The purpose of this project is to better understand the effectiveness Term Paper

The purpose of this project is to better understand the effectiveness of the sling in hunting and combat - Term Paper Example Archaeologists give us a number of answers, one of which points to the use of sling. A sling may simply be explained to be an effective personal projectile weapon that was used in ancient times for purposes of protecting herds, hunting, and combat (York and York 2011: 56-59). Fundamentally, sling was used as a hand-on weapon that was fired by the use of the arm. Users loaded the sling with offensive pellets that included stones and clay. The carriers then spanned the sling in their arms till they felt they had gathered enough force or pressure in the sling before finally releasing it towards their enemies. A very popular story of the use of the sling is told in the story of David and Goliath, where we are told that David used a sling to project a stone against Goliath. There is a lesson learnt from slings here and that is, slings were very powerful weapons and once they were in the right hands, the size of the opponent or target was not a problem. As a shepherd, David was familiar wi th the use of the sling and so he succeeded. It is in this direction that this project is trying to find out how slings could be used effectively to accomplish hunting and combative missions even in today’s cotemporary world. Known history behind the sling Thanks to archaeologists, history behind the sling is fading no time soon. ... Again, history has it the use of sling can be traced to all continents of the world. Archaeologists today have, however, gathered more evidence on the presence and use of the sling in Europe and the Near East (Korfmann 1973: 33-37). What is even more beautiful among the role of the sling in world history is that up to date, the use of the sling are symbolically still in place in areas of the world such as Southern Africa, Pacific Island, Mediterranean and Andean cultures. The slings are used for traditional memorial contests, historical recreations and festival purposes. Much of the history also points to the reasons why the use of the sling started at all. In fact, the use of slings, though became very popular in battle, was not originally meant for that purpose. Knowing that man was basically living with wildlife in the forest in the days of old, the design of the sling was actually necessitated as a weapon for protecting man from carnivores and other dangerous animals that could a ttack them. The sling was found to be preferably for this course because it has the ability to swing its shot to chase the animals, most of which were very athletic. Materials and construction Even in the ancient times, the materials used in the construction of slings underwent a lot of changes. Generally, the weapon was inexpensive to make as its construction involved the use of readily available materials in the human environment. Basically, a sling was constructed to have a cord and a pouch. One ideal factor was that both the cord and the pouch needed not to be elastic. To this end, materials that were used in the construction included animal hide, flax, hair, hemp, plant fibers, sinew and wool. The ideal behind