We all know the archetype of the archer: master of the longbow, precise and deadly. It’s a staple of fantasy, and we can point to Tolkien and other British authors of classic fiction as the cause of this. The English longbow has a great pedigree on the British Isles, famed for its use in the 100 Years’ War and by legends such as Robin Hood.
If we want to break the cliché of the fantasy archer molded after British heroes, there are dozens of places to look to. Within the bow family, recurve bows, composite bows, and crossbows were each used time and again by people that changed the course of history. But let’s look beyond bows altogether and explore the oft-forgotten arsenal of thrown weapons.
Thrown weapons have been used effectively by soldiers and hunters throughout human history. They give the thrower greater leverage for their attack and can replace the bow for a hunter or act as a secondary weapon for a foot soldier.
1. Atlatl and Spear
The atlatl is an early spear-thrower, first used 30,000 years ago. For comparison, the first bow and arrows came into the picture only 10,000 years ago. The atlatl was a wooden device about the length of a forearm that cupped the end of the spear. A spearman would flick their wrist at the end of the throw, flipping the atlatl up and launching the spear up to 100 meters.
It was very accurate for the first 20 meters, meaning a lone hunter could easily kill small game with a single spear. For more dangerous animals, a group of hunters could volley spears at longer distances to minimize risk.
Atlatls were most popular in a period of human history when raids on neighboring groups were the primary form of warfare. Rather than form battle lines, warriors would have stalked an enemy camp or hunting party and used atlatls as skirmish weapons to support warriors with clubs, axes, and swords. Distinctions between hunters and warriors in such cultures would have been minor.
2. Sling and Bullet
Slings are severely underrated and mischaracterized as a weapon. While many people think that slings were only used by peasants, in reality they were a weapon of hunters and soldiers for centuries. The sling is as old as the atlatl, and was used in warfare as late as medieval Spain. It is a lightweight weapon and easy to make, needing only a length of rope, a pouch, and bullets of clay, stone, or lead.
With molded lead bullets slingers could hit targets as far away as 400 meters, and could easily incapacitate or kill a man. Dedicated slingers were often used in place of archers, but infantry also used the sling as a secondary weapon prior to the enemy closing with them.
3. Amentum and Javelin
The amentum and javelin were adaptations of the atlatl and spear, in common use during the Bronze and Iron Ages. The amentum was a leather strap wrapped around a javelin and slipped over the thrower’s fingers. It caused the shaft of the javelin to spin, much like rifling in the barrel of a gun. The spinning motion stabilized the javelin, giving it superior distance and accuracy.
While the amentum did not provide the same leverage of the atlatl and was effective to only about 80 meters, the spin made it accurate for that full distance. The amentum was lightweight and remained attached to the javelin, making the arrangement slightly less bulky than an atlatl. The javelin also had design improvements over ancient throwing spears. While throwing spears differed from thrusting spears only in that they were shorter, a javelin was shaped and weighted to improve flight.
Like the sling, javelins could either be used by dedicated skirmishers or by foot soldiers to supplement their melee capabilities.
4. Plumbatae Lead Darts
Plumbatae (latin for lead weighted) or martiobarbuli (“little barbs of Mars”) were large darts used from late Antiquity through the early Middle Ages. A barbed iron head with a lead weight behind the tip made up the front end of the weapon. Fletching provided stability in flight, and the wooden shaft extended behind the fletching for the soldier to grip. In full the plumbata could be between hand length and forearm length.
Roman and Byzantine soldiers would lob the darts in an underhand throw high into the air. The weighted front end would ensure that the dart landed point first on the target and with significant force, punching through shields and armor. Its small size allowed soldiers to carry many of them either on belts or in the hollows of their shields.
A weapon used with an underhand lob may not seem elegant, but foot soldiers were able to quickly loose several volleys on their enemies before closing to hand-to-hand combat. Plumbatae were solely used by infantry at close range, but they could rain death on enemy formations as effectively as a volley of arrows.
5. Francisca Bouncing Axes
The francisca throwing axe was first used by the Frank tribes in early medieval Europe before spreading to Germanic tribes like the Angles and Saxons. The francisca had a long arched head that left it unbalanced and unwieldy as a melee weapon, but the wooden handle gave leverage for throwing.
