1970's toy company executive: "I've got an idea, lets turn a Roman weapon of war into a fun lawn game!"

In addition to adding weight, the lead prevents the dart from completely passing through the target. Meaning that to remove it, you *have* to pull it out the way it came. And while there were techniques for doing it without letting the barbs engage, it wasn't something you could do on a battlefield. So if you got stuck with one, it's in you, bouncing around until you stop moving.

I am not a historian, but I imagine these maybe an 'accuracy by volume' weapon. Fairly easy to make, give all of your legionnaires a handful and basic practice, then have them lob a volley an incoming enemies.

Cool video and beautiful weapons! One of these days I have to make a launcher for them maybe.

Being old enough to have played with lawn darts, I totally believe these are terrifying weapons of ancient warfare.

As a Dungeons and Dragons player, I've always wondered how "Darts" were used in medieval combat. In the past, I've always just went with the suspend your disbelief route and went with it. Now I can completely picture in my mind how it goes when using these implements of war.

When we were 16 - 18 years old we used to throw around a toy called a nerf vortex at the school playing field. It is basically a cushioned throwing dart. We were commonly able to reach distances of about 50 meters and one guy was even able to throw them a whopping 60 meters. So to me it is absolutely clear that a throwing dart with a steel point thrown by someone who is strong and spends some time practicing is an absolutely fearsome weapon! Edit: This was only possible with overhand throws. Anything else just does not work.

Seeing "darts" in D&D weapons lists always felt kinda weird. But if this is what they're talking about, yeah... not wanting that coming at me!

About 10 years ago I watched a group of a dozen Roman reenactors at Arbeia Roman Fort (South Shields) demonstrating these thrown en masse. They threw them underarm up high into the air , and let them rain down on a target area marked on the grass about 3 m diameter, something like 20m away from their line. Result : roughly 50 plumbarta inside the circle in about 20 seconds.

Would love to see javelin penetration testing

Enjoyed the video. Reminds me of the lawn darts I played with as a kid

It’s pretty amazing how much your accuracy improved over a few hours. Imagine actually training as a profession, they much have been crazy good.

To get greater range of the "plumbata" or "kestros" they also used the "Kestrosphendone" which is a type of sling specially designed for that dart.

I liked using these things in early versions of D&D when I could talk my DM into letting me use them. It let my swordsmen have a ranged option without having to carry a golf bag sized quiver of javlins or have to fiddle with taking a shield off to mess with a bow.

Me: "Hmm, it feels like these angles are rather restrictive, why do we not have a shot from the other side of the field?" Tod: "Oh Dear, Oh Dear, Oh Dear....I believe I've hit my camera..." Me: "Ohhhhhhhh"

I'm not a historian but I can imagine using these while enemy shields are above their heads protecting them from an archery fire. Plumbata was probably very effective against unarmoured enemy and their horses. This is basically a short range arrow useful in woods where archery has no much of significance.

When throwing overhand you should throw them like a throwing knife: hold the back end of the dart in your palm with index finger pointing down the shaft. When throwing it try to empart as little spin on the dart when releasing it. That should get it it fly more straight and a more even trajectory

you ever just have a long day, get to the corner shop and think "time to treat myself, gonna pick up a Mars Barb"?

As soon as the "It wasn't" showed on screen, I was dead. Man, one of those days. Sorry about your camera.

Like a Shuriken, a big problem is: When you miss, It will likely be coming back at you soon. That doesn’t happen so much with many other kinds of projectiles.

One theory I heard is that it is the second and third row of legionaries that throws them.They throw them in a high, steep arch right before impact with the enemy. So an enemy combatant in the front line has the choice of either raising the shield and opening up his legs and lower torso to the first row of legionaries, but protecting against the plumbata or ignoring the plumbata and risk being injured by one. Either way the first impact of the enemy infantry is lessend.

Imagine you're just about to hit the enemy line, and every other roman is throwing these high up in the air to fall down on them, all the while (maybe a split second later) the other half of the roman line are chucking these straight forwards. It would cause chaos.

