Atlatls to Bows: Reader Response

Atlatl Petroglyph, Atlatl Rock, Valley of Fire State Park

Jim Weller, who has extensive experience with atlatl construction and use, e-mails with some very interesting thoughts.  About the atlatl petroglyph on Atlatl Rock at Valley of Fire State Park in Nevada, which I have used to illustrate some earlier posts, he says:

What I find very interesting . . . is that the atlatl in that petroglyph doesn’t have a hook.  It’s forked at the end, which I assume means it had a string across the fork and the darts had nocks like an arrow.

. . .

This page here is what made me think the atlatl in the petroglyph was fork-and-string.  The business end of the 2nd atlatl shown looks just like the petroglyph, although it lacks finger loops on the other end. http://www.primitiveways.com/loop_cord_atlatl.html

Also, on finger loops:

As to finger loops, in my own tinkering with atlatls, I’ve developed a preference for them.  This is because the human wrist moves a lot more up-and-down than it does left-to-right, and the more wrist movement you can put into the throw, the faster the dart goes.  Without finger loops, throwing is like chopping with a hatchet (or throwing a javelin without an atlatl), limiting you to the left-right wrist motion. With finger loops OTOH, throwing is much like with a baseball, allowing the full up-down wrist snap towards the end of the throwing motion.

I think there’s enough difference in power (and accuracy) with finger loops for them to have been pretty much standard equipment.  Sure, you don’t absolutely need them, and there are many folks today who don’t use them and still achieve excellent results.  However, if my life depended on an atlatl, I’d definitely use them.  They have physics on their side.  And there seem to be more examples of atlatls from all over the world with some sort of finger loop than there are without.  Leather straps, shell crescents, and holes drilled through wide handles.  Thus, I’m not surprised that the loops are emphasized in art.  I prefer the leather straps because they don’t chafe and pinch my fingers as much as the hard types of loop.

. . .

Note in the petroglyph that the atlatl handle is much narrower at the loops than elsewhere.  This is a pretty necessary design feature for using loops on an atlatl that’s more than about 1/2″ in diameter.  So, if you find just the stick and wonder if it ever had loops, look for this narrow place if the rest of the handle is wider than 1/2″.  If there’s no narrow place, then it almost certainly never had loops.  OTOH, if the whole thing is only 1/2″ wide, then there’s no good way to tell.

The reason you need the narrow place on wide handles is because when using loops, the atlatl goes between the index and middle fingers, which still have to wrap back around on top to hold the dart.  The narrow gap between these fingers and their lack of opposability puts a limit on how big an object will fit between them comfortably.  If the atlatl is more than about 1/2″ wide there, you CAN use it, but each throw hurts the inside of your index finger just below the 1st knuckle, and you have to tense up the whole hand and wrist to get a good grip on the dart, which decreases power and accuracy.  Not fun.  But OTOH, if the whole handle is that narrow, you have to tense up your hand anyway to hold it with your thumb and other fingers below the loops.  So the best design is wide enough at the butt for a relaxed grip for the thumb, pinky, and ring fingers, and narrow above for a relaxed grip with the index and middle fingers.

To see how this works, make a peace sign keeping the thumb, pinky, and ring fingers in a comfortable circle so none of them touch the palm.  That’s a good diameter for the lower part of the handle (or the whole handle if you’re not using loops).  Now, keeping your middle and index fingers as far apart as possible at their 1st knuckles, bend them down and in until their tips touch each other and the tip of the middle finger is touching the end of the ring finger.  Look how much smaller the gap between the index and middle finger knuckles is compared to the gap between the other fingers and the palm.

Also, via the interesting Blackwater Draw blog, I see that John Whittaker of Grinnell College has an extensive annotated bibliography on atlatls available on his website.  From it I see that he disagrees with both Calvin Howard and Bob Perkins about the physics of the atlatl.  I don’t know enough about the thing to judge who’s right.  Gaining that kind of knowledge really requires substantial personal experimentation, and while I could do that, I’m mostly interested in the cultural and historical implications of these technologies rather than the details of their operation.  Still, there’s a ton of literature out there for anyone who is interested, and Whittaker’s bibliography would be a great place to start.