Franciscas are inaccurate weapons; they spin wildly in the air when thrown. If the axe hits the ground in front of its target, it will bounce unpredictably and violently. While a javelin is accurate for the thrower, and predictable for the target, the francisca is chaotic. Soldiers in formation cannot predict where an axe from the volley will land. When it does hit, the weight of the head can knock a man down or smash through a wooden shield. And if the spinning causes it to hit haft-first, it can still stun a person before bouncing into their neighbor.
Like plumbatae, franciscas were only used as a secondary weapon by infantry. These axes were thrown at close range during a charge to shake a formation. The volley of heavy axes smashing shields and bouncing dangerously and unpredictably would leave even disciplined men stunned. Moments after the volley, the Frank warriors were in their midst with swords and shields.
Breaking away from the archer mold will distinguish your story from typical high fantasy. Choose from plenty of fascinating weapons to arm your heroes and villains. Find something that grabs your interest and works for your story. A weapon doesn’t have to define the hero, but it can definitely help them stand out from the crowd.
P.S. Our bills are paid by our wonderful patrons. Could you chip in?
Very cool & informative, thanks!
YES! So good to see the sling on here. It is an awesome weapon!
Another interesting option – the kestrosphendone, or dart sling.
It’s a weapon similar to the sling and bullet, except instead of hurling stones or lead bullets in a pouch, it released large front-weighted darts similar to the above mentioned plumbatae from an uneven loop and cord.
The late-Hellenistic Macedonians used them against the Roman armies of the time, with devastating effect according to Livy and Polybius.
Boomerang is fun for alien races, because it leads to using a nulla-nulla as a hand to hand weapon.
Giant alien races (say 9′ high with a physique of a gorilla) would find spear & woomera to be powerful enough to send intrepid interstellar dragoons flying backwards and impale them pegged-down against the nearest tree.
This looks like being different just to be different. The bow is so prevalent because it’s a better weapon.
If that were the case, doesn’t it seem like these weapons wouldn’t exist? Clearly they have some benefits, since they’ve been used. Besides, bows can be boring, and are awfully Eurocentric. What’s wrong with shaking some things up? :)
It helps diversifying fantasy settings (in historical fiction, it depends on the time and place which ranged weapons are available, after all). The bow is prevalent, because it was the favoured weapon of European middle ages (later on, the crossbow became very popular, too, because it’s easier to master than a long bow or hunting bow).
Fantasy is horribly European-centric as it is (and most of the weapons listed were used in Europe as well), so every change from the ‘same, same’ is good.
I’d say the bow is prevalent because it was the most effective weapons. And it is very far from being “Euro-centric”, since people used it in one form or another all around the world for millennia. (Is you want non-European range weapons, you could use the Indian Chakram (metallic disc with sharp hedge) or the mambele (African weird throwing knife. Don’t know how to describe it).
If you have an antique setting, javelins, slingshot and the likes were used because they were effective in the context (The armor technology wasn’t so advance as to render them useless, and often being able to use range weapon one handed could come very handy). But as soon as you get armors capable of stopping them from arming you, they become a lot less effective. As for the bow, the technology evolved with times, giving it more and more power until you reach something like the English longbow who was capable of piercing some plate armor giving the right distance (but was so hard to use, the English Bowmans needed to train all is life to be able to use it).
Although, if you go for a magic weapon, that could easily work (It would be original to find an antique magical sword who reflect the time period it was made in. Like a magical Gladius trap in a stone or an ultimate spear of destiny that was made with caveman technology).
I won’t talk about atlatls, javelins, plumbatae and the like, owing to my lack of experience regarding such weapons. However, I have some knowledge about slings which may prove enlightening to the discussion on hand.
Slings, you might be shocked to realize, were used often in medieval warfare. More commonly than you might think, and fielded by people you might not expect to. Just not as often in battlefields as they were in the ancient period (Primarily because High-Late medieval armies recruited from primarily urban and freemen populations, not from Serfs, which comprise much of the Shepherding population).
They were largely fielded when needed by both attackers and defenders during sieges. (Likely because slingers, unlike virtually most projectile weapons, use ammunition that is practically free, and the ammunition itself will not put much strain on the baggage train).
Slings and Staff-slings were also of great use when it concerns the effective launching of deadly incendiaries. Olaus Magnus writes this, in regard to Finnish Staff-slingers.
“But, where there were no stones, which was seldom seen, they cast into the forts as forcible as they may, a piece of iron that is glowing red hot, which they put with a pair of tongs, into the sling. They will make such a violent wound and torture, that it can hardly ever or never cured with the help of the physician.” Olaus Magnus
Staff slings were also commonly used to propel lime during Naval battles.
