[Niels Just Rasmussen]

[Benjamin H. Abbott]

The curious thing about atlatls or spear throwers is that numbers for them are all over the place. Karl Hutchings and Lorenz Bruchert published a study in 1997 that claims velocities of up to 64 m/s and kinetic energies of up to 771 J. (Average 247J with a 273g dart and 353J with a 545g dart.) By contrast, John Whittaker and Kathryn Kamp report only 22-43 J for experienced throwers. So either darts from spear throwers hit harder than most any bow or they're too weak to be plausible military weapons. Given Spanish accounts of dart performance in the Americas, I'm more inclined to believe Hutchings, but 771 J seems unlikely.

Assuming high performance, atlatl darts remain slower than and likely less accurate than arrows from most military bows. Using javelins or darts to skirmish against a bow or especially a crossbow strikes me as a frustrating experience. While the javelins or darts might penetrate defenses better, they'd be harder to aim and easier to dodge thanks to the lower velocity. And the ability to carry more arrows than darts or javelins also matters.

[Bartek Strojek]

[Timo Nieminen]

[Alexis Bataille]

I talk of this previously in another thread but just to be sure :
in the skirmish "game" of the ancient Greek hoplite time, javelin was more used by skirmisher because it was cheaper right ?
another question : with a pelast javelin and a skilled thrower what is the effective range (more than 50% chance of hit) against a single target ?

[Jaroslav Jakubov]

from balistic perspective, doesnt javelin that is thrown at longer distance, also have higher impact speed? I'm no expert, but from what i remember about physics, projectile flies upward, til its speed is greater than gravitational pull, with javelin thrown at 30 degrees, javelin would get its minimum speed at the top of its ascend just slightly below the 9.81m/s, and would accelerate on its way down. it would not achieve the release speed, but will not get under 9.81m/s either, while javelin with longest descend would also have the highest impact velocity. correct me please if I'm wrong.

[Dan Howard]

[Gary T]

I think that's why the real use of Javelins in the later middle ages is limited to light horse like Stradiots.

You have the advantage of the forward moving horse to add even more energy, and against non missile armed armored troops they would be a very effective weapon.

[Alexis Bataille]

Which distance a trained soldier can hit a stationary target with a greek javelin ? (like 50% of hit) 20 meters ?

[Neal Matheson]

Interesting thread, as quite a serious atlatlist this is a subject that has come up a few times in the spearthrower/atlatl world. I think it's worth just adding that the spearthrower (caveats about antiquity and archaeology) was developed as a hunting tool and not neccesarily as a means of increasing power, as is often stated. At realistic ranges a good thrower will hit a kill zone on an animal near enough every time something hard to reproduce with hand thrown spears.To get this accuracy spears thrown by an atlatl need to be lighter than those that can be cast by hand. That said my own calculations on throws made by some of Europe's best thrower's using a variety of darts produced momentum values that were higher than achieved by primitive bows.
Most of this work was done to counter some rather over stated claims about atlatl effectiveness made on popular youtube videos. As far as I know no atlatlist has confirmed what Diaz wrote about darts going through armour either.

[Pieter B.]