The British Roman reenactment group Commitatus used these both on foot and mounted, and had some impressive results, throwing underhand, overhand and a sidearm throw at close range. Being on the receiving end of a blunt dart launched from a rider at a canter was apparently quite the terror.

There was a battle in the Peloponnesian War, I think called the Battle of Pylos (it took place on a small island called Pylos), where the Athenian darters were the decisive element for beating a Spartan detachment. The Athenians had chased the Spartans up onto a hill and the darters came out and unleashed on the Spartans until they couldn't fight anymore. Thucydides talks about it.

That is a nice little terror weapon for the enemy. Along side the sling-shots, the javelins and the arrows, the battlefield must have felt like walking into a hail-storm.

Honestly all i see is the lawn darts i used to throw as a child. Just making a funny. Keep up the good work.

Hello Todd ! Just wanted to thank you for making these videos not only entertaining and instructive but also so accessible. I love your subject material and the down-to-earth way you treat them, but as a foreign guy who does not have English as a first language, the combination of (extremely) welcome subtitles checked by a human, and your clear and patient elocution really allow me to fully understand and enjoy these videos and the topic you tackle. Big shout-out here, and I'm impatiently waiting for the next instalment !

Also worth considering that in a tight infantry formation, troops likely wouldn't have the space in front of them for an underhand throw. Overhand makes way more sense considering that fact unless you're in the foremost line.

And that is why they banned lawn darts.

Tod these experimental archeology series continue to be my most looked forward to videos on a weekly basis. Keep it up dude!

Could the Romans honorably fight with such an underhanded weapon?

I have heard in a video of British reanactors that the plumbata would actually be thrown into the sky. This was done when running towards the enemy, in combination with throwing the pila. When there are pila comming from you front and plumbata from the sky you won't know where to hold your shield, causing more casualties and I presume more panic.

next two t-shirts: "Dont plumbata til you see the whites of their eyes!" and "Put the fear of mars into them!" lol

And this children, is why we can no longer buy lawn darts in the US....

If I remember correctly, the Greeks also could use a sling to get these darts to greater heights, distances, and could possibly penetrate wicker shields, like many Persians had (my speculation). Also, I think the Romans also used some slings for pila, which I'd assume would be used by dedicated skirmishers, and we can imagine the slings allowed the pila to glide over a Roman formation, or over their layered fortifications. Now, when I imagine the Battle of Thermopylae, I imagine the Persian army getting pelted by these, stones, arrows, and javelins as soon as they rounded that corner. The phalangites there had been training for weeks w the picked Spartan royal guard, and could maneuver back and forth, and they had rebuilt a wall to stand behind the phalanx, a perfect place to hurl these missiles. One can imagine the Persians and their allies had to stop the combat whenever the bodies mounted too high: or else you can imagine men stumbling over the dead, further making them vulnerable to missiles, and if they survived, their loss of cohesion would stand no chance against the mighty wall of hoplite. Not that they stood a chance even with their cohesion, as the Greeks, as I hinted, must have cycled their troops. There were thousands of Greek combatants, and they only needed one phalanx at a time (300 men) to hold that point at any given time. On the advance to the narrowest point: Herdotus writes the width as "two chariots wide". Cheers!

I really appreciate the transparency of your videos. They're not edited to leave out mistakes and inaccurate throws/shots

Imagine getting 50 of them adding a basket and a catapult or ballista.

7:35 wait, wait, wait. So these Plumbata things are essentially the Roman version of our modern day Flashbang!?

Imagine holding your shield and one of these catches you on the foot. You’re pinned to the ground -:-

There was a lawn game we use to play that involved plastic weighted darts, similar to these. The goal was to toss them into a small circular ring, at a set distance away. It was easy to get the darts to fly incredible distances with little effort, but you needed to know how to hold them when you throw, and the trajectory when released was a pretty flat arc; you were not holding them correctly. After some children began suffering accidents from impalements, the darts were banned in most states. They didn't have a sharp tip, but it didn't take much effort to injure someone.