For battlefield usage, The English fielded Irish Slingers during the battle of Falkirk. The Spanish and Andalusians often fielded slingers alongside crossbowmen for usage in the field. They were certainly present during the Battle of Najera, where Castilian slingers fought against English Warbow archers, and though they lost (Likely because they, unlike the English probably had no armour), Froissart mentions that the stones heavily dented English bascinets. Denting a bascinet is not easy, especially from a long ranged engagement.
If slingers were thought to have been of ‘No use’ against heavily armoured men (The English archers), then the Spanish likely would not have used their slingers in the first place. They had crossbowmen after all.
You might also be surprised to note that Slingers saw quite a lot of usage by the Hussites, they are known as Pracata. There is in fact a statue in Prague today depicting one. Given that the Hussites commonly used heavy crossbows and guns, if slings truly were of no use against armoured men, they would not have used them!
The Spanish conquistadors also had an impression of the sling, when they faced it from both the Aztecs and Later the Incans. “They are just lesser than an harquebus” is one quote. This is not so surprising, however, given that some of the Spanish likely had some experience with the sling. Bernal Diaz infact states that he used one to ward off canoes holding Aztec warriors, and almost struck Cortez during the night with his sling, due to Cortez approaching without warning from behind. (These are from his memoirs)
Perhaps one of the more interesting sources is from De expugnatione Lyxbonensi, from the 12th Century. Not only is it perhaps one of the only few sources from the Medieval period that describes Urban combat, yes, Urban combat. But it also shows that slings were often used by both sides.
Simply put. I do not believe that it is development in armour that had the biggest impact in sling usage. Rather, I believe it was both a change in recruitment standards as well as the general disuse of foot skirmishers in the High-Late Medieval period.
But, Why don’t I think that armour development plays as big a role in the equation?
Because fist-sized slingstones generally, and I need to state this, generally… Don’t care very much one way or the other about most medieval armour. Fist-sized slingstones, unlike arrows, doesn’t care very much about the impact angle upon which it is striking. This means that slingstones are much less likely to glance. It also means that they are much more likely to transfer a lot of that energy into a given armour.
Does this mean it won’t be of much use against a breastplate? Probably, because you’re talking about several centimetres of air-gap thanks to a general globose armour-shaping between you, your pourpoint and your armour. I would be surprised if you didn’t get a dent that needed to get hammered out, however. (Unless, of course, you are talking about Renaissance armour that has been proofed against firearms. No sling, let alone staff-sling… is going to be of much use, because even arquebuses were not of much use!)
But munitions armour (Perhaps of wrought or low carbon steel) or not-so-great heat-treated steel armour, it is likely going to take a dent.
What about a hauberk? Likely not going to be that great. Whilst maile armour is more protective than you might think against blunt impact, it likely won’t be of much help against fist-sized slingstones.
Hauberk + aketon? Likely won’t be of much help either. Aketons are lightly padded and would likely offer only a limited amount of protection.
What about someone armoured perhaps in the way that the Kings Mirror suggests, with aketon + hauberk and an over-armour gambeson being worn over the hauberk? This is where things likely get much more interesting. Because now it’s a layered system.
Or what about Aketon + hauberk + coat of plates? Also interesting. And I can’t really make any inferences.
But a strike to the helmet or the limbs from plate armour, or pretty much any armour? It likely isn’t going to result in anything nice. An arrow against a helmet… it’s likely going to glance off because of the heavily curved shape. A slingstone against a helmet is more likely to not care.
There is actually a video by a user called Jaegoor on Youtube, who slings a big stone at a Roman helmet. It isn’t a medieval helmet, however you can certainly make inferences (Especially about anything regarding the sling). And I can for one, see why the Roman soldiers at Dyrracheum opted to make a wicker-woven basket to be worn over their helmets. Fist-sized stones pack a whollop.
Here is a link to the video if you are interested
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mMMebwEdAaE
Does this mean that Slings are the best weapon. Definetly not. But they were used much more often than people think, and used properly, both with the right projectiles and the right person behind them, they are capable of terrible things. Luis Pons Livermore, for example, has been chronographed throwing a 200 gram slingstone at a velocity of 52 m/s, In episode 5 of ‘History of Weapons’. ~270J, That’s terrifying for a hand-held pre-firearm projectile weapon. Most references for Warbows that I have seen, such as from Mark Stretton… yield figures of about ~70-90J, from a 150lb Warbow.
