The Atlatl: Most Underrated Stone Age Tool?
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- Опубликовано: 22 май 2020
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The atlatl, or spear thrower, came before the bow, and the earliest evidence we have goes back to 17,500 years ago in France. The Mungo man, found in Australia, has osteoarthritis in the right elbow which has been interpreted as a result of using a spear thrower (the aboriginal word is woomera). If that's the case, and not caused by manual throwing, then it would be as old as 42,000 years.
It's a simple but fascinating implement in my opinion. So I went ahead and made one to try out. I have very little experience in throwing darts with an atlatl, but I wanted to give you a glimpse of how useful it is. Aside from explaining how it works I also did a distance test, to see how much more powerful it makes a throw.
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Развлечения
The boomerang is making a comeback, but the atlatl is gaining leverage.
Underrated comment. And I reckon the axe is up for the chop. Sorry,I’ll see my own way out.
@@Rajamak I would hit you with a club, except you obviously are not a member.
I was gonna make a bow joke, but then I took an arrow in the knee
I like this
nice one
Apologies as I am using google translate to communicate with you here. When I was a child my father taught me how to use this weapon along with a bow as we would hunt ibex and gazelle. We were incredibly poor back then as we lived in the wilderness of Yemen so used primitive tools for hunting. It makes me happy to see that people acknowledge such a weapon today. Times have changed and I no longer live a life of hunting as I am too old and now instead I live within a city with my son and his wife and grandchildren. I do try to make them learn the old ways of hunting with these weapons but my son refuses as he owns an American assault rifle.
Sounds like you've enjoyed a very beautiful and diverse life. Much love to you in this world :)
I hope one day your son realizes how valuable your knowledge is! Rifles are great, but it's good to preserve the old ways too.
This post is absolutely wonderful, it must have been a hard life for you sometimes, yet I think it has given you great rewards as a human being - Thank you for sharing this with us.
Best regards from the UK.
You should show him this video!
ramadan kareem thank you for sharing. maybe some day your son will hear you out and give the classic way a spin. i pray you and your family are well and thank you again it sounds like your life has been blessed and long
"The air is thick with these damn things!" -- Mammoth's last thought about Atlatl darts.
Don't worry . Those things are like a pin. They bounce off a wooly mammoth every time those humans come for us ! hahaha
@@triumphmanful Unless the darts have obsidian tips.
Lol that's funny
the atlatl maybe the underrated stone age tool, but the electric mosquito swatter is the most underrated modern age tool.
Seriously though, are mosquito swatters effective?
@@redteamla give it a better battery and put it on the end of a long stick and yeah, probably lol
@@evandudek9216 Okay but have you actually tried one? I never have. If you can actually reach one with the handle it has, does it really kill the mosquito?
@@redteamla I actually have not, but it's strong enough to cause pain to humans, I think it'd evicerate a mosquito.
@@redteamla If a newspaper does it the swatter does too. Swatting is also known to work on streamers.
"Extremely thin spear or oversized arrow."
It's the Knife/Sword debate all over again.
Messer
Messer
Messer?
@@mikedanielespeja6128 War knife
"It's a small sword!"
"No, it's a big knife you dolt!"
*Repeat ad infinitum*
I live down here in Florida and me and my buds go digging for 'arrowheads' all the time. We have to explain to people that 90% of them are spear (javelin) points not arrowheads. And then explain that they propel them with an atlatl not a bow. Then I have explain what an atlatl is and difference between a javelin point, a spear point and an arrowhead. Now I can direct them here for a good explanation of an atlatl.
One thing I find interesting is that those points were traded from 100's and 1000's of miles away.
Brilliant
There were ni aztecs in florida tho
@@kyomademon453 LOL, they were used all over the world for 1000's of years. The Aztecs are recent history. In fact, everyone forgot about them until they met Amazon tribesman that still used them. Now they are cool again. But for me as only as a survival hunting tool. I made my first one 30 years ago. And if you read again what he said, he never said they found the heads here, just that he had a hard time explaining it. Go to Amazon and look, I'm not kidding you, lol
I had a friend that oddly enough had my exact same name.....for 10-15 years. He was a big hunter and he had an amazing ability to find points. I asked him how and he said he looked over the land and thought, "where would I put a village"?. And then he would dig. You never found any flint knapping because they were made in maybe North Virginia etc and traded by foot to Florida. This is why confused people find seashells in the mountains. It was uncanny the way he found them his personal collection semi filled a small room.
Choco-latl - widely overlooked Aztec tool to add mass to one's body, thus increasing the power of one's cuts and thrusts.
Actually, the chocolate back then didn't have sugar, so it probably wouldn't have been as fattening.
@@danic_c on the contrary, cocoa is highly fattening itself. Cocoa butter is where the fat in chocolate comes from. Take a look at two bars of chocolate of the same size, one milk chocolate, the other dark. The milk chocolate will have a higher sugar content, but lower fat content; the dark chocolate will have a higher fat content but lower sugar content.
I myself love very dark chocolate and if Im not careful I can make myself sick from overeating it quite easily. There's a lot of fat in it.
Oh and I didnt know spear throwers existed until this video
@@REALjohnmosesbrowning Good points. Still, I assume cacao was probably not eaten or drank in very large quantities, especially not by your common warriot, as the original comment seems to imply.
@@danic_c
It could be drunk as their version of coffee.
