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Thus the title of an eight page essay by Dietrich Evers published in the
"Archaologisches Korrespondenzblatt" of the Roemisch-Germanisches
Zentralmuseum in Mainz. Evers first describes the circumstances of the
find and the reconstruction of the sensational piece. Finally, he sums
up the results of the throwing experiments. Thanks to the museum, there
is a reconstruction consisting of synthetic material weighing 800 g with
which we could perform our throwing experiments. On winding paths, the
object reached Fridolin Frost and Eckhard Mawick. Mr. Evers asked us for
a detailed and clearly formulated programme to realize and to document
the experiments, because his own energy was not enough.
We set off to Fridolin´s training meadow with a reconstruction
and a similarly crooked club with a circle section (which was also brought
to the weight of 800 g with lead). With approx. 2 bft we had ideal wind
conditions. We threw without gloves intentionally. All wind directions
were tried out. The dominating factor for the behaviour of the boomerang
soon turned out to be the absolute weight of the boomerang. Thus the lateral
wind was nearly irrelevant for the exactness of hitting, not even with
the ending phase of the flight. Left-handed throwings showed similar results.
With the widest throwing (66 m), we had about 3 bft headwind. The average
range of 45 to 51 m was almost ideal from the hunter´s point
of view: The throwing object did not fly higher than 1,50 m at the vertex
of the flight path, when thrown from waist height, and then regularly,
just within the last 3 meters, fell clumsily to the ground.
An observation we had never made with Australian throwing woods became
clear: The "mammoth´s tooth" flew with a clearly visible
retrogressive axis of rotation when watched from the side. We trace the
phenomenon back to the pointed wing endings. Obviously, they are hardly
able to produce any aerodynamical lift. Non returning Australian throwing
woods with less sharply pointed wing ends generally level off in a practically
vertical axis of rotation, in which they also rotate horizontally around
this virtual axis. Although throwing experiments with the equally heavy,
unprofiled and crooked wooden club were subjectively much easier to handle,
the strong braking effect of the truncated shape of the section soon showed.
The 27 m flying range with a flying speed of 18,5 m/s was clearly inferior
to the one of the "mammoth´s tooth" with 50 m and
21,4 m/s. Seen from the hunter´s point of view this is an advantage,
if you consider that the club also showed a very bow-shaped (ballistic)
flight line.
Finally Evers conjectures about the more than 18,000 year-old boomerang:
"The shaping of the find allows the conclusion that there was a long
tradition with the production of such throwing weapons." We are favourably
disposed to agree with him after seeing the amazing results of our experiments.
(source:
Eckhard Mawick - Bumerang Welt 1/95)
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