In another video on youtube, you can see the same slinger (Luis Pons Livermore) hurling 150 gram stones towards watermelons at velocities of roughly 50 m/s. That’s roughly ~180J ballpark.
And, when you read anecdotes like this, which whilst not from Medieval Europe, they do give you food for thought.
“I have been led to think that the natives throw stones and other missiles with extraordinary force. I am confirmed in this opinion by a musket which stands at my elbow. It was used by a Tonguese in the late attack on Koro na Yasaca. During the conflict a stone struck the barrel of this musket – the barrel is 3 feet and 2 inches long – shattered the lighter part of the stock; made an indentation in the barrel 1-8 of an inch in depth, and … drove the barrel 7-16 of an inch out of the straight line.( I have since learned that this stone was thrown from a sling).” Reverend Thomas Williams
Or this, in reference to Guamanian slingers:
“They are very skilled at using the sling for which they fashion marble slingstones that fly as through bewitched. These resemble very large acorns that are flung from their slings in such a way and with such force that it is as through they were fired from an harquebus. They always hit the target with the point of the slingstone and strikes with such force that, if it hits the head or the body, it will
penetrate.”
Goes some way to demonstrate the effective hitting power you can get from skilled slingers.
I suppose I had better round this off, though. There is a medical journal entry written for the Israeli Police regarding Slings and their associated trauma. I will let people decide for themselves whether slings are deadly enough to be used by their protagonists in their story.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/bcbkl4eukqwvxxr/Borovsky%2C%20I.%282017%29.%20The%20traumatic%20potential%20of%20a%20projectile%20shot%20from%20a%20sling.pdf?dl=0
But if you don’t want to read the entire document and just want an excerpt, here it is.
“Our data indicated that projectiles shot from unconventional weapons such as a sling, have serious traumatic potential for unprotected individuals and can cause blunt trauma of moderate to critical severity such as fractures of the trunk, limb, and facial skull bone, depending on the weight and shape of the projectile and the distance from the source of danger. Asymmetrically shaped projectiles weighing more than 100g were the most dangerous. Projectiles weighing more than 100g can cause bone fractures of the trunk and limbs at distances of up to 60m from the target and may cause serious head injuries to an unprotected person (Abbreviated Injury Scale 4-5) at distances up to 200m from the target. Due to the traumatic potential of projectiles shot from a sling, the police must wear full riot gear and keep at a distance of at least 60m from the source of danger in order to avoid serious injury. Furthermore, given the potential for serious head injuries, wearing a helmet with a visor is mandatory at distances up to 200m from the source of danger.”
I should also note that I am not replying here to anyone in particular. I feel though, that I am obligated to comment on behalf of the sling.
I should also note that, as with any other weapon, you can also get varying results. Differences in Missile weights, release velocities and distances from target will all affect the effectiveness of a given weapon. So whilst fist-sized slingstones thrown from an expert slinger might very well have a lot of potential to deal significant damage, a novice slinger throwing a pebble will obviously not deal anywhere near the same amount of damage. And so on and so forth. Yadda yadda yadda.
The hussite Pracata (Práčata) were often children and youth – the word could be translated as “sling-younglings”. They used slings because they were cheap, and easy to train for, not because they were better than bows. For ranged combat adult hussites used mostly guns or sometimes crosbows – again because they were much easier to train for than bows – keep in mind that hussites were mostly peasants and commoners.
Not necessarily.
First off, bows can’t really parry or attack in melee effectively without a high chance to be damaged. Archers with conventional bows are inherently glass cannons unless they’re in full plate. Many other ranged weapons can be used with a shield, meaning that for example a flighted Atlatl dart packs enough punch to go through light armor and possibly medium armor while it can be used with large shields, making the user far less vulnerable to missile fire themselves, additionally an atlatl itself, rather than the dart, is a hefty, pointed, rigid object which can be used as more or less a club. Or with a metal spike on it, a war pick. So arguably an archer has a hard time actually hitting an atlatl user, and the atlatl user can also fair much better in melee combat using a pick and shield, whereas the archer’s answer to melee combat is pretty much just “moar dakka.” If an archer finds themselves at short range against infantry, they don’t have great options except dropping the bow and pulling out a secondary, or just praying they can hit a shielded target.