@@REALjohnmosesbrowning Except fat isn't highly fattening, it's just calorically dense. Sugar is calorie for calorie the most fattening ingredient due to the endocrine effects of sucrose metabolism.
I've been on a small-time competitive atlatl team for some years now (believe it or not those do exist) and have done quite a bit of coaching others for that team, so I thought I might add a little bit of unsolicited advice here.
We of course have no idea how atlatl were used, and it's probable that everyone did it their own unique way, like most people do today, however there are a few things which seem to work well consistently. For instance, you seem to be side-arming your throw sightly. That's taking away from both your power and accuracy. Typically, I tell people that they want the atlatl to move as laterally as possible, like it's moving along a rail. It should stay parallel to the ground for most of the arc before you release the dart, and not stray vertically or horizontally.
I also personally like to drop all my weight on my back foot and do a sort of rapier-like lunge to put as much of my body into the throw as possible. It generates a lot of power without forcing the arm to do the work, which is not only less effective, but detracts from your accuracy.
I hope you don't mind the unsolicited advice :)
Wow.
I reckon I will never put those tips to use but I appreciate them nonetheless.
advice is never 'unsolicited' unless you start with 'you're doin it wrong', and TY honestly, 1st time i was no advice screwin around. 3rd try i put the dart between my big toe and through my shoe. then found out its illegal to use for hunting in usa, im a decent shot now and when im hunting i use a gun, kill quickly and eat what you kill. it's just trying to imagine how hard it is to use on anything smaller than a barn in a hunter life society. it has the worst learning curve
I've used a owners for many years. Taught by aboriginal people in northern Australia. You need to hold your arm higher and incorporate a movement of your body in your throw.a bit like a baseball pitcher's step. I've seen a wooden tipped spear penetrate a truck tire
Not bad advice. Learned about atlatls as a young teen and several friends and I got really into them. In fact we were responsible for getting atlatls put into our local conservation manuals for hunting.
Awesome tool, and used properly with a little bit of practice(didn’t take us long), you can get very accurate and do quite some serious work with them!
The tennis racket bug zapper. The ultimate training tool.
You definitely need to mind the dangerous end and treat it as a taser like weapon.
Ok but seriously are vpn’s worth it?
@Crusader Nikolai Maybe...
Shhhh! Don’t tell anyone that I told you this ok? It can help you download and watch things that are unavailable in your country
@@tsumikiayato1560 Sadly many content services are running a whack-a-mole fight against VPNs, banning IP numbers of VPN services...
@Michael Tempsch But then there will be more IPs, then even MORE
2020AD Skallagrim: ''The air is thick with these damn things!''
20,000BC Unknown Mammoth: ''Toot-toot!''
(The air is thick with these damn things)
Alright, the guy gained some weight over the years, no need to call him a mammoth xp
@@trisko777 He's thicc. He ain't fat. Just a lil bit of chonk. Hardly comparable to the modern landwhale.
@@BigPuddin I like how this is clearly a comment by a follower of this channel
@@trisko777 Damn skippy, my man.
Was gonna comment how delightful it was to see a guy who loves this stuff, daintily waving around a piece of modern technology.
The Axolotl: The Most Underrated Amphibian
They're just to cheerful to throw at things though.
@@shaggybaggums they are too cute not be shared long distance sovietwomble plushie
@@shaggybaggums Or to throw things at!
DID YOU KNOW
Axolotls can turn into salamanders if they drink a bottle of _SaLaMaNdEr GoO?_
Walter Magni I’m scared of axolotls
You live at my old house, that’s crazy, just searched up a video on the atlatl and here you come up at my old house, that’s crazy, hope ya like the deck on the back we put onto it
Alternative title: Skall Plays with His Shaft for 10 Minutes.
ahem. Foreshaft
Lol xD
@@johnlin3959 *Detachable* foreshaft.
And prefers a tighter fit, apparently...
@@donchrisangelo5699 Lol XD
Pre-metal weapons in general are super underrated.
they're made out of "rocks"
ba dum tsss
I once thought stone weapons weren't very sharp, untill I saw a video in which someone just cut a goat heart in half with a single slice.
Being a flintknapper, yes theyre very sharp. Pretty easy to make if you know how to do it correctly too, and they wont rust or require much care like steel does. Sharpening isn't so simple though, and if done incorrectly you can break the piece or severely compromise the edge. But when its sharpened correctly they are sharp as hell.
The best thing about them is, for how deadly they are, *how easy they are to make.*
:)
Obsidian can be made sharper than iron.
Have heard that stone arrows have better penetration ability than iron arrows.
The atlatl is one of the simplest and most effective weapons in the world. The Aztec civilization was the one that insisted the most on its improvement, I recently tried one with obsidian and the arrows go wherever you want after a few minutes. An arrow to the bare neck of a conqueror would be fatal.
to be fair, pretty much any edged weapon hitting anyone in the neck would be fatal lol
4:58 paleolithic huntsman summons the power of Thor to annihilate annoying bugs
More accurately, would they like to summon the power of a tiger? I heard they had animal spirituality.
@@walangchahangyelingden8252 thunderbird
@@dogf421 Hey, true.
The sling is a totally underrated tool also, quite tricky to master but with enough time you can become quite proficient with it, especially if you started from a young age. The best thing about it is how economical it is, in that the ammo can just be picked up from the ground for free. The blunt force power you can get from a simple stone moving at those speeds is extraordinary too.
