Hi, everyone, and welcome to another episode of ancient warfare answers.

I'm flying solo again this time round, so I get to play while the cat's away, the cat being Yaspah.

And so we've got a question from Adam Pollard, which I'm going to answer in a minute, but just a reminder, of course, that you can ask us a question.

You can also support us on Patreon.

So all you have to do is go to www.patryon.com forward slash ancient warfare.

And you can support the podcast three different levels, even get a copy of the magazine.

Exciting stuff.

Anyway, this question from Adam Pollard today is, what made slings so suited to ancient

warfare? And he asks, slings are an iconic weapon of the ancient period, but they don't seem to have

been used much in later periods. What made them so suited to ancient warfare? Sub-question,

what disadvantages do they have over, say, bows?

Now, slings are used later, not necessarily in warfare.

And, yeah, they're not sort of mass slingmen exist well into the Roman period,

and so have existed as sort of weapons of war for quite a considerable amount of time longer on the sling than on the rifle for instance or the musket or even their precursors but one of the things about slings

is of course that they are ubiquitous virtually every hunting culture will have a sling of some kind and people will be

able to sling. We know from obviously the Roman sources about the Belaeric slingers of Caesar. We know of

the Rhodian slingers that Xenophon talks about during the retreat of the 10,401 BC. And you get slingers

mentioned in other sources. Sometimes they are just light tracts. We don't get the fact that

their slingers mentioned specifically, but we assume that that's what they are. Alexander

the Great takes some into his invasion of the Persian Empire.

So they are indeed everywhere.

And yet at the same time, they have some advantages slash disadvantages to archers.

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