Additionally, a bow is a very unstealthy weapon. It’s huge, very conspicuous, and two dimensionally large when strung. You can’t even disguise it as a walking stick because the draw weight is too low for that and the limb shape is wrong. Shorter designs of Atlatl dart can be concealed much as arrows can, and so can the atlatl itself. A specially designed atlatl might even be possible to disguise as something inconspicuous like a cane. The twang from a bow is also, while much quieter than even a silenced gunshot, still quite audibly loud. Whereas an atlatl is nearly noiseless until impact.
Finally, in a bit more of a silly advantage, there absolutely no issue with dual-wieling atlatls if you’re ambidextrous and store the darts in a way you can reload one-handed. Fantasy badass characters though should have absolutely no issue making effective use of a pair of atlatls, or potentially using some weird combination of dual wielding atlatls that also work as something vaguely like a hooksword with a spike or blade on them and potentially some kind of guard. I definitely wanna see someone use an atlatl to hook a shield and a second atlatl to throw a short dart at them from nearly point blank range. Fantasy? Maybe. But it’s certainly not impossible.
There are a few situations of course where a bow is practical and an atlatl isn’t. First, an arrow can go through light armor like it isn’t there and medium armor still fairly effectively and while it definitely isn’t a counter to heavy armor (plate) it does have the potential to do some damage with the right arrowhead and a lucky hit to a weak spot. Whereas an atlatl will not likely do anything to heavy armor and will still probably struggle with medium armor.
Second, it’s easier to aim a bow through fortifications as a defender. Arrow slits are much easier to shoot bows and crossbow through than to use an atlatl through.
Third, bows have greater range than atlatls. While both greatly exceed thrown javelins in range, the bow has clearly superior velocity and also less obviously, doesn’t lose power when fired on a ballistic trajectory like an atlatl does. The biomechanics of bows mean they can be shot equally strongly at any angle, which is not true of atlatls.
Fourth, while accurate archery isn’t simple, accurate atlatl shots are even trickier, as getting both power and even approximate vertical aim together requires practice. It would be hard for someone who’s never used one to hit a torso sized target from even 5 meters.
Fifth, in order to be efficient, atlatl darts need to be at least a bit heavier than hunting arrows. Maybe even heavier than war arrows. Ammo counts for atlatls are more limited and also need to be carried more securely, as the motion of throwing an atlatl dart is far more intense than the motion of drawing and releasing a bow.
——-
Despite these disadvantages of the bow, the atlatl and skirmishing in general survived in many societies where bows were well known. In the Americas, the most formidable armor was probably partial copper plate. While bronze and even salvaged iron and steel did exist, there is no indication that it was used as armor to any extent.
More typically, non-metallic armors were used in conjunction with shields. Cloth, leather, bone, hardwood, wool (available from specially bread dogs and llamas), while obsidian and copper were used for the heads of spears, darts, and arrows, as well as bladed swordlike wood or bone cutting weapons known as macuahuitl. Copper swords and axes also existed.
So in this environment, where the average soldier is wearing light armor not medium and nobody is wearing heavy armor, the superior armor penetration of a bow doesn’t mean atlatls fall by the wayside. There was a delicate balance and meta between the two weapons where each had a role and the atlatl was often MORE popular than the bow, with bows being niche weapons in some societies while atlatls dominated.
All this is to say that the bow didn’t strictly replace the atlatl. Each weapon had it’s own niche. Much as firearms didn’t replace the bow but had their own niche for a long time. And while that niche is now very wide and diversified, overlapping much of the previous bow niche, firearms still don’t fully replace bows. Even as late as the war in Yugoslavia in the 1990s, bows and arrows were used as an anti-fortification weapon for their ability to penetrate sandbags and some other types of soft armor better than anything short of cannons or RPGs. Far exceeding the penetration of infantry weapons. A high draw weight compound bow with the right arrow can go through more sand than a 14.5mm machinegun, let alone infantry rifles or handguns.
So this should probably inform fantasy as well. It’s perfectly fine to have two or even three classes that use ranged weapons but in a very different way. Skirmishers can coexist alongside archers and even possibly Crossbow(o)men. And all of them can have mounted variations as well.
Bows and arrows need more skill to make than, say, slings and rocks. They need more maintenance than throwing darts. “Better” is in the eye of the beholder.
One trope that really annoys me is making bows the go-to weapon for forest dwellers; wood-elves, rangers, bandits – if they live in the forest, they use bows. I blame Robin Hood!