It's one of my favorite weapons along with spears. Super super simple obvious stuff that fucking packs a real punch
the sling and sling staff are absolutely deadly in well trained hands. Its the time it takes to become a lethal force with them that keeps most from becoming skilled with them. But people had a lot more "time" for such things back in primitive days. Your not hunting, fishing or gathering... well its time for some fun with friends, bust out the slings and hit trees
Yeah, we totally underestimate the story of David and Goliath these days. It was basically a big, burly guy with a knife having a duel with a skinny dude with a gun by our standards.
I read somewhere that the Romans actually needed specialized tools to remove lead shot from sling hits. No idea if it's true
I just started playing A Plague Tale: Innocence, and it's basically the ultimate sling game. It's your primary weapon for attack, defence, or distraction, and they've done a really good job of making it work in a realistic fashion, the animation is legit. There's clearly been some actual research into them.
Slings are seriously underrepresented in medieval and classical themed media generally, great to see the tool has been done justice here.
One of my dad's buddies has one of these. He let me use it when I was around 12. Ended up piercing the top of his house with it. He didn't even get mad, he just laughed it off while I awkwardly put it down. :D
Well, he let a child use it so its pretty much his own fault ;)
Yeah I don't think I'd feel like I have the right to be mad if I was him.
It's a weapon that can kill some one or a mammoth
sounds like an awesome dude.
@@o0xTHEcoPlayerx0o
Oh, he was, man. He was.
In third grade, my grade school had a two week long "camp"; my favorite part of it was this guy dressed as a mountain man who showed us fun things such as "how to make fire with flint and steel" and "here's an atlatl made of a femur".
The 'detachable head' was made in response to the fact that if they tossed around a lot of spears.. they would know that some would hit a target and get stuck in it (positive) and some of course would miss.
It is easy to test this: Shoot a low power bow at a brick wall or something.. The arrow will hit then pop/bounce right back out.. or a spear etc..Replace the brick wall with an animal and now you have something where the tip sticks inside the animal and the shaft pops back out for you.
So why carry 10 full spears when you can carry 2 spears with 10 detachable heads.
Ideally you and your buddies sneak up on a bison, toss 3 spears at it.. each spear point sticking into the animal while the shafts just popped back out. You run up, pick up the spears.. jam another tip on it.. and toss another 'new' spear.
Essentially a semi-auto spear. They have found pouches filled with what they assumed at first were daggers of some kind.. but why did he have 5 of them? Was he a cave-to-cave spear point seller? Who knows! But the theory is sound.
Remember back then.. if you went hunting and lost or broke your spear.. you and your families could starve to death.
Carry one heavy spear, but with a pouch full of spear tips.
More like a breechloading spear
i mean...considering how relatively easy they are to make, starving to death was unlikely just from losing a spear. at worst you're hungry for a bit while you make a new one (although considering...well, human, i'd imagine that even this they had teh ability to mitigate)
dying because you lacked a defensive weapon? much more likely.
It was also used in battle. When you throw a weapon at an enemy you don't want them to be able to throw them back. So if you make a spear with a tip that breaks off when it hits it cant be thrown back at you. Ancient Romans had Javelins which when thrown the thin tips would bend causing them to get stuck in enemies armor making them impossible to be removed and thrown back.
Spears really weren't as an important part of hunting as you seem to think. There's a method of hunting where people just chase an animal to exhaustion. Spears were only required for putting a hyperventilating animal to sleep.
The bigger the animal the the easier to hunt this way. Remember back then megafauna was everywhere.
Loosing or breaking a spear is pretty much no big deal.
Jackvos depends on the animal and the weather. I doubt you could overheat an animal by chasing it down in winter in Europe or north Asia. This also would work with very large animals like mammoths. The chasing the animal until it overheats tactic is great on antelope or horse sized animals in our native habitat, or in hot places in general, where sweating gives us the advantage. However spears were necessary to put some distance between you and really bid animals. This wouldn’t mean you would starve to death by losing one, but they were still very important
The simple:effective ratio of this weapon is off the charts
Right? Have two people race to complete a bow and an atlatl and see who makes a functional weapon first. The atlatl may take a little longer to use accurately though.
Do a fly swatter weapon review!!!! Please we already saw the sneak peak. Lol jk ok on a serious note can you review the aztec obsidian weapons?
@@michaelfranciotti3900 Interestingly enough, most cultures that built versions of the atlatl phased them out in favor of bows, or sideline them for special tasks. (yes, there are some notable exceptions to that) a simple bow doesn't take too much more time to build and is a LOT more forgiving in terms of both accuracy and materials needed. Every throwing dart needs to be made with as close to identical mass, center of gravity, and head shape as possible for a given person. variations make relatively large changes in the dart's accuracy and range. It also requires more "choice" materials to make effectively. The spearheads are made from larger stones, the shafts need to be as straight and uniform as possible. Arrows can be made from much smaller, easier to source, and inferior materials without nearly as much impact on the weapon's overall performance. Additionally, arrows can be made much faster than darts can, and you can carry more of them with much greater ease. add in the fact that it's a LOT easier to hit a target with a bow than a spear.
@@olinseats4003 yes, bows are more efficient in a lot of ways, but I still stand by my statement that an atlatl would be easier to make. I know darts need a certain amount of flex to work right, but I've watched guys make em real quick and easy out in the field in less than a day. My dad once made a bow with materials from the hardware store and detailed instructions. Took him a little over a month. It was super accurate for the first 7 shots, and then it broke.
