Posted on 08/18/2022 7:17:04 AM PDT by Red Badger
Indigenous Australian Boomerang. (Gift of the Royal Australian Historical Society, 1981)
A wooden boomerang might not possess the many arms of a Swiss army knife, but the uses of this ingenious tool by Australia's First Nations peoples are manifold.
This wooden, elbow-shaped instrument is popularly known around the world as an aerodynamic throwing stick. But depending on how the tool is made, it can also be used as a battle club, a digging stick, a hammer, a fire starter, a toy, a musical instrument – and even, it turns out, a sharpener of bone and stone tools.
In a new study, researchers in Australia have shown that hardwood boomerangs are tough enough to be used even for flint-, bone- and stone-knapping.
VIDEO AT LINK................
One of the authors is a Birrunburra / Bundjalung / Yugambeh / Yuggera / Turrbal man, and he contributed two of the four hardwood boomerangs used in the experiments.
Members of the Milan Dhiiyaan mob also shared their Traditional knowledge and some bubarra / garrbaa / biyarr (boomerangs) with the authors.
When expert knappers were given these hardwood boomerangs to use, they were able to flake away the edges of bone instruments. This left scratches on the wooden tool that closely match those seen on older boomerang artifacts held in museums.
Researchers previously suspected these markings were the product of wood tapping against stone or bone, and the new experiments show that is very much a possibility.
"In our article, we put together traditional knowledge and experimental archaeology to investigate a forgotten use of boomerangs: modifying the edges of stone tools," says archaeologist Eva Francesca Martellotta from Griffith University in Australia.
"Traditionally handcrafted experimental replicas of boomerangs proved very functional to shape stone tools. Our results are the first scientific proof of the multipurpose nature of these iconic objects."
"While our results for the first time scientifically quantify the multipurpose nature of daily tools like boomerangs, this is something that Aboriginal people have known from a very long time," Martellotta adds. 
Sequence of boomerang retouching efforts
Retouching using boomerangs. (Martellota et al., PLOS ONE, 2022)
The findings support the hypothesis that Australia's First Nations peoples regularly used hardwood boomerangs for retouching purposes.
Since the European invasion in the late 1700s, however, the multipurpose nature of the boomerang has received little attention from archaeologists or ethnographic researchers.
Earlier this year, some of the same researchers published a systematic review of the scientific literature on boomerangs. Their analysis revealed that most previous studies have focused only on the aerodynamic properties of returning boomerangs, and little else.
Few other functions of the boomerang have been considered, despite reports of many different uses. Returning boomerangs may have become the most famous of the lot, but not all boomerangs are designed to fly back. Some are designed to fly straight and true.
In the video below, a Marrawarra / Barkindji man by the name of Brendan Mitchell walks through the numerous ways that boomerangs are designed and used today. As he cheekily demonstrates, some make for great back scratchers.
VIDEO AT LINK................
While it might seem pointless to use wood against rock, this might have been humanity's first step in the history of flint- and stone-knapping.
The markings found on ancient boomerangs in Australia closely resemble bone retouchers from the early phase of the Stone Age in Europe. Neanderthals even used this technique as far back as 500,000 years ago.
Some of these Paleolithic bone retouchers have caught and held micro flakes of flint that still remain stuck in the fossilized wood to this day.
In the current study, some hardwood boomerangs showed the same tiny chips.
Across great distances and great lengths of time, humans have been using hard wooden objects to reshape their tools.
The Australian boomerang could very well belong in that arsenal.
The study was published in PLOS ONE.
Mine came back.
Hit me in the head.......................
LOL, OUCH!
But don’t use a boomerang *that* way or you might get Monkeypox.
Ahhh a vague MASH reference.
What’s funny is the actor in that scene was the same one who played “Ugly John” in the first season of MASH.
Bkmk
What did one boomerang say to the other?
I’ll be back!
Oh cool
I had one of those plastic boomerangs, made by Wham-O I think, but never could get it to return. No matter how I threw it, it’d go out about 50 or 60 yards, then go straight up and fall back out there. Used to play with it on the high school practice field when nobody was there — try that now.
I should get another and try again one of these days.
“...some of us would use a router...”
Your boomerang had Wi-Fi?
“Practiced till I was blue in the face.”
The original lyrics were “Practiced till I was black in the face”, but I suppose that’s too un-PC now. I haven’t even heard that song on the radio in many, many years.
The toy store boomerangs (i.e. Wham-O) was always crap. My brother had a wooden one that I think we special ordered through the mail that worked pretty well. There's definitely a technique to throwing it and you also need a breeze to throw into or it will just go up in the air and fall down far away.
Hopefully most of the damage was on the passenger side.
Damage on passenger side = stern talking to, maybe some stay in your room etc., for a week.
Damage on driver's side = RED-A$$ from beating.
Inquiring minds want to know?
I’ll have to try it again. Plenty of desert to practice in.
Passenger window. Strong words were spoken. Apologies were made. 2 weeks of cutting, splitting, stacking firewood in all my spare time.
Thanks Red Badger.
Archaeologists Think They've Found an 800-Year-Old Boomerang Victim [from 22 September 2016, so it's an 806 year old victim]South Australian Museum |
The History of Boomerangs 101
Kevin Verbael
April 18, 2015
https://boomerangs.com/blogs/boomerang-history/18535689-the-history-of-boomerangs-101
[snip] Contrary to popular belief, the boomerang did not originate in Australia. Historical traces of boomerangs have been found throughout the world. Boomerangs are considered by many to be the earliest “heavier-than-air” flying machines invented by human beings. Australian Aboriginal boomerangs have been found as old as ten thousand years old, but older hunting boomerangs have been discovered throughout Europe. The famed King Tutankhamen of Egypt had an extensive collection of boomerangs over 2000 years ago. [/snip]
He forgot to duck!............................
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