In the open, bows are powerful; they outrange other missile weapons so an archer can attack without their opponents being able to retaliate, and, unlike thrown spears, axes and so forth they can be used multiple times before running out of ammunition. Given favourable terrain – say a narrow steep-sided river valley that the enemy must first clamber down one side of then wade the river before scaling the other side to reach melee range, an archer could conceivably empty a quiver-full of arrows into the enemy and still have time to put away the bow and draw a melee weapon.
In a forest, these advantages are nullified. For a start, an archer simply can’t see a target at long range through the trees. If they were somehow visible, then to shoot at them the arrow’s trajectory would have to pass through the forest canopy twice (once going up, once coming down) and even brushing past a twig could deflect it by a degree or two, causing it to land tens of yards off-target – if it didn’t get stuck among the branches and fail to land at all!
This makes overhead shooting very difficult at best, and reduces the range at which a bow is useful to roughly the same as a hurled weapon.
Assuming our archer does get a clear shot, by the time they’ve notched a second arrow to their bow where are their targets? Behind a tree, if they’ve any sense! The archer might get off an un-aimed snap shot or two as the enemy closes in by short dashes from cover to cover, but then they’re in hand to hand combat – and a bow’s not much use at that!
It would, in my opinion, be far better to use spears; there would still be the option of a missile attack if chance allowed, and a spear is actually useful in melee – so why, oh why, do authors and game designers insist on arming their forest-dwellers with bows?!
Yes, ranged weapons in general are not something to use in an environment like a forest. There’s too many places to take cover for them to be any good. Melee weapons are much more useful in a forest and the spear – throwable, quite some range as melee weapon, efficient in close-quarter – would be a great choice.
All of this is true, however, a few things worth pointing out here.
1. Bows are rarely used against point targets in the fashion you describe. Theoretically yes you can bombard someone half a kilometer away with arrows, but the accuracy is not gonna be good, and the flight time is gonna be very long, probably 10-12 seconds or so. I think this would only really be used against formations of enemy units or static targets, or maybe as a form of suppressive fire or area denial. Definitely not with the intention to actually hit an individual person who’s moving and aware they’re being shot at in a small number of shots. Against a small number of moving targets you’d use a bow at much flatter angles, not as a bombardment weapon where cosine losses need to be accounted for.
2. Bows are unproblematic to shoot upward at things that are IN the trees. Atlatls, slings, etc are highly awkward to use against something above you.
3. Not all forests are created equal. A forest of old growth conifers with a full canopy has a lot less vegetation at ground level. A mangrove has moats of water that prevent your opponent from just running up to you. In a forest with lots of easily climbed trees, shooting from above is also a viable tactic, and I pity whoever’s job it is to try to climb up to you while being shot at and engage you in melee on top of a 30 meter tree.
4. Bow rate of fire scales inversely with draw weight. Consequently, some people have the ability to shoot 25 lb bows with reasonable accuracy at very high rates of fire. If your opponent has no or minimal armor, forcing them to deal with fire rates of 100 shots a minute per archer would certainly make them think twice about getting within range.
5. Concealment cuts both ways. If you have no idea I’m there and all I need to do is draw and release an arrow at you, you’re not gonna have a good time even if I’m just 15 meters away. A cluttered forest is an excellent place for archers to hide. Maybe you won’t even see me after I hit you and reload. If you lose me for a two seconds, I have another arrow ready for you. On an open plane, there’s nowhere for me to hide
Well , elves are hunter-gather types so bow is natural choice. Bow used by tribal peoples everywhere from the steppes of Eurasia, Plains of America, Jungles of Africa, Asia, Indonesia, PNG, Deserts of Africa, Asia; in the Forests of Eurasia, islands of the Andaman…
Just use a gun.
As a former bowhunter, I can say that bows DO work quite well in the woods. To the poster who said that the arrow has to pass through the forest canopy twice, once going up, once going down, that’s completely untrue for most shots in the forest, which are at much shorter range, and the arc of the flight is much less, almost a straight line.
Use atlatls because they are much older than the bow? No, the atlatl became obsolete once the bow was invented.
In open terrain, the bow outranges pretty much every weapon on this list, with an effective range of about 400 yards for a unit of longbowmen. The overall efficiency and effectiveness of the bow is WHY it is the most common ranged weapon (until guns were in common use, of course). It has nothing to do with any ridiculous “European bias” or cliche.