Not just Roman! They saw extensive use in the Early Medieval period, even up to about 1000 AD

imagine a bucket of these thrown over a wall during a seige.

NPC: "I was an adventurer once. But I took a dart in the knee."

When you were doing the argument about the speed throwing, I had the feeling that quantity, was a factor, and it seems that gravity would be doing most of the work, so I wonder... could you throw a group of them at once? And if you did, what would the spread be like? Why even go for accuracy? The darts are small enough that you could carry a good quantity of them, and just saturate the field with what amounts to a shotgun/multi shot approach. If you can, say, have every soldier on the first couple ranks just launch a couple hand fulls of 5 darts at the right time, that might be more effective than trying to aim them.

They can be thrown by a yoke stick kinda like the goat's foot, that would be the martial secret that isn't disclosed in drawings. Shorten the fletchings to the last 1/3rd of what you have and put a knob behind them on the shaft. Lawn darts. Another way to throw them, still with only 1/3rd the length of fletching, is to place them across your palm with your hand angled so the side of your hand with your thumb is lined up with your forearm bones. Lay the weight just behind the tips of your index and ring fingers and stand with your non-throwing side towards the target. Palm up with arm across to opposite side, place in palm. spin arm down around and up and then release by letting your thumb and fingertips relax. It's like a backhand throw. Just let it slip out. You should be able to get about 55-65m with the windmill and about 38-45m with the backhand fling. Your "rate of fire" with the backhand, thrown literally from a series of tubes bandolier, can be as high as 5 in 4 seconds. They are *actually* for hunting small game.

I hate to bring up my past, but, with jarts as they were called when I was a kid, I made a stick that was like an atlatl spear thrower for the jarts and increased the throwing range quite a lot. After putting one into a roof, we were not allowed to play with them any more.

Thank you. Apart from learning something new, I have now a new idea of what I could throw at my Players in one of our next sessions. Well, just to stay clear, at their characters.

Great job Tod :) Not a bad throwing

Give it a week and Joerg Sprave will have a full auto plumbata gun

I too played a lot with lawn darts back in the day! I remember once we tried to go for distance and someone sent a dart over into the second neighbour's yard, right into is brand new above ground swimming pool....made quite a mess of his lawn!!!

If you want to throw those darts properly, you have to hold them differently You’re doing the javelin hold which is necessary to introduce spin (because your fingers roll the javelin on release) To throw something like this, “hook” your index and middle finger behind the weight and throw it like that. It’s much easier to throw like that without introducing tumbling or spinning (which can easily turn into tumbling) The feathers will stabilize the dart with ease

remember kiddies use lead free dart when hunting joints of gammon

Someone literally gave a 12 minute video a dislike at least 8 minutes after it was posted

My first thought is that these would have been an excellent way for small infantry units to deter attacks by cavalry. Get one of those barbs stuck into horseflesh with the bouncing weight causing the tip to cut around in the muscle as the animal moves. The pain would be maddening and the horse will probably throw his rider and disrupt others nearby. A unit of only 20 men could probably have 60 darts in the air in seconds with a little practice and a horse and rider are a big target.

The noise produced when those entered the flesh..."There was a sound of ripping fabric as the sword bit deep".

So that's why the Gauls feared that the sky would fall on their heads.

I feel like I have to warn you, Todd... I LOVE your semi-scientific videos, period. I feel like you are very aware of your own biases. All of that said, I have never seen a channel featuring a non-scientist which actually managed to maintain that for more than a couple of years. Please stay who you are and keep checking yourself properly! I would really love for you to be the only channel with this kind of content that I have ever stayed subscribed to!

I’m fairly sure that you can throw them like you would a throwing knife with instinctive/no spin techniques. I bet the results would be interesting

Everyone knows you should use the official scientific "Paul Harrell" meat target to determine effectiveness of ammo...geeze. Great video!