To be honest i love pre iron-age weaponry and armours. stone mace heads and some wooden clubs have awesome designs and what made me get interested in that period warfare were your previous videos on them. I would love to watch another video about that Skall
Are you including the Bronze Age?
@@ezrafaulk3076 Yes, a lot of uses of bronze and the designs are very diferent from mild steel and even iron, so its very interesting to see how different armor and swords were
@@aenaros6845 VERY true; if it interests you, the Bronze Age actually had a sling called the Kestros, that was designed specifically to sling DARTS, much like the Atlatl. Why not check it out?
@@ezrafaulk3076 The kestros is an Iron-age invention and dates to ~180-140 BC, roughly around the time of the Third Macedonian War between Macedon and Rome.
@@ezrafaulk3076 Oh thanks, will do for sure. I had no idea how it was called.
Being an Aussie, I seen the thumbnail and instantly thought woomera.
And a bit of trivia: In Jean Auel's, Earth's Children series of stone age history novels. The protagonists, Ayla and Jondalar are credited as inventing the spear thrower
As kids in the UK we had something called a "Dutch Arrow" Based on the same principal but a smaller, lighter projectile thrown with the aid of a string. With a little practice you could throw one the length of a football field
I've seen a video of that. I do wonder how accurate and effective it was though.
@@ShadeSlayer1911 they're pretty accurate with some practice; me and my brother would stand facing one another on opposite sides of the road out front of our house and play a game similar to curby, only with flying sticks of cattail or bamboo trellis we'd repurposed along with the laces out of our trainers, could fairly proficiently land them beside one another on the grass verge. We'd often ignore traffic and use car's like a badminton net of sorts, till one day when my bro tried to throw one over a lorry and it stuck in the canvas side, it clipped a lamp post a bit further down the street- the driver got out and chased us, which was fun, lol. Obviously ours were only tipped with a pointed cut, not with actual heads and we were too small to get more distance than maybe 40 feet, but a teenager with "real" Dutch arrows can be impressive.
"portable educational"material sure let's go with that!
ruste shackleferd indeed
Fore Shaft 😜
@@justanotherbrickinthewall2843 Detachable! ÒwÓ
You can't spell Portal Educational material without P O R N
Porntable education
Atlatl stores energy by in the dart through the arc of the throw by flexing the dart, greatly increasing the force at release, good point. Huron spear throwers improved on this with a thong spiral wrapped around the dart, imparting a spin for greater accuracy and stiffening the dart to allow it to store more energy. Decorated with a small 'stone bird' at the end of the thong sometimes found by archaeologists, this innovation is well worth experimenting with for modern throwers.
Do you have an image or a link,i cannot seem to find it.
@@junichiroyamashita It's been some time since I last discussed this with an archaeologist who showed me some related finds, but www.donsmaps.com/atlatl.html turned up with some related images from slightly different origins, not specific to the thong or stone bird but of carved stones (misidentified as 'charms') on the atlatl that serve the same purpose. In particular, the image from Sturtevant (1978) shows the right apparatus optionally used, without a thong attached to the anchor stone. We don't know for sure how often thong spinning was used, maybe only for long range throws or the like.
@@graithtools8215 are you saying that the thong used had a similar function to the amentum? Now i really want to see what a modernized version could do.
You say it should have been attached to the anchor stone ,the bigger one in the middle?
@@junichiroyamashita So the archaeologist speculated. As it was an informal discussion, and years ago, I don't have a citation or know whether this was well-founded in relics or extant practice or just theory, but it seemed reasonable. There are spear throwers, slings and variants with similar features worldwide just as the Greeks and Celts used the amentum; very likely some combination would have been employed by some cultures.
That said, stone attachments to atlatl seem to have had multiple functions and arrangements: posts to elevate the dart, as weights to tune the thrower, potentially as decorations or charms, as anchors, stops or indices.
With a relatively inflexible javelin, the energy storing aspect would be almost entirely in converting between rotational and linear forces and the elasticity of the amentum. With the more flexible dart and greater energy from the leverage of the atlatl, I think it reasonable to expect some element of energy storage and release would also come from the additional stiffening due the wrapping of thong around projectile.
And yes, that seemed to be what the Huron bird stone was used for, as an anchor at around the midpoint of the throwing stick for the amentum/thong, according to the one researcher showing me her conclusions.
It seems like the reason it took so long for the bow to supplant the atlatl, was that the atlatl design was really, really optimized with innovations like these.
The weight tolerances on found atlatl dart heads are also apparently really high - and it can't be because an atlatl doesn't work with a few grams heavier or lighter dart heads, since obviously they do. It must have been because they had really optimized the heck out of it. Probably no one alive today can throw it as efficiently as a stone age man.
A friend of my family in Aztec, NM taught my dad and I hoe to make them back in the early 80’s. We became quite proficient. His NM license plate was “ATLATL”. They even experimented with putting a small amount of lead in the “head” of the thrower. They were awesome.
Great video! Some years ago I bought an atlatl and fiberglass darts from Tate Industries, and I found the atlatl gave twice the distance compared to hand thrown and the darts penetrated twice the depth into the ground compared to hand thrown. The power is amazing. Some Indians in South America still use the atlatl for spear fishing. It takes a lot of practice but a skilled thrower could take large game easily.
I Built one when I was a child (10 years old I think, not sure though). I was practicing in the garden with plastic chair as target about 15m meter away.