Slings are good, but have you ever used one? I’m pretty sure it’s a lot harder to use accurately than a bow, needs more space to use, and has a lower rate of fire. Not to mention, just how many “fist-sized rocks” can a slinger carry? Probably a lot less than the number of arrows an archer can comfortably carry. Also, suitable stones of that size are a lot harder to find in nature than you might think. Smaller ones, from an inch in diameter up to fist-sized, sure.
Javelins, plumbatae, and throwing axes are interesting additions to a unit of infantry, as a means to inflict casualties and confusion to enemy infantry just before they come into melee. However, they wouldn’t replace archers, by any means.
“Fantasy is horribly European-centric”….well, I will say that all fiction is also rather human-centric and Earth-centric as well (other than some science fiction, of course), for the very good reason that every single author of fiction we know is a human, who lives on Earth. And probably most authors of fantasy fiction use elements of European history and culture, because that’s what they are descended from.
There are some exceptions, of course. Glen Cook’s Black Company series eventually wound up in an area that seemed much like India, and had a lot of elements of Eastern Asia in it as well. Of course, they still used bows…..for the very good reasons I’ve outlined above.
No reason to change from what works for any misguided ideas that “any change is good”.
*In reply to Gary*
“Slings are good, but have you ever used one? I’m pretty sure it’s a lot harder to use accurately than a bow, needs more space to use, and has a lower rate of fire. Not to mention, just how many “fist-sized rocks” can a slinger carry? Probably a lot less than the number of arrows an archer can comfortably carry. Also, suitable stones of that size are a lot harder to find in nature than you might think. Smaller ones, from an inch in diameter up to fist-sized, sure.”
Accuracy with a sling? That’s a difficult subject, because accuracy isn’t exactly easy to define. Slings accuracy IMHO is more comparable to throwing than it is to using a bow. Throwing is never usually as accurate as a bow is, for example… but there are some terrifyingly accurate Baseball throwers who I wouldn’t want throwing anything at me. Slings are similar… Experienced slingers will likely never be as accurate as a master bowman… But I still wouldn’t want one throwing anything at me, especially if there are multiples. On the Individual level, accuracy very much goes to a bow. But on a battlefield, the importance of Accuracy goes less towards hitting Individuals and more towards formations, in which case ones accuracy doesn’t need to be as high, given that there is a good chance you could hit someone, even if they weren’t one you were aiming at.
On the otherhand, in battlefield contexts in adverse conditions, I think slingstones could be superior to arrows, especially regarding sidewinds or forward winds. Sidewinds can knock arrows off course fairly easily, In fact it has been attributed to some military Losses such as at Towton IIRC… Slingstones though, once they are flying (And you haven’t picked up a jagged angular rock)… they rather like to not screw around and deviate very much from their flight even in strong winds… this is where having a heavy and condensed projectile is a definitive positive. So in this regard, they can be more accurate than arrows. Lead glandes… they just plain don’t care about winds, they just want to soar, and dig into people, which is probably why they were so well regarded in the Ancient sources (lead projectiles). In the case of wet weather and moisture… this is one lead that slings (And staff-slings) Have over bows and crossbows, since wet bowstrings can sap a fair amount of energy out of the shots (Which is probably comibined with wet fletchings… which will sap more energy). Moisture on the otherhand has very little effect on slings, which is likely why they were well regarded and used in naval battles even into the 1600’s, especially for grenades or quicklime.
Have I used a sling? Yes I have, I have been slinging for years (On-and-off). It seems to me that you are going under the misguided belief that slings need a lot of space to use… but whoever has tried several slings out will quickly realise that this is only true in the case of large slings thrown from a Side-arm throw (With large slings, this is generally the only release style that can be used effectively). In this instance… yes, they do use up a lot of space. Using a Medium to short length sling though reduces the space required, and you can reduce the space further by using Vertical-style releases… this only requires a slinger to have forward space. That being said, slings will never be as efficient as bows space-wise, which is why they can be ‘stacked up’ into dense-ish formations. But this was never really a problem for slingers in the first place, as the roles of slingers and archers where different (Though they were both long ranged). Slingers tended to be used more as skirmish troops and were usually best used in a more spread-out fashion. In the ancient period, they also tended to be paired with Javelin-equipped skirmishers. Slingers could also use a shield (Which means they could theoretically get closer, and use heavier shot, with less personal risk), so they could fulfill a variety of skirmishing roles that an Archer might not want to risk.