The scene opens with Chekov's leg of meat, just sitting there very conspicuously. I wonder what's going to happen to it.

Can you imagine the effect they would have if they were loaded into a catipult 2 dozen at a time and launched over the enimy line at a high arch , dozens of small sharp projectiles that's hard to see raining down on them , even if they missed the head but contacted an arm or leg would effectively slow them down .

They were an answer to skirmishers for heavy infantry, as the Romans and Greeks both used. Lightly armored skirmishers make nice meat targets for those things.

As for speed, I have a theory that multiple were thrown at the same time. Kind of like a shotgun of barbed darts. Doesn't seem like it would be too difficult. Toss 2-5 of them underhand quickly at the enemy charge and draw your primary weapon.

An ideal projectile for mass launching by a "ballista". Imagine launching 50 or100 at a time, and multiple machines.

Anybody else herre because of Joerg Sprave? Great content Tod, looking forward to getting familiar with your channel!

One additional use for such a weighted barb dart. It could be used to weigh down the enemy shields if say 3-4 were suck into the front. Any additional weight would tire out the line soldier that much faster.

When we were kids we threw weighted darts easily out to 70-80 metres, before parents became involved and banned them. Cut a "V" notch in the shaft just in front of the feathers, (we used playing cards). Cut a piece of string about x1.5 times the length of the shaft. Tie a knot near the end of a piece of string. Wrap the string around the shaft, so that it sits in the V notch. Lock it in place by looping the string over the knot. Pull string tight by wrapping it around your throwing hand, and hold point of the shaft to throw. Same leverage as when using a sling. If you reduced the length of your flights, and increased the shaft length, it would be interesting to see how far your darts would go using this technique. I would say a gentle overarm lob would see your darts go out to 40-50 metres with ease. We also launched them using a stick, but even as kids we realised this was asking for trouble.

If the damage dealt to that camera isn't proof that an underhanded throw is effective then I don't know what is.

My contribution: skin makes a noticeable difference on "meat" resistance, as does clothing. I suggest doing penetration tests on meat with skin and some kind of clothing.

I used to be part of a late Roman re-enactment group we used plumbata all the time in demonstrations, they are nasty little thing's, we used to throw them high as to rain down on the the enemy we had rubber ended ones for combat, they would hit everywhere including your feet! A late Roman legion would have around 500 men, each would carry usually 4 plumbata held in their shield, they would also carry a few javalins, an Angon or Spiculum (late version of the pilum) and perhaps a throw in axe, the point was, for each legion they threw around 2500 sharp missiles at the enemy, even if they didn't hit marching through the hedge of javalins Spiculum, and plumbata was a nightmare. Good video I enjoyed it.

The chef in me is screaming "I hope he sanitized after touching the raw pork" lol. Very interesting video!

In those times not everyone was armored. Imagine a slave uprising and a legionare using this as we now use watercannons against riots, the bloody kind.

Reminds me of the lawn darts we played with when I was a kid.

I can see them disorganizing a charge and breaking an enemy’s focus. Practical archeology at its best. Well done

We used to make similar thing when I was a kid (Yes I am welsh) but we called then Dutch Arrows. These were thrown, or slung by looping a knotted end of a cord around a notch at the top behind the feather and holding it near the point.. The throw was a high baseball action whipping the dart forward as fast as possible. The distance achieved was several hundred yards. (also known as French arrow, Swiss arrow or just throwing arrow)

I looked at this and thought "Surely that would be better with a launcher - a bit like an atlatl or your dog's tennis ball thrower". Great video! Those combined with caltrops must have been great fun...

I feel like the stabilization really depends on the fletching design. I have made a few with a short length but a lot of height that stabilize with an overhand throw after a few meters

This was like watching a new recruit's first day training montage. Awesome!

Main issue I see with these is that they're quite easy for the enemy to pick up after the volley ends and toss right back at you.

