"Whistling Sling Bullets Were Roman Troops’ Secret" Topic

…"Terror Weapon"

"Some 1,800 years ago, Roman troops used "whistling" sling bullets as a "terror weapon" against their barbarian foes, according to archaeologists who found the cast lead bullets at a site in Scotland.

Weighing about 1 ounce (30 grams), each of the bullets had been drilled with a 0.2-inch (5 millimeters) hole that the researchers think was designed to give the soaring bullets a sharp buzzing or whistling noise in flight.

The bullets were found recently at Burnswark Hill in southwestern Scotland, where a massive Roman attack against native defenders in a hilltop fort took place in the second century A.D…"

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Amicalement
Armand

think

Why would they not just try them (or replicas) and find out …

I wonder if they were in fact drilled to keep them organized on a rope? Counting strings of say, 10 bullets, would be an efficient way to keep inventory.

Why would they not just try them (or replicas) and find out?

Arm all the researchers, take them to the nearest paint ball facility, and let them blast each other with replicas. I'd pay to watch this "field research". Oh, and the survivors get to publish in the Archeological Journals.

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they have

Thank you for the link!

Maybe someone will make Balaeric Stickers now …

In all seriousness, though, the sling bullet can kill, the stick would would make you go, "Ow! $&@#!".

The former one less opponent, the latter an angrier one.

Bowman, you've got a good sense of humour. I'm going to guess you can appreciate Monty Python.

PS. That guy has a pretty nice yard. (I can see him spending hours water, pruning and talking to his flowers every day.)

Interesting clip of the testing. I can definitely believe the whistle was the main purpose for the hole in the bullet. But I was pretty surprised that the guy that produces "The slingshot channel" didn't once test any of this with an *actual* sling and in fact said he was pretty rubbish with one. He would have had to actually practice . . .

While they just came up with a hypothetical means of launching the sling stones from the end of a stick, what they really did was just invent a new weapon that there is absolutely no evidence for in the historical or archaeological record. What was the point of that?

Also, he tested the penetration of the bullet by shooting from point blank range. How useless is that for collecting any real data?

Quite right John, but I was disappointed because I only wanted to hear those bullets whistle!