Terminal ballistics of Atlatl darts
July 15, 2022 1:30 PM Subscribe
Projectile weapons were essential to the daily lives of ancient people. Although studied by archaeologists for decades, questions and misconceptions remain about the potential of spears, darts, and arrows to incapacitate prey. This project uses an experimental approach with replica weapons, skilled users, and modern observational equipment to study the terminal ballistics (impact and penetration) of stone-tipped atlatl darts and arrows, yielding needed data about early hunting capabilities (pdf).
I assume it's about this "Some prominent archaeologists are starting to become sceptical that [prehistoric humans] were capable of killing big animals on a regular basis" (paywalled link, I just saw the snippet)
posted by dhruva at 1:50 PM on July 15, 2022
posted by dhruva at 1:50 PM on July 15, 2022
As someone who made an atlatl in college and found myself not to be a skilled user, this is my jam. Off to read.
posted by agentofselection at 2:07 PM on July 15, 2022 [7 favorites]
posted by agentofselection at 2:07 PM on July 15, 2022 [7 favorites]
If this interests you, the excellent Alie Ward has an episode of her podcast Ologies about experimental archaeology in general, and atlatls specifically.
posted by deadbilly at 2:17 PM on July 15, 2022 [5 favorites]
posted by deadbilly at 2:17 PM on July 15, 2022 [5 favorites]
Did they kill bison for the experiment? With the atlatl?
posted by signal at 3:58 PM on July 15, 2022
posted by signal at 3:58 PM on July 15, 2022
From the video:
"The animals are put down humanely by ranchers--we aren't involved in any of that." So no, these are tests carried out on carcasses.
posted by agentofselection at 4:53 PM on July 15, 2022 [3 favorites]
"The animals are put down humanely by ranchers--we aren't involved in any of that." So no, these are tests carried out on carcasses.
posted by agentofselection at 4:53 PM on July 15, 2022 [3 favorites]
Yes. Further down on the page of the first link is:
Additional Information
All animals used in these experiments are raised for meat and put down by ranchers immediately prior to the experiments using humane methods. Animals are not killed or harmed using ancient weapons. This protocol was approved in the previous bison experiment by an Animal Care and Use Committee, and the upcoming experiment follows the same protocol.
posted by aleph at 6:39 PM on July 15, 2022
Additional Information
All animals used in these experiments are raised for meat and put down by ranchers immediately prior to the experiments using humane methods. Animals are not killed or harmed using ancient weapons. This protocol was approved in the previous bison experiment by an Animal Care and Use Committee, and the upcoming experiment follows the same protocol.
posted by aleph at 6:39 PM on July 15, 2022
I took a university class called "Native American Technology" that discussed hunting techniques as well as traditional farming and building methods. This would have fit in perfectly.
posted by fiercekitten at 6:51 PM on July 15, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by fiercekitten at 6:51 PM on July 15, 2022 [1 favorite]
As someone who made an atlatl in college and found myself not to be a skilled user, this is my jam. Off to read.
I never made or used an atlatl but I did make and use it's weird floppy cousin, the rock sling. I have one I've made with paracord and some nylon webbing I keep in my bike's handlebar bag for slinging rocks down at the beach just for something to do with my hands.
Those things are remarkably alarming for something that's really just a bit of string and some kind of fabric or leather, and I got pretty good at it to the point I could hit cans or can sized targets 50-100 feet out regularly. And you can easily huck plum to peach sized rocks several hundred yards out, so I can see why they're still popular in a good ol' police riot.
As for actually hunting with one? Yeah, I don't know about that. Granted I have really poor form and I have never really mastered the one swing or less and then release in one smooth movement thing you're supposed to do - not unlike an atlatl - and if you're standing there whirling it overhead the whistling noise of the strings and general movement will definitely make birds take flight right away, and I can't imagine small game like a rabbit sticking around for it, either.
However I don't have to hunt for my food, and if I did I'd probably get pretty good at it.
posted by loquacious at 7:00 PM on July 15, 2022 [4 favorites]
I never made or used an atlatl but I did make and use it's weird floppy cousin, the rock sling. I have one I've made with paracord and some nylon webbing I keep in my bike's handlebar bag for slinging rocks down at the beach just for something to do with my hands.
Those things are remarkably alarming for something that's really just a bit of string and some kind of fabric or leather, and I got pretty good at it to the point I could hit cans or can sized targets 50-100 feet out regularly. And you can easily huck plum to peach sized rocks several hundred yards out, so I can see why they're still popular in a good ol' police riot.