I used a wood broom stick with some metal wire around the tip to add weight).
First shot, without spear thrower, barely hit the target and tip the chair over. I was happy about my accuracy.
2nd shot (well, 2nd one who hitted the target, don't remember how many time I tried) with the spear thrower. Hit the chair were I was aiming, with a lot more strengh. End result... There was on chair less, the stick just pierced the chair at the junction between the back and the sit, splitting the back in two. The whole spear passed through.
My reaction : "wow, cool!"
Let's just say my parents reaction was a bit different.
My friends and I invented a variation out of bamboo that would throw a rock so fast it would hum. After that we won every rock fight.
It would be intresting to try atlatl as an fairly familiar spear thrower.
@@blondknight99 oh damn!!
So it didn't sit well with them?
*Try paiting the dart red so you won't lose It when practicing*
Big brain move is glittering tassles.
Florcent colour in night ? Search with a UV lihht
@@conlinbryant5037 hahahaha lol, I like the idea. Abit flamboyant, but would do the trick
Conlin Bryant even bigger brain move would be to attach the “sparrow” with a cord to your wrist for faster retrieving.
@@mistakenotou7681 this gives me Metroid vibes
This is really entertaining to watch. My first atlatl was one I built when I was in college. I got some friends together between classes and went to an empty field and while they kept a lookout for anybody passing by and getting too curious, I took an inaugural throw with a takedown dart I'd built and got a 77 yard throw!
I love the atlatl.
Mostly because it's used by my favorite character in John Flanagan's series Rangers Apprentice: Brotherband
Ah yes, I see you're a man of culture as well
Lydia
Ah yes a man of culture.
yes, that's why i'm here
@심William A.C. Swift Lydia i think
Not to mention if the fighting comes to close range you can easily use it as a club. No doubt an effective stone age weapon!
He demonstrated that in his ranged weapons in melee video.
@@JilutheFang Just grab a forshaft for a pointy infighting weapon.
Well I will say that most atlatls I’ve seen and the one I own are not near as thick as that one
Some atlatls show signs that they were designed to also serve as a club or very short spear, but most designs we are aware of do not duggest that they were intended for that purpose.
Likely they carried a club or axe with them as well for both finishing wounded animals and also defense in melee.
Almost as effective as the Pommel Throw.
Fanstastic Video Skall, nice throwing ,)) !!! Cheers
Try to make trickshot with it
This tool is awesom. Glad you did a video on it. The thing got me interested after the documentary and now i see it in action
The Atlatl is very cool. There's even a hunting season in Missouri and some other states where you can use them.
My siblings and I used to jab crab apples on the ends of sticks and whip them at each other. It's extremely effective over long distances, stings like hell lol
holy shit lol... I thought my friends and I were the only ones stupid enough to do that
I remember playing with these while my dad was taking a break from the mammoth hunting, who else did that? #only paleolitic kids will remember
Lol you assume that estern Europe dont exist or some shit?
Fk paleolitics we in Podlasie have hunted with a bows and cops arrived and pulled out a foken crossbow.
@@michagruzewski5592 Hey, as long as they don't spring the sling on you it's all good. Eastern European cops are deadly accurate with those things.
@@buriedalive3192 indeed they are accurate with that sheet. I still have the scars.
@@michagruzewski5592 forget Eastern Europe, Australia was still using theses things not that long ago.
@@asaenvolk u clearly havent heared about Podlasie.
It's like Australia except instead of dangerous wildlife they are naked drunkasses with Fauchons running around cutting people open.
We gotta have ranged weapon going to foken shop or we die.
Skall, I love that you keep those bloopers at the end, it adds up for great extra content. Well done on the obsidian head, it would most definitely do the trick despite it not being absolutely perfect. Do not undermine your own work and don’t be so harsh on yourself, most of us couldn’t do it anyway, myself included ;) keep up the good work Skall
I learned to make primitive atlatls and darts a few years ago and was impressed with the power you can get out of one.
If I remember correctly, the atlatl was one of the few weapons the Aztecs had that actually could get through some of the Spanish Conquistador's armor and was supposedly responsible for many of the kills they got against them.
I doubt it. Flint would break against steel. It’s like when people say that Aztec slingers could snap the conquistadors’ swords in two. Could you get a kill if you hit the unarmored parts? Absolutely. But steel wins.
@@FoundWanting970 To my understanding the tips of the small throwing spears/darts used with the atlatl were obsidian; while this is also brittle it's extremely sharp and if you keep the point/piece small it's less likely to shatter. If I recall correctly the conquistadors primarily wore steel helmets/breastplates with gamebeson covering most of their body. Perhaps the accounts of the atlatl penetrating armor was in reference to the gambeson? Obsidian tips would make easy work of gambeson due to the sharpness.
The Voracity Maybe. Definitely not steel because sharpness isn’t effective against steel. Penetration is.
N oviedo It was. That doesn’t mean that it could break and pierce high quality steel armor. Flint never wins against metal. I’m sorry. It just doesn’t. But that doesn’t mean the Aztecs could’t kill them. They just had to avoid hitting the armor.
You are very correct!
How has someone already disliked this. It’s physically impossible for them to have watched the video fully.
The famed hater, haha
Same could be said for the 171 people that liked it, yet you choose to comment on the 1 dislike.
Haters gonna hate.
It was probably the sponsorship.
