What were boomerangs used for? Detailed answer

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What were boomerangs used for? Detailed answer

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What were boomerangs used for?

For kangaroo hunting? Think well. The main task of the boomerang is to go back. They are light and fast. Even the largest boomerang is unlikely to cause more harm to an adult male kangaroo weighing 80 kilos than a bump on its head. But even if boomerangs knocked marsupials off their feet, what's the point of inventing so that they would certainly fly back to the owner?

In fact, the boomerang never played the role of a club. Boomerangs were used to imitate hawks to drive game birds into snares hanging from trees, a kind of banana-shaped wooden hunting dog.

Nor are they the exclusive weapons of the natives. The oldest of the returning throwing weapons was found in the Olazova cave in the Polish Carpathians - its age is more than 18 thousand years. Archaeologists tried the find in action - it turned out to be fully functional.

It can be assumed that the use of such tools is an ancient tradition: for a boomerang to work reliably, its physical parameters must be so accurate that we are hardly dealing with a single craft.

The most ancient boomerangs of the natives are 14 thousand years old.

In ancient Egypt, various types of wooden throwing tools were common from 1340 BC. e. In Western Europe, a returning projectile called the cateia was used by the Goths to hunt birds from around 100 AD. e.

Isidore of Spain, Bishop of Seville, described the cateia in the XNUMXth century as follows:

“There is also a “thrown mace”, looking like a Gallic rocket, consisting of a flexible material, which does not fly very far, because it is quite heavy, but it flies exactly where it is needed. It can only be broken by very strong force. returns to its owner."

Probably, the Australian aborigines learned how to master the boomerang so skillfully because they did not know the bow and arrows. Most Aboriginal people used both boomerangs and non-returning throwing sticks (known as "kylies").

The first officially documented use of the word "bu-mar-rang" dates back to 1822. It came to us from the language of the Turuwal tribe, who lived along the banks of the George River near Sydney.

The Turuwals had other words for hunting sticks, but it was "boomerang" that they called those that returned to the hunter. The Turuwal are part of the Daruk tribal union. Many of the Australian Aboriginal words that have entered the English language have come from the languages of this union, including the wallaby, dingo, kookaburra and koala.

Author: John Lloyd, John Mitchinson

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