Main Discussion Area > Primitive Skills
Hand thrown spear better than the Atlatl?
John32r:
Lol I'm sorry, I'm not trying to be abrasive but I think prehistory and history have been mythologized beyond belief. Some people seem to think that everyone around back then was running around looking like Arnold Schwarzenneger, throwing atlatl darts 100,000m to hit squirrels, doing roundhouse kicks to take down elephants and actually killing something with a promontory peg trap, and that the only reason people aren't doing that stuff nowadays is because they don't have time to practice, or didn't eat enough organic food when they were a child, or because their mom didn't breastfeed them, or whatever. And for some reason people seem very, very unwilling to rethink this idea.
mullet:
I think you believe that. Everybody else has tried to tell you what they believe but you are too busy listening to yourself to read it.
Joe is right, trolling, I guess you had a lot of time to think with the last 30 day suspension.
the barkman:
Well John it seems you have a hard on against the ATLATL- or at least folk's appreciation of it. I like to think our ancestors had a very large , mixed bag of ways to solve every day survival problems. Much like we do today, excepting the industrial processes we've inherited from our great, great grandparents. The ATLATL has been a part of that mixed bag of problem solving tools a lot longer than guns, bows and arrows. It's actually still used in some remote societies still extant on our planet. What I am suggesting is that not all people used ATLATL for everything all the time- that for some applications (and I, being a reasonably intelligent modern human, admit to not knowing ALL of those applications as I am not a hunter gatherer--BUT I AM fascinated by ) it was actually the best available. Thus it exists. It exists because it was essential for some activity----for thousands of years.
I've been making/playing with ATLATL for almost two decades, using absolutely anything I can get my hands on to make/experiment with them- modern materials included, and what I can tell you, empirically anyway, is that there is a wide range of purpose you can build ATLATL for. Are you hunting Birds? If I were to scare a large flock of birds (and I have every reason to believe flocks of game birds were larger in prehistory) I could reasonably assume I would hit one or more birds with the ten or so light-weight cane darts I launch at them during the ten or so minutes it takes them to hit the sky. Am I hunting wooly mamoth with ten to 15 men from my tribe? Well if we all have some pretty heavy duty darts and we stand real close we will bring down that beast, yes? well. It happened. If I am a Mayan warrior tasked with killing armored Spanish invaders, along with ten thousand other ATLATL warriors with my ATLATL then yes I will. You've used a lot of sweeping generalisations to discredit the ATLATL. It's fine for you to think whatever you want, but if you honestly want to know the ATLATL, why not make a few (or a few hundred- it's not difficult) and see how they work----then you might appreciate better it's place in humankinds toolbox. Today, in America, we still use the technology-----to throw balls for our dogs. Also, whomever didn't know wether or notthe Aztecs had the ATLATL-----ATLATL is an AZTEC word.
Josh B:
--- Quote from: mullet on December 04, 2015, 09:24:14 pm ---I think you believe that. Everybody else has tried to tell you what they believe but you are too busy listening to yourself to read it.
Joe is right, trolling, I guess you had a lot of time to think with the last 30 day suspension.
--- End quote ---
Oh yeah.....that's right. I didn't recognize the username. I should have remembered the MO though. Thanks for the reminder Eddie. Undoubtedly the troll will burn his bridge to PA beyond repair soon enough. Then we can all forget him permanently. Josh
JackCrafty:
Someone reported this thread so I took a look...
Very interesting. Not much in the way of hostility, so that's a bit of a downer. But hey, I can pop the corn for something else.
As for the thrown spear being better than the atlatl dart, I'm sure the Schwarzenegger types in the past would agree with you. And when the thrown spear became useless after being broken by the angry bear, a roundhouse kick to the jaw would work nicely to finish off. And then sit down for a nice afternoon of new spear construction while feasting on an organic dinner of wild berries and bear meat.
Point is, the atlatl makes throwing easier. Easy is good. A thrown spear is about as accurate as a thrown rock. And thrown rocks are nothing to sneeze at (especially if you sneeze while a rock is flying toward you and you don't see it). Anyways, there has to be a drastic improvement over thrown rocks for me to use it rather than a rock. I think the atlatl looks pretty good to me. And the ammunition is lighter too.
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