The possible employment of the boomerang in Europe has been made the subject of occasional speculation amongst antiquarian writers. Having been used in Egypt, and perhaps in Assyria, there is no good reason for doubting that it may have spread from thence to the north-west. In a learned paper on the subject in the Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy, vol. xix (1843), § ‘Literature,’ p. 22, Pl. i, ii, Mr. Samuel Ferguson endeavours to prove that the ‘cateia’ mentioned by classical authors was the boomerang. He quotes several passages, and amongst them one from Virgil (Aeneid vii. 741), in which mention is made of a people accustomed to whirl the ‘cateia’ after the Teutonic manner. In the Punica of Silius (iii. 327), one of the Libyan tribes which accompanied Hannibal to Italy is described as being armed with a bent or crooked ‘cateia’. Isidore, Bishop of Seville, a writer of the end of the sixth and beginning of the seventh century, described the ‘cateia’ as ‘a species of bat, which, when thrown, flies not far, by reason of its weight, but where it strikes, it breaks through with extreme impetus, and if it be thrown with a skilful hand, it returns back again to him who dismissed it’ (Origines, xviii. 7. 7).
Strabo also (pp. 196-7) describes the Belgae of his time, as using ‘a wooden weapon of the shape of a grosphus, which they throw out of hand ... which flies farther than an arrow, and is chiefly used in the pursuit of game’.
General Conclusions relative to the Boomerang.
Those who desire further information relative to its supposed use in Europe, cannot do better than refer to the paper from which I have quoted. Meanwhile, enough has been said to show:—(1) that the boomerang was used in many different countries at a very early period, and in a very primitive condition of culture, and that it was everywhere employed chiefly in the pursuit of game; (2) that it was everywhere constructed of wood, before it was copied in metal; (3) that in Australia it originated as a variety of the almond- or leaf-shaped sword, and was suggested by the natural curvature of the material out of which it was formed; (4) that the subsequent improvements by which its return flight was ensured, arose from a practical selection of suitable varieties, and was not the result of design, and (5) that the form of the boomerang passes by minute gradations into at least three other classes of weapons in common use by the same people, and may therefore be regarded as a branch variety of an original normal type of implement, used by the most primitive races as a general tool or weapon.
Development of the Club.
Amongst other implements used for war, the form of which appears to be derived from the same common source as those already described, may be included the Australian club, and the wamera or throwing stick. I have arranged in Plate XVI, diagram 8, figs. 130 to 137, a series of Australian clubs, showing a transition from the plain stick, of equal size throughout, to one having a nearly round knob at one end. Nearly similar forms to some of these, from Africa, figs. 138 to 140, are also represented on the same diagram.
Contrivances for Throwing the Spear.
Amongst the Australian ‘wameras’, there are so many varieties, that it is next to impossible to speculate upon the priority of any particular form, unless the plain stick, with a projecting peg at one end, may be regarded as certainly the simplest, and therefore the earlier form. The ‘wamera’ is held in the right hand, and the projecting peg at the end is fitted into a cavity at the end of the spear, which latter is held in the left hand, in the required direction, until just before the moment of throwing. The spear is then impelled to its destination by the wamera, which gives great additional impetus to the arm. Fig. 147 is a wamera from Nicol Bay, of exactly the same general outline as the sword already figured from that locality, figs. 61 and 62, except that one of the faces at the end of which the peg is fastened, is concave, and the other convex; this specimen is in the Christy Collection. The wamera assumes a great variety of forms; some, as for example fig. 142, resemble on a small scale the New Zealand paddle, the broad end being held in the hand, and the peg inserted in the small end; others, broad and flat, figs. 148 to 150, bulge out in the middle by successive gradations, until they approach the form of a shield. No reasonable cause that I am aware of, can be assigned for these different forms; beyond caprice, and the action of the law of incessant variation, which is constant in its operation amongst all the works of the aborigines.
The wamera is found on the north-west[166] and south-west[167] coasts of Australia, and Major Mitchell describes it in the east and central parts of the continent.[168]