Quote:
Originally Posted by Maerlande
I'm curious. What makes you think sling bullets are heavy? Let's take the example of a one inch diameter rock. Assuming it is made of basalt it weighs 0.87 oz. As previously stated the mass of an arrow is about 0.54 oz. This is not exactly a huge increase. Can you back up your statement of generalities with some calculations or facts? So far it appears to be base generalization with no substance. I'm also curious to learn how a rock is hard to remove from a person? Perhaps it penetrates the stomach cavity and is therefore a challenge to extract?
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Typical sling bullets were made of lead for one thing, or clay way back when. Incidentally the density of basalt is about 3 g/cm^3, compared to 11.54 for lead. That works out to 3.23 ounces for a 1 inch sphere, which is much higher than the .54 for an arrow. Rocks are really not high priority ammunition. Now, 2 1 inch long .75 inch diameter parabolas attached together (foot ball shaped ammunition, in common use.) is .471 inches cubed, compared to .523 for the sphere, and weighs only 2.9 ounces. Most sling bullets are in the 2-3 ounce range, though there are outliers. The Balearic slingers are known for using 5 oz bullets, but that is exceptionally heavy, though lighter than some of the Incan ammunition, which were typically very heavy, large rocks, with limited range. Note that I'll try to find the data I was looking at earlier for some of the specifics. Among them are Roman sling bullets typically weighed between 30 g and 90 g. 28g is about 1 oz (28.4 if I remember correctly), so 1-3 for Romans, which is a big difference. The sling is a very dangerous weapon, just difficult to aim for the obvious reason that it is an aim while firing weapon instead of an aim then fire weapon, and the projectile is a decent distance from the hand.
There are a few exceptions to lead bullets other than the Incans. Another is the Apache, who used obsidian in some cases, despite low weight. However, it was used differently, obsidian is rather brittle, and if an obsidian sling bullet shatters near you, it is going to cause some injury, not to mention being bad for morale. Though heavy armor helps hugely at this point.
As for removal difficulty, there are two main factors. The first is the difficulty inherent in removing an object that has fully penetrated. All of the sling bullet is inside the struck target, whereas an arrow is only partially inside someone shot. Furthermore, sling bullets were round, egg shaped, or shaped roughly like an American foot ball. If you can't get around to the back of objects shaped like any of these, you can't get a good grip on them easily, which means either stuffing your hand in an injury, pushing tissue out of the way, and pulling it out (which will lead to infection), or specialized tools (which probably still will lead to infection in earlier eras, but at least won't cause further immediate damage.) The Romans actually eventually developed some specialized prongs, which could still prove problematic. Note that an arrow or crossbow bolt, as a cylindrical pointed object, is much easier to remove, though it obviously has to be done carefully.