Glad to see a post from you. Always love your "primitive weapons" and the general way all of your presentations are made. Thank you. 70 years ago when I was in high school I was a class mate with a missionary kid who was raised in Kenya and who was really good with the atlatl as well as the sling. He was about 17 and had lived in Africa until he was about 15. He started using them when he was about 5 or 6, and while playing with the local kids. He said that they ate the game they harvested and for many families it was an important food supplement. He and a good friend were taught by his friend's grandfather,and he said that in his time, about 149 years ago now, it was their main hunting weapon. Used spear, he had those too, as defense from dangerous game. Said sling worked best for birds, but atlatl was the game getter for small deer, etc. His darts were solid of some light weight tropical wood and it looked like feathered with what ever was handy. They were about 4 feet long and the stick used to throw them was about 3 feet long as I remember. Points were cut out of heavy sheet metal, looked like the old tin roofing. Saw him take rabbits and javelina with it in Tucson area, and doves. pigeons, quail, etc with the sling. Takes a while to develop skill, but they have worked for 10's of thousands of years. Easily made, effective, no noise, reusable, might be a handy thing to know or just a fun thing to do. Was very surprised at how accurate he was with, sling,, atlatl and in finding water, building survival shelters from the sun, cooking food without a pot or frying pan etc. Have seen old Lakota man, 70 or so in 1944, make arrows from scratch with quail feathers, flint points, sinew for string and animal hide glue to hold on fletching and reinforce bow. He was playing with us kids and used a flint knife as well to make arrows and a bow. Don't remember much, but the flint came from Kansas, he used a piece of deer antler to flake it and a piece of raw hide leather over his leg as a work table. Don't remember his name, but as a 6 year old was impressed by the chunk of flint and what could be done with it. Arrow heads, knife, hatchet, scrapers for working with leather in tanning, cutting slits to sew leather with sinew or throngs,etc. Funny what you remember at an early age. Remember things from 80 years ago better now than some things from 5 years ago. Sad thing is that I don't think any of his knowledge, learned as a child from people born around 1810, was ever passed down and we had no phones to record t for you tube either.
There are lots of Indians, and other people, that know how to make arrow heads, spear heads, scrappers, hatchets, knives, fishhooks, etc. from a hunk of flint. I've seen it done and bought an arrowhead from him. Sometime later a guy came into my place of business and wanted to sell part or all of his Indian artifact collection, but I wasn't interested. Told him I had a brand-new arrowhead at home. He said that his stuff was made by real Indians, I told him mine was too cause I watched him make it!
Oh yeah flint Knapping is a skill on its own I do a little bit my self but not nearly as good as some people are
