this post was submitted on 07 Nov 2023
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How in the world was a sling more accurate than a bow? You can hit a bullseye with a barebow from 50 yards away. A sling is whirled around your head and then released. I don't understand how that can be accurate at all, since I've never used a sling, but it seems impossible that it would be more accurate than a bow.
A basic sling should be very consistent and simple. Early bows have a lot of advantages but the mechanical complexity makes them less consistent. 50cm of rope is 50cm of rope, it's gonna throw the same every time as long as you're practiced. Bows are made of natural wood and fibre with all kinds of tensions and inconsistencies, as well as requiring more work to repeat the same action precisely
You still get two-handed control over the plane the arrow takes (before drift) and it's easy to dial in angle and draw length. A sling bullet leaves tangent to a circle spinning at considerable speed and distance. The fact anyone can hit anything with a sling is a testament to the human brain's that-looks-about-right capability to treat tools as extended limbs.
The same for the bow, when considering we only figured the archer's paradox already in the XX century and demonstrated it when high speed cameras were develope.
A sling shoots forward in a straight line and it only depends on the thrower to give it centripetal force.
Slings are still used today as weapons and effectively. And hunting with one, particularly birds, is an extremely complex exercise.
That last sentence pretty much gets it perfectly
I think slings are treated similarly to throwing by the brain, which humans do very well