FIG. 74.—Axe of the Banyai (Matabeleland), employed in
hunting elephants; special hafting, partly by means of bands.
(After Wood.)
The first of these methods did not produce very brilliant results. The Zandeh peoples and their congeners of Central Africa considerably modified the knife to make use of it as a weapon to throw with the hand (trumbache); the Franks had the missile battle-axe called “francisque,” and the Romans javelins of all sorts. But the use of these weapons was very restricted in all times. Clubs are still used as missile-weapons either by reducing their size (the kerri-kerri of the Bantu Negroes) or by changing their form (the boomerang of the Australians). The boomerang (Fig. [75]) is a wooden blade, the form of which varies from a very gentle curve to that of a square; its surface is always slightly curved. Thrown into the air, certain kinds of boomerang have a secondary movement of gyration and return to the foot of the thrower, as a hoop returns to the child when he throws it before him, having given it first a rotatory motion. Similar weapons (singa) exist among the Khonds of Orissa (India); they existed also in ancient Egypt, and have served perhaps as models for the “trumbaches” of the Zandeh of the present day. Let us add to the boomerang the “bolas” of the Patagonians (which must not be confounded with the lasso) and the balls of bone united by little cords which the Eskimo use for killing birds, and we shall have exhausted the list of weapons thrown directly by the hand, which, moreover, are not very effective. The true improvements in missile-weapons have only been attained by the second solution of the problem—that is to say, by increasing the power of propulsion by means of special apparatus.
FIG. 75.—Missile arms of the Australians: a, b, boomerangs;
c, transverse section of a boomerang; f, Lil-lil, a kind of boomerang,
with geographical map representing the environs of Broken River;
d, the same seen sideways.
(After Br. Smyth.)
The contrivances for hurling missiles may be divided into three categories, according to the three forces which set them in motion: direct application of the muscular force of man, elasticity of certain solid bodies, and lastly, the pressure of gases. Of the first of these forces but little use is made. The amentum of classic antiquity had only a restricted use. The throwing-stick,[303] or stick provided with a notch which serves to increase the force of the impulse given by the arm to a javelin, is only used in some very circumscribed regions of the globe, especially on the borders of the Pacific Ocean, in Australia, where it bears the name of Woomera, in Melanesia (Fig. [76]), in the north-west of America, among the Eskimo and Chukchis. It was also known in pre-Columban times in Mexico and Peru, whence, perhaps, it passed into Brazil. Another similar weapon, the sling, in former times much used by Semitic peoples, and still surviving as a common toy of our children, is scarcely used as a weapon of any importance, except by some Polynesian or American tribes (Hupa Indians, Araucans, Fuegians).
Missile weapons which make use of the pressure of gases are very little known among uncivilised peoples. We can only mention the blow-tube, the Sarbacan, or more correctly speaking the Zarabatana, of the South American Indians, and its homologue the Sumpitan of the Malays, in common use among the Indonesians of the Asiatic Archipelago and Indo-China.
FIG. 76.—Throwing-stick of the Papuans of German New Guinea,
and the manner of using it in order to hurl a javelin;
below, longitudinal section of a throwing-stick.
(Partly after Von Luschan.)