Atlatl

The atlatl, or spear-thrower, is a hand-held device that uses leverage to launch a dart or light javelin at far greater velocity and range than an unaided throwing arm can achieve, its rigid shaft ending in a hook or socket that engages the butt of the projectile and stays in the thrower's hand after release. Archaeological evidence places its origin in the Upper Paleolithic, with the earliest confirmed example a roughly 17,500-year-old antler atlatl found at Combe Sauniere in France, and some researchers argue for even earlier use based on repetitive-motion arthritis, nicknamed atlatl elbow, found on a 42,000-year-old skeleton in Australia. The device spread across the ancient world in independent or related traditions, used by Ice Age hunters of Magdalenian Europe, by numerous pre-Columbian American cultures including the Basketmaker culture, the Maya, the Moche and the Aztecs, whose own word atlatl gave the weapon its common English name, and by Andean peoples as the related estolica, while Aboriginal Australians developed a parallel version called the woomera. The weapon remained in active use by several of these cultures through their historical wars and hunts up to and past European contact, only gradually giving way to the bow or, in the Americas, to European firearms.