Thread: Stone throwing and the art of war

Stone throwing and the art of war

By Leilani Grajeda-Higley
Originally published 12:01 a.m., July 7, 2011, updated midnight, July 7, 2011

When did humans grasp the first stone, wind up like a baseball pitcher, and hurl that stone with killing effect? It had to have been at the dawn of humanity. Stones were our first weapons. They still are. Little boys replicate human history when they hurl rocks at each other. Even my sweet, peaceful husband threw rocks at cars when he was nine years old. He tells me that on occasion a motorist would stop the car and chase after him and his buddies. Rocks are basic to warfare. The Israeli army certainly takes Palestinian youth seriously when they throw stones at soldiers. The U.S. Border Patrol has to guard against stone-throwing youth at the border with Mexico. Stones are used to carry out the death penalty in some cultures where the condemned is made to stand in a pit with only her head exposed (It’s almost always a female). The executioners hurl stones and crush her skull.

Rock throwing is one of the most insidiously lethal human activities. The history of war is the history of rock throwing. We will never know who threw the first rocks, but they must have seen the murderous effect. From there the race was on to find more effective and efficient ways to throw rocks. They would tie leather strips around rocks and send them sailing. They could launch them from slings made of leather. To get leather they scraped meat off animal hides with sharp rocks. They learned to chip stone into slender points. Such points could be attached to long sticks to form spears. As arrow heads they could be attached to reed-thin sticks and launched from a bow, sending a small stone farther than ever. After the invention of the wheel, they could create rolling platforms for catapults to launch even larger rocks.

Higher, farther, faster. The quest is always how to send rocks higher, farther, faster. Hurling rocks is the art of war. And war technology leapt forward with the creation of gunpowder. Gunpowder did away with castle building since cannon balls (rocks of metal) could blow holes in castles’ stone walls with impunity. Sappers, those warriors who tunneled under the castle to invade from underneath, were no longer needed. Of course, gunpowder required rocks that would not shatter, so iron was worked into shot, those missiles that are metal rocks large and small. Man-made rocks are called cannon balls and bullets, but a rock by any other name is still a rock. The ancestor of the machine gun, the Gatling gun, could let fly more little iron rocks in less time.

The right to throw metal rocks is enshrined in one of our nation’s founding documents, the Bill of Rights. While the Second Amendment speaks to the people’s right to bear arms, arms are not the issue. Every citizen in the country could carry around an empty gun, but what would be the use for an empty gun? Bullets are the issue; specifically the right to throw metal rocks. To paraphrase a famous slogan, guns don’t kill people; bullets kill people. Arms are the means by which the rocks are propelled.

Of course, at the time the Constitution was written, only dueling pistols and muskets were available.

Maybe if we still only used dueling pistols and muskets, and an occasional cannon, we would all rest more easily and the story could stop there, but we keep amping up the lethality. We keep seeking higher, farther, faster ways to kill with rocks. Finally, in the 21st Century we created the ultimate rock – the nuclear bomb – the most awesome and dreaded weapon of mass destruction.

Countries vie to get their hands on the biggest rock, “the bomb.â€

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Debate continues on fatal border shooting after rock assault

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When I was a kid a friend of mine was killed by a rock thrown by a teen at her families car .The rock hit her in the side of her head and killed her instantly.