War in the history of mankind is, unfortunately, a very frequent phenomenon. Since ancient times, the improvement of the weapons that were used in their progress has been ongoing. One of the most ancient specimens are spears and darts. In fact, they appeared at a time when the most ancient human ancestors came up with the idea of sharpening a stick to increase its “lethality” in terms of food production. By the way, what is a dart? Many are familiar with the concept of “spear," but not everyone can decipher this word.
Deciphering the basic concept
The dart is a special spear, the length of the shaft of which does not exceed one and a half to two meters. Its specificity is expressed in the optimal balancing for shots. Darts, unlike classic combat spears, could not be used to fight against heavily armed opponents, but it was convenient for them to throw light infantrymen and cavalry. In Slavic tribes, these spears were called sulits. In some places in Africa, darts are used to this day, and by no means only for hunting purposes. That's what a dart is.
Other meanings of the word
In addition, the so-called projectiles for playing darts, as well as heavy arrows, fired from ballistic and other throwing devices. In a word, the meaning of the word “dart” is quite the same, as it means, in most cases, a heavy arrow or light throwing spear.
What was the purpose of this weapon?
But what is a dart in terms of combat effectiveness? Why did our distant ancestors generally need short spears, which, with all desire, was impossible to break through heavy armor? Firstly, darts were very cheap to manufacture. Each soldier of the regular army had a stock of at least two or three of these kinds of projectile shells. And darts were not always intended to defeat enemy soldiers.
They could be easily beaten off by taking on the shield ... But only after a couple or two of such copies got into it, it was very difficult to keep it. In fact, by releasing an avalanche of darts before the attack, the soldiers pursued only one goal - to deprive their opponents of protection in the form of shields. If everything went well, then usually followed by a volley of bows, whose arrows thinned out the ranks of enemy warriors, as a result of which the attack on their ranks became much safer.
We learned what a dart is. But was it only used for war? Of course not. The range of their application was much wider.
Hunting Matters
Of course, walking a dart with a dart was, let’s say, somewhat frivolous ... But among our ancestors there were no suicides, and therefore they were used exclusively for hunting medium-sized game: wild boars, roe deer, rams and mountain goats - these are targets suitable for light weapons . Since darts were light and cheap, any hunter could have a good supply with them. If the beast broke its tip or shaft, the replacement was done in the field, cutting out new weapons from any suitable tree.
So you found out what the word “dart” means. We hope that the material presented in the article was sufficiently informative.