Sling (weapon)

A sling is a projectile weapon typically used to hand-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, although elsewhere it means something else). 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, where a projectile is placed. 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 inertially and ballistically towards 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.

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.

Modified stones suggested to represent ammunition for slings (slingstones) have been reported from the Near East at least as early as the 6th millennium BC, during the Pottery Neolithic, from cultures such as the Wadi Rabah culture in the southern Levant.

The oldest-known surviving slings—radiocarbon dated to c. 2500 BC—were recovered from South American archaeological sites on the coast of Peru. The oldest-known surviving North American sling—radiocarbon dated to c. 1200 BC—was recovered from Lovelock Cave, Nevada.

One of the oldest slings in the Near East is the "Manchester Sling" from the Twelfth Dynasty of ancient Egypt, c. 2000-1800 BC, a completely preserved sling constructed entirely of plant fibre. Another sling was found in the tomb of the pharoah Tutankhamun, who died c. 1325 BC. A pair of finely plaited slings were found with other weapons. The sling was probably intended for the departed pharaoh to use for hunting game. Another Egyptian sling was excavated in El-Lahun in Al Fayyum Egypt in 1914 by William Matthew Flinders Petrie, and is now in the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology—Petrie dated it to c. 800 BC. It was found alongside an iron spearhead. The remains are broken into three sections. Although fragile, the construction is clear: it is made of bast fibre (almost certainly flax) twine; the cords are braided in a 10-strand elliptical sennit and the cradle seems to have been woven from the same lengths of twine used to form the cords.

Representations of slingers can be found on artifacts from all over the ancient world, including Assyrian and Egyptian reliefs, the columns of Trajan and Marcus Aurelius, on coins, and on the Bayeux Tapestry.