As for actually hunting with one? Yeah, I don't know about that. Granted I have really poor form and I have never really mastered the one swing or less and then release in one smooth movement thing you're supposed to do - not unlike an atlatl - and if you're standing there whirling it overhead the whistling noise of the strings and general movement will definitely make birds take flight right away, and I can't imagine small game like a rabbit sticking around for it, either.
However I don't have to hunt for my food, and if I did I'd probably get pretty good at it.
posted by loquacious at 7:00 PM on July 15, 2022 [4 favorites]
I was impressed by the bison torso through and through with an atl atl and dart, but calling obsidian “soft” instead of I guess brittle kind of contaminated the rest of the article for me.
Before I developed empathy for chordates, I used to kill many birds, rabbits and rats using an old air rifle and home made slingshots, rock slings, spears, crossbows and my favorite the 6 foot long blowgun.
The rock sling is stupidly powerful compared to how easy it is to make, but it is the hardest to master. The shepherds sling is slightly easier to master and turns a small 10 year old into a major league pitcher.
My favorite for small game was the blowgun. I would spend days finding the right bamboo stick, curing it underwater in an irrigation channel, hollowing it out with a piece of stolen rebar and a hammer. The darts I would make from bamboo splinters and the fluff from ceiba trees. Later I would just buy a 6 foot length of half inch pvc and make darts out of magazine paper and stiff wire.
In just one weekend I killed over 90 rats in my uncles’ greenhouses with the blowgun, after figuring out that blunt tipped darts work better at transferring energy to small animals.
Another time I “ran away” from home to go live in the hills. I walked to the train tracks going north from the iron mines to gather some ammo. Iron ore pellets, bolonchas, are mostly round, vey dense, and come in sizes from blueberry to plum. Thousands could be found lying on the tracks.
With my iron amo and my homemade guamúchil slingshot I landed a rabbit and a dove for dinner. Cleaned em up, lit a fire, roasted them, and walked back home to get some salt, pepper, and chili powder to add to my EDC.
What I am getting at is that if an 8 to 10 year old can improvise projectile weapons to kill small game, knows where to find the best building materials and ammo, and the weapons are powerful enough to kill an adult human (with the shepherds staff picture a fastball to the head from a trained pitcher, with the blowgun you’d need a lucky shot), I’ve never had any doubt that a team of adults with generations of knowledge could take down big game.
posted by Dr. Curare at 9:02 AM on July 16, 2022 [19 favorites]
Before I developed empathy for chordates, I used to kill many birds, rabbits and rats using an old air rifle and home made slingshots, rock slings, spears, crossbows and my favorite the 6 foot long blowgun.
The rock sling is stupidly powerful compared to how easy it is to make, but it is the hardest to master. The shepherds sling is slightly easier to master and turns a small 10 year old into a major league pitcher.
My favorite for small game was the blowgun. I would spend days finding the right bamboo stick, curing it underwater in an irrigation channel, hollowing it out with a piece of stolen rebar and a hammer. The darts I would make from bamboo splinters and the fluff from ceiba trees. Later I would just buy a 6 foot length of half inch pvc and make darts out of magazine paper and stiff wire.
In just one weekend I killed over 90 rats in my uncles’ greenhouses with the blowgun, after figuring out that blunt tipped darts work better at transferring energy to small animals.
Another time I “ran away” from home to go live in the hills. I walked to the train tracks going north from the iron mines to gather some ammo. Iron ore pellets, bolonchas, are mostly round, vey dense, and come in sizes from blueberry to plum. Thousands could be found lying on the tracks.
With my iron amo and my homemade guamúchil slingshot I landed a rabbit and a dove for dinner. Cleaned em up, lit a fire, roasted them, and walked back home to get some salt, pepper, and chili powder to add to my EDC.
What I am getting at is that if an 8 to 10 year old can improvise projectile weapons to kill small game, knows where to find the best building materials and ammo, and the weapons are powerful enough to kill an adult human (with the shepherds staff picture a fastball to the head from a trained pitcher, with the blowgun you’d need a lucky shot), I’ve never had any doubt that a team of adults with generations of knowledge could take down big game.
posted by Dr. Curare at 9:02 AM on July 16, 2022 [19 favorites]
I had been thinking of the difference between proving someone could have done X with Y than to prove nobody could have done X with Y. I hadn’t even been accounting for the difference in skill you get by practicing when you’re young.