Mayer 🙄
You know how regular guys are lucky to kick a ball half way across the field and pros can easily serve it the whole way? Imagine a pro atlatl thrower
Thank you so much for your presentation. I watched two presentations be for yours. Yours was the best and your experimentation and and reporting of it was well done.
Skall looka pretty good for a 38 year old, I thought he was in his 20's.
Omg, hes 38??? Damn he aged like some fine wine!
The guy is eight years older than me, but I look older than he does. Life isn't fair.
The detachable point will also make both parts of the dart less likely to break when the prey animal runs through brush after being hit.
Yes, I agree. A long shaft would likely break off if the prey ran off through brush. This is like how lizards have break off points in their tail, so it separates cleanly.
It would make transport easier and safer as well. Put the tips in a satchel and you're less likely to bang the brittle tips against a tree or accidentally stab someone in your hunting party.
Honestly I would just assume they were found with detachable points as broken ones were repaired. Maybe some found them to be better and intentionally used them, but it doesn't seem to have enough of a clear advantage for many groups of individuals to take the time to do.
@@jamessilly6837 I disagree, there are enough advantages to be worth making. Also, consider how much free time these people had. Could easily spend a couple hours every day making improvements to vital gear. It's also a way of showing off. Not much different from buying a fancy car or the newest phone. We're not much different from our ancestors so it stands to reason they'd also like fancy objects with extra features.
@@overlorddante
Especially considering that Obsidian blades tend to be sharper than modern scalpels. You can injure yourself or others pretty damn easily with them.
Lmao, the last minute killed me, I clearly haven't watched enough of your videos but I haven't heard you go off like that before, was hilarious 😂
Thanks for the video,
You look to have lot of fun to do it!
Last time I was this early humankind was still hunting gazelles with atlatls...
*oh wait*
I’ve wanted to see an atlatl being reviewed ever since i read about it in a high medieval style half fantasy sort of book. Interestingly though the darts used then were metre long steel darts rather than head height wooden darts
What book?
Isaiah White it’s a series called Brotherband by John Flanagan. They’re a bit young but still a good read. The atlatl only comes in book 2 though. There’s also another series in the same universe called Rangers Apprentice
id suppose the idea for a shorter heavier dart would be like a arrow to crossbow bolt analogue
Interesting, you can check for soliferrum; it was a pre-roman weapon of the Iberi, in today Spain.
@@matthewdixon7903 I read the first maybe 5 Ranger's Apprentice books in elementary/middle school, good books.
Recently found out about your channel and have been binging. Good stuff. Keep up the good work my man. Us medieval history nerds appreciate very much.
I remember being taught about this weapon in school. Stone Age was a large part of my history teaching growing up.
I always assumed that these kinds of weapons were thrown fairly flat in order to keep the power instead of distance.
From experience, that's probably closer to how they were actually used in most hunting situations. A more direct throw is faster and requires a lot less movement. That means the animal has less chance to see you and react, which increases the probability that you'll make a clean kill.
For hunting it makes sense, especially given what is shown in surviving illustrations. The increased power across shorter distances would be far more useful than accuracy and range for longer throws.
As a weapon of war, however, the increqsed throwing distance could be a vital advantage.
Yes I was thinking more for hunting, especially because I thought this would be used against fairly large targets. In war I'm not sure perhaps like a pilum but seems like a lot of effort for that.
I think it would depend more on context and skill of the thrower. You can't always guarantee your range nor can everyone be proficient at all ranges.
There are videos of people hunting today with modern iterations of this weapon. The mesoamerican art rapresent it with a much shorter and, probably, thicker shaft.
Wow, detachable fore shafts? Stone Age mega brain right there
The ancient Israelites regularly practiced... foreshaft detachment.
Super big brain.
Grug makes many points, grug makes one dart, grug changes food, grug changes point
We haven't actually become much smarter these past thousands of years
@@512TheWolf512 being smart doesnt mean being prudent or wise
I have always liked the atlatl. Learned bout it when I was a scout. One of our leaders brought one when we were camping and showed us how to use it. same trip we made hand made arrows where we made the tips from stone we had to break to shape with other stones
I remember learning about that thing when I was a little kid, it was used in a book series I read, the Redwall novels. I was always wanting to see one in action, great video.
I know exactly which one too! The guy makes a bet with one of the bigger animals that he can throw a javelin farther, then makes an Atlatl to beat them easily. That was the first time I ever heard of them and I thought it was ingenious
@@Kilo6Charlie ohh man you just opened a floodgate of memory, you're totally right. I didn't have a specific memory of where it was used until you said that. I have to re-read Redwall now...
@@TheExplosiveGuy I love the book series, and own nearly every book. I even have run a Redwall TTRPG a few times.
As I recall the specific use I mentioned was in Martin the Warrior. There's only like. 2 books where they besiege a place far away from Redwall and Salmandastron and I wanna say it's the Martin book that contains this scene since I don't recall the other book
Yeah, the east coast gets buggy. Just wait till summer hits! Then you’ll be covered in mosquito bites!
Build bat boxes. Suckers eat thousands a night
@Level Nine Drow Changes the surface tension of the water so they can't swim on top methinks.
I just moved here from the west coast- I thought the mosquitoes were bad there. This is even worse.
Maybe the good ol' improvised flamethrower could help? Deodorant + lighter. We used to kill bugs during spring back in my highschool this way.
@@DeAthWaGer Hard to find bats where he lives, a fungus wiped out almost the entire population a few years ago. It's *very* slowly recovering but they're hard to find.
