The throwing stick or throwing club is a wooden rod with either a pointed tip or a spearhead attached to one end, intended for use as a weapon. A throwing stick can be either straight or roughly
boomerang-shaped, and is much shorter than the
javelin. It became obsolete as
slings and
bows became more prevalent, except on the
Australian continent, where the
native people
Indigenous peoples are culturally distinct ethnic groups whose members are directly descended from the earliest known inhabitants of a particular geographic region and, to some extent, maintain the language and culture of those original people ...
continued refining the basic design. Throwing sticks shaped like returning boomerangs are designed to fly straight to a target at long ranges, their surfaces acting as
airfoils. When tuned correctly they do not exhibit curved flight, but rather they fly on an extended straight flight path. Straight flight ranges greater than 100 meters have been reported by historical sources as well as in recent research.
Distribution
The
ancient Egyptians used throwing sticks to hunt small game and waterfowl, as seen in several wall paintings. The
18th-dynasty pharaoh
Pharaoh (, ; Egyptian: '' pr ꜥꜣ''; cop, , Pǝrro; Biblical Hebrew: ''Parʿō'') is the vernacular term often used by modern authors for the kings of ancient Egypt who ruled as monarchs from the First Dynasty (c. 3150 BC) until th ...
Tutankhamun
Tutankhamun (, egy, twt-ꜥnḫ-jmn), Egyptological pronunciation Tutankhamen () (), sometimes referred to as King Tut, was an Egyptian pharaoh who was the last of his royal family to rule during the end of the Eighteenth Dynasty (ruled ...
was a known lover of duck hunting and used the throwing stick in his hunts, and a number of throwing sticks were found in the tombs of pharaohs. Menceys, the kings of the ancient
Guanches of the
Canary Islands
The Canary Islands (; es, :es:Canarias, Canarias, ), also known informally as the Canaries, are a Spanish Autonomous communities of Spain, autonomous community and archipelago in the Atlantic Ocean, in Macaronesia. At their closest point to ...
, also used throwing batons.
Gimel
Gimel is the third letter of the Semitic abjads, including Phoenician Gīml , Hebrew Gimel , Aramaic Gāmal , Syriac Gāmal , and Arabic (in alphabetical order; fifth in spelling order). Its sound value in the original Phoenician and in all ...
, the third letter of many Semitic alphabets, may have been named after a weapon that was either a staff sling or a throwing stick, ultimately deriving from a Proto-Sinaitic glyph based on an
Egyptian hieroglyph
Egyptian hieroglyphs (, ) were the formal writing system used in Ancient Egypt, used for writing the Egyptian language. Hieroglyphs combined logographic, syllabic and alphabetic elements, with some 1,000 distinct characters.There were about 1,0 ...
.
The
Aborigines of Australia are well-known for their use of the boomerang. Although returning boomerangs are found in many Aboriginal cultures and will return to the user if thrown properly, the choice weapon of the Aborigines and most cultures was the heavy throwing stick, known internationally as the kylie. It was primarily used to kill
kangaroos,
wallabies
A wallaby () is a small or middle-sized macropod native to Australia and New Guinea, with introduced populations in New Zealand, Hawaii, the United Kingdom and other countries. They belong to the same taxonomic family as kangaroos and som ...
, and
emus
Emus may refer to:
* Emu
The emu () (''Dromaius novaehollandiae'') is the second-tallest living bird after its ratite relative the ostrich. It is endemic to Australia where it is the largest native bird and the only extant member of the ...
from afar, though it could also be swung like a club.
Some Native American tribes such as the
Hopi, as well as all southern California tribes,
utilized the throwing stick to hunt
rabbits and occasionally
deer
Deer or true deer are hoofed ruminant mammals forming the family Cervidae. The two main groups of deer are the Cervinae, including the muntjac, the elk (wapiti), the red deer, and the fallow deer; and the Capreolinae, including the re ...
.
The throwing stick was also one of the first weapons used by European stone age people to hunt.
Stone carvings in
Brittany
Brittany (; french: link=no, Bretagne ; br, Breizh, or ; Gallo: ''Bertaèyn'' ) is a peninsula, historical country and cultural area in the west of modern France, covering the western part of what was known as Armorica during the period ...
,
France
France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of Overseas France, overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic, Pacific Ocean, Pac ...
have been found depicting throwing sticks.
Though originally designed for hunting and survival, the throwing stick can be used as a weapon in human conflicts, though the heavy non-returning boomerang was the only variant ever to become truly effective against a human opponent.
Survival tool
As a survival tool, the throwing stick is one of the most effective and easiest tools to obtain. It can be used as a digging tool for making fire-pits and underground shelters in addition to its function as a weapon. A curved branch will suffice as a basic throwing stick. Ancient throwing sticks were made of hardwood with a weighted or curved end to one side to impart momentum so the stick stays straight and does not wobble in mid-flight.
Variations
Some variations of the throwing stick are two-to-three-foot long pieces of thick hardwood, usually about the circumference of the user's wrist. They are intended to be thrown with spin, creating the image of a blurry disc.
Pommel Point Throwing Sticks are noted for their slightly blunt points that can crush skulls if thrown at sufficient speed. Thus, they are also dubbed the "skull crusher" throwing stick.
Return boomerangs have a flat convex surface and must be thrown about 10-15 degrees from upright with a sharp flick of the wrist, but throwing sticks are thrown horizontally.
See also
*
Spear-thrower (atlatl) – also called a throwing stick
*
Boomerang – closely related to advanced throwing sticks, but with curved flight paths instead of straight ones
*
Woomera – Aboriginal variant of the spear-thrower
References
{{Prehistoric technology, state=expanded
Throwing clubs
Ancient weapons
Medieval weapons
Stick and staff weapons
Throwing weapons