Ruth Goodman talks somewhere about how her daughter learned a particular ?lacemaking? as a tween, because she was on set maybe, and is still startlingly faster at it than professional fiber artists.
posted by clew at 9:39 AM on July 16, 2022 [1 favorite]
Ruth Goodman talks somewhere about how her daughter learned a particular ?lacemaking? as a tween, because she was on set maybe, and is still startlingly faster at it than professional fiber artists.
posted by clew at 9:39 AM on July 16, 2022 [1 favorite]
My favorite for small game was the blowgun
Dr. Curare
hmm
posted by atoxyl at 11:38 AM on July 16, 2022 [5 favorites]
Dr. Curare
hmm
posted by atoxyl at 11:38 AM on July 16, 2022 [5 favorites]
The rock sling is stupidly powerful compared to how easy it is to make, but it is the hardest to master. The shepherds sling is slightly easier to master and turns a small 10 year old into a major league pitcher.
Repeating this. The first time I played with a rock sling it was absolutely alarming how large of a rock or projectile you could throw and how fast and far it could go, with better accuracy than just throwing it by hand.
It's not surprising to me that there are currently attempts at launching things all the way into orbit by that Spin Launch project using this exact same principle of converting rotational energy and centripetal force converted to linear force, kinetic energy and momentum.
I also remember there was some historical attempt to make a gun or machine gun using the same principles. Instead of explosive forces and gasses pushing a projectile down a barrel, it just had a disc spinning at ridiculous speeds and some way to feed a projectile into it and release it at the right point towards whatever target that needed shooting. There was even a Mythbusters episode about it.
posted by loquacious at 1:20 PM on July 16, 2022
Repeating this. The first time I played with a rock sling it was absolutely alarming how large of a rock or projectile you could throw and how fast and far it could go, with better accuracy than just throwing it by hand.
It's not surprising to me that there are currently attempts at launching things all the way into orbit by that Spin Launch project using this exact same principle of converting rotational energy and centripetal force converted to linear force, kinetic energy and momentum.
I also remember there was some historical attempt to make a gun or machine gun using the same principles. Instead of explosive forces and gasses pushing a projectile down a barrel, it just had a disc spinning at ridiculous speeds and some way to feed a projectile into it and release it at the right point towards whatever target that needed shooting. There was even a Mythbusters episode about it.
posted by loquacious at 1:20 PM on July 16, 2022
my favorite the 6 foot long blowgun
posted by Dr. Curare
O.o
posted by tigrrrlily at 8:45 PM on July 16, 2022
posted by Dr. Curare
O.o
posted by tigrrrlily at 8:45 PM on July 16, 2022
In Waterford, we used to call improvised slingshots gallybanders. With a small amount of practice, they can be very accurate.
Going to a Catholic school, we also had guest talks from missionaries. One had been in Brazil, and brought back a blowpipe. He hit a wool hat from maybe 30m away. That may not sound like much, but when you're nine it's the most badass thing you've ever seen.
posted by kersplunk at 3:19 AM on July 17, 2022
Going to a Catholic school, we also had guest talks from missionaries. One had been in Brazil, and brought back a blowpipe. He hit a wool hat from maybe 30m away. That may not sound like much, but when you're nine it's the most badass thing you've ever seen.
posted by kersplunk at 3:19 AM on July 17, 2022
Yes my username is no coincidence.
I had a strange childhood, I took words literally and then my imagination and anxiety ran wild with them. When in fist grade Miss Lupita said that “at some point in the future every one of you will need to learn how to fend for yourselves” I felt I could waste no time.
By third grade I was making weapons, building shelters in the woods near my house, starting fires with sticks and pieces of broken bottle, had a fanny pack EDC kit with knives and medicines, and could identify most edible and poisonous plants within a few kilometers radius of my house.
Curare was the ideal poison. It kills by paralyzing muscles and preventing breathing, but if one keeps artificial respiration the victim makes a full recovery. In my mind I would shoot a falcon, tie it down and give it CPR and take it to be my companion. Or paralize the bad guys, tie them down, keep them alive and leave them for the police to find.
Sadly in my area I could only find less romantic poisons so I never used any. I am back in my hometown and just looking out the window I can see higuerillas, toloache, floripondio, rodilla de fraile, palma arauca, and what could be ojitos de pájaro, but I need to wait for it to go to seed to confirm. Enough plants to make poison to take down one of the mastodons that people used to hunt near by the lake a few thousands years ago.
Some people are appalled by the idea of a 10 year old walking around with improvised weapons and the knowledge of how to make poisons, incendiaries and explosives. Some people find the idea romantic. Now that I am an old I know it was a reaction from a timid queer undiagnosed kid with autism and ADHD to a hostile and borderline abusive home and school environment. I wonder how many peepers and tactical fetishists come from a similar place.
