THE SLING, BOW, AND OTHER WEAPONS 131 



I suppose the first weapon was a club that the savage dis- 

 covered increased the reach of his arm and force of his blow, or 

 possibly it was a stone held in his hand to add to the power of his 

 punch. Then he learned to throw the stone or hurl his club as 

 a crude spear. Finally, he discovered how to shape his spear 

 to make it more effective, how to make devices that would hurl 

 the stone or spear farther than he could unaided, and so came 

 the sling, bow, blowgun, and other similar appliances. 



Such progress as is here briefly sketched in few words took 

 long ages to accomplish. Man has come up very slowly from a 

 savagery that was next door to animal existence. For tens of 

 thousands of years his language was made up of grunts and 

 gestures. He built no shelter, made no clothes, had no tools, no 

 weapons, ate raw foods, since he had not learned the use of fire, 

 and trusted largely to chance for them, eating only as luck 

 gave him a meal. In fact, his existence was a bestial one with 

 merely a shade of advantage over his animal competitors because 

 of his increased cunning. This is not merely guesswork, for we 

 have discovered the skeletons of these early men in caves where 

 their bones, together with the bones of some of the animals that 

 lived there, have been covered up and preserved- by deposits 

 of lime or accumulated clay. There are no vestiges of tools, 

 weapons, utensils, no evidence of fire or clothing, as are found in 

 similar situations among the remains of the men of later ages. 



One of the very early weapons of mankind was the sling. 

 Every child is familiar with the story of David and Goliath and 

 will recall that it was with the sling that David killed Goliath. 

 This sling is made out of a piece of leather large enough to hold 

 the stone that is to be thrown. A leather thong or string some 

 30 inches in length is tied on each side of the leather; the free 

 ends of the strings are held in the hand, one firmly, the other so 

 it can be readily released. The sling with the contained stone 

 is then swung round the head and, when the stone is swinging 

 with great rapidity, the thong is released and the stone flies out 

 of the sling. The boy who undertakes to use this sling for the 