How many fist-sized stones can a slinger carry? Easily over 20, and perhaps closer to 40 (Of course, as a rough size group, this can easily yield a range of ~100-300 gram projectile mass per stone depending on stone density etcetera). It can be conveniently held up in a bag by the hips so you can have easy access to the ammunition… That being said, just because it’s small doesn’t necessarily mean it’s easy… Because it might be conveniently sized, it is also quite heavy. In the case of lead projectiles, I can carry 70 40 gram glandes in a small leather pouch and it is about the size of a large orange that can easily fit in the palm of my open hand. This is not the most comfortable thing to carry around though, given that it’s ~2.8 Kilo’s in a very small container… but that’s still 70 shots in a small pouch! (But, has a tendency to whap around on my hips… and has on one occasion got me in the balls when jogging with it.)
If I were in a battle, I would prefer to have about 20-30 shots, whether these be large stones or lead glandes etcetera wouldn’t really matter, as I have the feeling that carrying more might impact with the lightness and fastness that you would want out of a Slinger. If more is required, it wouldn’t surprise me if there were attendants or slaves to go and fetch more shot… or maybe there might be a large communal bag of shot that you might rush up to to resupply. It wouldn’t be that difficult to do this. Interestingly enough, I was talking to another archer and they too prefer to have about ~20 arrows when it comes to carrying them around on their person.
On the otherhand, a slinger doesn’t have to deal with long shafts and fletchings, and you don’t really need to place much care or consideration towards storing slingstones like one does arrows (Hell, you can just throw them in the bag). I can definetly see why some military campaigners tended to store their arrows seperately into barrels for fletchings, shafts and arrowheads and then joined together before a fight. (This is not meant to be a negative opinion of arrows, by the way, It’s just a difference that I have noticed)
Also, in the case of finding fist sized stones etcetera, that’s true enough. But slingers didn’t always source their shots from just rocks. if any military force is about to go on campaign and they have slingers, You’d be damn well sure that they would have fired clay slingstones, or access to clay. A lot of the ammunition for military campaigns in the ancient world were made from fired clay (And I have seen some photos of fired clay shot dating to the 1100’s AD from Germany). Which when I think about it… clay is still nature… but my point stands. Clay is far easier to source than decent rocks (In fact, very good slingstones are hard to find in nature.) Supposedly one of the best places in the world to find natural slingstones is at Chesil beach.
Clay also comes with the benefit that it tends to be homogenous (That is, have a similar density throughout) and is easily shaped (So you can make Biconical points etcetera)… that’s great when it comes to slinger-speech, because that means your projectiles can all roughly be ‘the same’, so you can expect to have consistent release timing, which is very important with a sling! (Different weights and shapes can have big changes in release times… thats why when you see a lot of slingers using stones they’ve just picked up off the ground… they can barely hit the broad side of a barn!)
Rate of fire? Depends. People have the assumption that Bows should be able to fire faster, and I’d argue this is true in the case of lighter draw weight bows… but likely not for any decent bows with draw weights higher than 50lbs, especially over 100lbs. Slings can be used fairly quickly, perhaps one shot in five-to-seven seconds, and there are video’s up on youtube with people throwing quite rapidly. I have found that rapidity of shot with a sling is mainly about being selective with your ammuniton and establishing a good ‘thoughtless’ repetiviness towards grabbing your next shot… and using a one-motion release, it is rather like a kata.
I’d argue that in a battlefield context, the ‘sustained’ rate of fire for both Bows and slings would likely be about ~4-6 shots in a minute. This might seem slow, but I’d argue it would be necessary in order to not exhaust the ammunition quickly, and to keep said users from exhausting themselves also. They could easily ramp it up where needed, and in this case some lighter bows would likely exceed a sling, but by how much I have no clue.
Also, very much agreed on the usage of Bows from forests! I may have not used a proper bow in my life (Outside of a terrible bundle-bow made from multiple lengths of bamboo), but if you are using a bow in the forest, that’s all flat-trajectory shooting, not arched shooting. (I have used a sling from a forest/heavy bushland) The only difficulty I can forsee in this situation is brush/foilage getting in the way of a decent shot. But you’d likely be shooting within ~20-40 metres. Maybe more if there is a stretched out expanse of less-dense tree coverage.
Also, the indian chakram.
The problem with the spears, javellins and axes is that arrows are way cheaper to make.
Yet, slings are even easier to make than bows (not to mention they’re more flexible when it comes to material) and the bullets can be made out of basically everything: stone, clay, metal, it all works.