I like multiverse science fiction because I like to imagine what would have happened if at age 6 the message I got was that emotional and social skills are the ones you should focus on to face the world. I don’t know what the emotional intelligence equivalent of a first try eye shot on an iPod billboard from 60 yards with a piece of 1/2” pvc and darts made from Chinese takeout chopsticks and menus would be, but that one gave me a lot of credibility with the engineers at the startup I joined in 2005.
Hope you enjoyed the rant :). FWIW sometime in my late twenties I changed my focus from hiding and killing and burning to healing and bringing together. Now I grow medicinal plants and fungi, cook nourishing and tasty food, and only shoot clay balls at the backyard wall. I am still working on social cues, like noticing when I have gone off topic for too long, but that is work in progres.
posted by Dr. Curare at 8:51 AM on July 17, 2022 [23 favorites]
I had a strange childhood, I took words literally and then my imagination and anxiety ran wild with them. When in fist grade Miss Lupita said that “at some point in the future every one of you will need to learn how to fend for yourselves” I felt I could waste no time.
By third grade I was making weapons, building shelters in the woods near my house, starting fires with sticks and pieces of broken bottle, had a fanny pack EDC kit with knives and medicines, and could identify most edible and poisonous plants within a few kilometers radius of my house.
Curare was the ideal poison. It kills by paralyzing muscles and preventing breathing, but if one keeps artificial respiration the victim makes a full recovery. In my mind I would shoot a falcon, tie it down and give it CPR and take it to be my companion. Or paralize the bad guys, tie them down, keep them alive and leave them for the police to find.
Sadly in my area I could only find less romantic poisons so I never used any. I am back in my hometown and just looking out the window I can see higuerillas, toloache, floripondio, rodilla de fraile, palma arauca, and what could be ojitos de pájaro, but I need to wait for it to go to seed to confirm. Enough plants to make poison to take down one of the mastodons that people used to hunt near by the lake a few thousands years ago.
Some people are appalled by the idea of a 10 year old walking around with improvised weapons and the knowledge of how to make poisons, incendiaries and explosives. Some people find the idea romantic. Now that I am an old I know it was a reaction from a timid queer undiagnosed kid with autism and ADHD to a hostile and borderline abusive home and school environment. I wonder how many peepers and tactical fetishists come from a similar place.
I like multiverse science fiction because I like to imagine what would have happened if at age 6 the message I got was that emotional and social skills are the ones you should focus on to face the world. I don’t know what the emotional intelligence equivalent of a first try eye shot on an iPod billboard from 60 yards with a piece of 1/2” pvc and darts made from Chinese takeout chopsticks and menus would be, but that one gave me a lot of credibility with the engineers at the startup I joined in 2005.
Hope you enjoyed the rant :). FWIW sometime in my late twenties I changed my focus from hiding and killing and burning to healing and bringing together. Now I grow medicinal plants and fungi, cook nourishing and tasty food, and only shoot clay balls at the backyard wall. I am still working on social cues, like noticing when I have gone off topic for too long, but that is work in progres.
posted by Dr. Curare at 8:51 AM on July 17, 2022 [23 favorites]
We had a small crewThe reason I’ve got absolute faith our distant ancestors could and did eat the very large animals they killed with these kinds of weapons, is that the terminal ballistics is just the end of a hunt—the thing that Homo sapiens can do that a bison can’t is work together in a team or community and pass down group techniques to find them, stalk them, and exhaust them. Modern hunters are recreational, or at most a sideline to other income, so it’s a small group or solo activity. But why not get lots of people involved?
Modern people have this odd self-image that we’re better at doing all things than our distant ancestors. Of technological tasks, sure, design a weapon, build a rifle, shoot a target. Of just working together in groups to accomplish tasks, there’s no reason to think modern cultures are even particularly adept, compared to those of past humanity.
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 3:31 PM on July 17, 2022 [4 favorites]
... there’s no reason to think modern cultures are even particularly adept, compared to those of past humanity.Indeed, given that "wild" humans probably lived in the same group their entire lives, and had to constantly practice "working together... to accomplish tasks" just to stay alive, they were probably better at it than the median modern human.
posted by Aardvark Cheeselog at 10:57 AM on July 19, 2022
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I’m a bit confused, though. What questions or misconceptions exist about the potential of spears, darts, or arrows to incapacitate prey?
posted by rrrrrrrrrt at 1:42 PM on July 15, 2022