I remember when we were little my Dad taught my sister and I to make minnie atlatls that we used to chuck sticks at targets and occasionally each other. I didn't realize they were an actual weapon until now so this was really cool to watch
Your knapping is beautiful. I had a chance to use an atl-atl, although the dart was plastic. I was inaccurate but it was amazing how easy it was to throw far. The movement of the dart in flight is very similar to what an arrow does. Thank you for the video.
Your videos are just what I need to get that daily medieval fill that I need lol keep em coming as long as possible
Paleolithic Green Arrow:
"Nuke tipped atlatl dart, F YEAH!"
"Always the Blackfly no matter where you go. I'll die with the Blackfly picking my bones in North Ontar-I-O. In North Ontar-i-o!"
He's actually in Nova Scotia, but Yep, black flies and no-see-ums. (Good Canadian folk song too.)
Are blackfly what we call horsefly in the states.
Nvm just looked them up. We don't get them to my knowledge in Erie county NY.
@@DaveDahuh You would know if ya did.
More upvotes here!
I love the bloopers man lol. Great vid!
Ooh I got to try one of these before! It’s crazy how much further and harder you can throw the spear with the atlatl!
I had the oportunity to try the Atlatl once at Missión San Luis at Tallahassee with an instructor. They recomended starting with the hand over the shoulder and extend as straight as possible. To add power one could take a step with whichever foot was on the side of the throwing hand to avoid giving it a spin.
"Most underrated stone age tools"
Estonians: still used that while they already had swords in 1100s and even 1200s
I heard that in Estonia the Yeotwingian used Swordstaves,are they the same of the nordic Svardstaf?
@@junichiroyamashita I don't know that sorry
did they use them against the teutonic knights? heard was it estonia or lithuania was the last part of europe to be converted to christianity?
@@MusMasi Estonians were the last ones, also Estonians were the last vikings of Europe. they did use them but not really often, as they started adapting crossbows from the Knights, Estonians lost the war because Sweden and Denmark joined too, and all of the Latvian tribes
@@edusc6893 thanks for the info man, and no the estonians where not the last european vikings. Europeans continued raiding and pillaging long after the so called viking era faded away :p.
when you started with the vpn sponsor I thought "I don't care, I already have one" but when you reached the Surfshark part I was like "wait a minute, that is the one I have!". Glad they are sponsoring you. I have been using them for the last 10 days and is working pretty well so far, even if I live in a part of the world (Egypt) that is no so friendly to this type of services (I need a vpn not only for privacy but also just to make my internet work "normally")
Seems like an accurate assessment so far. Looking forward to updates.
This would make an interesting difference on Olympic sports
Extremely cheap tickets for the downrange seats.
@@k1ll3rbunny That reminds me of that spanish athlete that threw the javelins spinning and consistently broke the world record. It was then forbidden because it was potentially dangerous for the audience if the thrower wasnt fully trained with the technique
@@Changdao1644 Also there was Finnish Pitkämäki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salim_Sdiri#Rome_javelin_accident
We're going to need a bigger stadium.
I wonder if they have javelin throwing with the atlatl in the World Nomad Games.
Ok just got to say it; you're looking like a young Saruman having a relaxed day at home.
I grew up building bows and atlatls, taught by my uncle who was into anthropology. Due to the power I could get behind atlatl darts compared to bows I built I always thought it was an extremely underrepresented item, both in more recent history(figured it would be more deadly than bows on a medieval battlefield) and in fantasy. But now I know the reasons for both.
-It's not represented in fantasy because it has a weird name and isn't well-recognized.
-It's not represented in history for a variety of reasons past being alien technology to medieval europe. For one thing you basically need the physique of an olympic athlete to properly use it. It also requires significantly more training than something like a crossbow, which has similar power. Then the darts are much more resource intensive than things like arrows and bolts. At the end of the day it is an inferior weapon for most medieval applications, even if a steel tipped atlatl dart could potentially do damage to an armored foe(needs some proper testing).
Thanks for more stone age content! I took these weapons for granted for too long! Your channel and a few other sources of information have been showing me the error of my assumptions. The Stone Age was Metal before people had metal :P
With how much these wiggle when you throw them, for some reason it made me imagine Skall yeeting a whole salmon at someone.
it is the unscrewable spear pommel, for ending one rightly
Glad you referenced the Aboriginal woomera
Man, you are getting out of shape! (and you are not alone in it) Really interesting video ;) Pre-iron age stuff is super interesting.
I know of such speer throwers made from thigh bones of deers. Very interesting
Elk antlers were also used where available.
I made a few myself. Also on my channel. They are so fun, but it takes a lot of time to get precise and consistent. Longest throw for me was about 90 meters with a 3-piece take-down bamboo dart.
Have you ever read the Earth's Children books? The characters invent them in the fictional prehistoric past.
I made one of these when I was younger. They are super easy to make and fun to use!
Amazing,I did a report on the Atyle in in grade school (highly underrated tool)😃👍
Glad to see you mention the woomera (WOOM-era, not woo-MER-a), not enough love is given to this unique version of the spear-thrower (that can also be used as a water dish, if you don't have anything else)
I'd put the pronunciation as more Woom Ma Ra, but that's possibly a regional thing.
@@Pyropardus I've always heard it as Woom-er-a with the er pronounced as in "her" or Woom-A-Ra.
