persian slings.
Many cultures viewed the sling with begrudging mysticism. The concussive damage done by slings could kill without breaking skin, a trait many saw as unfair or magic.
In the same fashion that World War II pilots painted jaws on their planes or wrote messages to the enemy on bombs, so too did ancient slingers write on sling bullets: Dexai, “take that”!
Stones ranging in size from a pebble to a fist-sized stone
Clay bullets provided a consistent shape and size
Lead became the most effective ammunition, easily produced and very dense
Though the sling eventually waned in popularity by the 14th-century, the invention of gunpowder revitalized the sling as a simple, effective grenade throwing apparatus.
Slings were even caught on film being used in the Spanish Civil War in 1939!