@@JohnJ469 I think it has more to do with the Australian Accent, and the "anglicized" Aboriginal language, than anything else. Although I would definetly say that these pronunciations are closer to "correct" than Skall's.
Australian Aboriginal technologies and culture in general do not get enough "love" or recognition period. Which is a shame, because they are quite unique in many aspects, and it CANNOT be said that they have received any influence from European or Asian backgrounds. (although there is some speculation that there "may" have been contact, many ten's of thousands of years ago between Australia, and South America. )
@@lrg162 Definitely under rated. They came here in the last years of the Megafuana. 10 metre long Megalania and all they had were fire hardened pointed sticks. There was the Marsupial Lion, nastier than the African Lion and a carnivorous Kangaroo.
It's a wonder they survived at all. There may have contacts but I doubt there was much. Not putting them down but the land was very poor, their technology primitive and a Hunter/Gatherer society doesn't have any excess for trade. No real impetus for anyone else to come here.
I did read the Chinese travelled the East Coast in the 1400s (?) but they went home and didn't return as the locals had nothing to trade. We even have a story of an Egyptian expedition.
It's hard to tell as many in the History and Archaeological fields suffer from what I call "Cook's Blindness": Nothing happened before Cook arrived.
@@JohnJ469 Agreed, for many years, and even now, very little real research is done into pre-cook Australia. Though I don't believe Australian Aboriginals were in any way sea-fearers, some unusual anthropological dilemma's are that physiologically they resemble no known "race" and also that there is a very small, almost extinct tribe in South America that bears a striking resemblance to Australian Aboriginals. Common Ancestor? Also, we know that Polynesian people were sea-fears, yet they only went as far as New Zealand?
Huh. I'd never heard of the fore-shaft feature before. I always find it fascinating to learn about little things that ancient people did which demonstrated their cleverness.
made many shafts (darts) from long bamboo . It is hollow and I can carve a fore shaft to fit nicely. I try many tips made from glass, alum., steel, stone, hard wood, antler, bone, fiberglass. The list is what you can find lying about ! Just secure them in a wooden tip with sinew (real or artif. ) and an ancient glue of pine sap, beeswax , charcoal and some sawdust. Just like the old boys did it . Just don't mix it up in your wifes best pot. It won't clean out very well and you will be sleeping outside of the cave that night !!!
Since I've read about it I love it. Such a nice early concept and tool.
I've seen an aboriginal throw an 8ft spear about 200 meters using a woomera, very impressed i was , they had a circle target marked on the ground and were very accurate not all went in but most were within a couple of feet. The circle was only 10ft across.
Super interesting. I can imagine a skilled hunter being a crackshot with such little investment or risk to the user.
Oh wow, the old intro.
He's been using a LOT of his old intros lately. I wonder why?
I have always wanted to make one of these. Never got around to it though but it is my favorite simple hunting tool
Really cool concept. I appreciate it.
"Primitive" weapons anything but that when one looks at the science behind them. Also there were atlatls that were weighted and flexed adding more 'oomph' (technical term lol) to the cast.
primitive is a perfectly precise and accurate description for all stone age tools/weapons.
what you mean to say is that 'ineffective' or 'simple' are inaccurate terms. which you'd have an argument for. but...well, by definition they are primitive.
Primitive doesn't mean bad or without thought/consideration; it just means "near to the beginning"; if you want to, you can even call the bombs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki "primitive nuclear explosives"; that wouldn't, of course, mean that no or little to none science and study went behind them; just that they were close to the first designs. Same applies here; the Atlatl is a primitive projectile technology, not because it sucks but just because it was a very early design in the history of human weaponry.
100% primitive but still affective as hell not as affective as a gun though which makes it primitive
Hey Skall, what’s the effectiveness of using the atlatl in melee? The dart seems too thin to be used as a spear for a long period of time, but I feel like the launcher could be used as a makeshift club as soon as you need to reload but can’t.
I wonder if the darts can be tweaked to be big as javelin or made of metal,kinda like a soliferrum
Look at his ranged weapons in melee video.
The "launcher" is the atlatl. Most prehistoric atlatl's would have a stone affixed to it as a counter weight which, if you're desperate, could probably be used as a club in a pinch.
Atlatl is pretty effective in Melee, but its not quite enough to beat Fox 🦊
I found this very interesting, thank you for sharing
Brought back memories of when I did a project on this particular tool in 6th grade, when we were studying privative civilizations. Constructed a replica with my step dad and everything.
Phrase of the day: Bug repellant. Glad you finally got around to the atlatl, it's a fascinating and effective weapon. There was a "reality" show several years ago wherein a group of people lived a "paleolithic" lifestyle, creating clothing, weapons, shelter and gathering/hunting food for several weeks. One of the men made an atlatl and actually took down a caribou with one shot.
I’ve seldom clicked a video this fast.
Except when you're on the.... other site.
Love the new intro, feels refreshing!
impressive how effective this simple and small tool is
I absolutely love the atlatl. After I had the chance to meet a former atlatl competition thrower, I got into atlatl hunting here in Ohio. I usually hunt wild pig and it is such a blast. Ive even made some of my own.
I'm sure the wild pigs think it's a blast too. What animal doesn't enjoy being murdered for fun?
7:30 As a Finn I first thought you were talking about some Spanish person, so yes, butchered.
Il Ca Continajo.
Can't wait to see what you can do with some practice. This was a fun educational video.
Beautiful job on the obsidian.