So playing on the idea of it being a harassing weapon to slow down an enemy charge and to distract them for a moment, would it stand to reason in order to get as many out as possible they may have thrown 2-3 at a time? Just getting as many into the air in a short amount of time as possible. You loose accuracy and some distance but then you are getting into the territory of "accuracy by volume"

Hi Tod. I remember when studying at university, that the darts used in the later Roman period were a lot bulkier than the ones that you tried out. We're talking like 3 times as long, about 4 times as thick on the shaft, and a heavy spike on the end. The idea was to throw underarm high in the air over the heads of your front row troops. The weight of the spike would give it the power and impact needed to do a lot of damage once it came down again. The tactical aspect of it was to get charging enemies to raise their shields over their heads as they came in, which obviously left them very exposed. The smaller size of the darts (compared to the pilum) is why is became more popular. You could bring loads of them to a battle and throw them all day. The only problem is that they were often thrown back.

Hey, lawn darts! Played with them as a child. We lost a few kids to them but it was worth. They are fun.

9:15 when that hit the mean I let an audible groan - that would have hurt like hell. As a Roman historian, this was awesome to watch.

So what you're saying is that they are for against light infantry because most of the time they have only a weapon and if lucky some kind of small wooden shield that's only good for deflecting sword blows, not ranged projectiles...

In the 70's they sold those in the US as "Lawn Dart games." They turned out to be rather lethal and kids used them more as weapons than as game items.

The throwing test is perfectly framed so that they disappear from view immediately as he lets go and we don't get to see their flight at all.

Nice work Tod. Regarding throwing technique: When I was a young athlete I threw the Javelin with my pointer finger wrapped around the end of the grip (as most people do) and used my finger to make the Javelin spin. Similar to what you seemed to be doing naturally with your overhand throw. Unfortunately spin does not seem to suit a fletched projectile. One day the Australian champion was training at our club and my coach asked him to give me a lesson :) He used a different grip which did not cause the Javelin to spin and would probably suit the plumbata. Basically if we put our pointer finger and middle finger on either side of the plumb (lumpy metal bit) we can keep our wrist cocked back and flick the wrist forward at the end of the throw. I never got good at it but it obviously worked for him.

Lawn darts were much deadlier with a better throwing handle.

Was anyone else waiting for Tod to throw all three darts underhand at once? I feel like the way they self-level you'd be able to lob three high in the air and they'd still be effective when they hit the target.

That's terrifying, coming at you head on their profile would be small enough that they might not even register and from overhead, you'd most likely have to see them being thrown to be ready for them. Having the lead afore center of shaft might also minimize the chances of them landing barb up on the ground. Imagine stepping on one of these.

After consideration, I have concluded that the weight is held in the hand and thrown in a sort of baseball/football side-ways style of athletic throw, sort of rolling the weight off the fingers. Though it flys at a sort of cant right off the fingers, the fletching will orientate the dart rather quickly. Much better flight and greater penetration.

HEY i remember these! our parents let us play with them back in the day. i loved lawn darts

“Been facinated by them for 20 (t)odd years!” Thought that was funny

We used to have lawn dart battles when I was a kid and no grownups were around. They can very effective and accurate, let me tell you. Have a friend with a thigh scar and another with a shoulder rip and I have a hand scar from trying to catch one in the air. I did catch it.

I have noticed that in all throws except javelin-like one, darts rotate around the center of gravity. Which means that they would not strike point-on, and thus would be... not entirely ineffective, but rather less so.

They’re like ancient Jarts. No wonder they took them off the market. I don’t for the life of me know as children how we didn’t get a Jart embedded in someone’s skull.

Side note: The sound Tod made when throwing them like a spear was eerily close to that of the Warrior unit from Civilization III

I think the high arc method is how they were used - with say the 6th(or whatever) rank of men behind the shield wall getting plumbata passed forward to them and throwing them high behind the enemy's front rank

A very interesting experiment. For some reason I had the impression, possibly from reading somewhere, that plumbata had a leather strap on them and they were whirled on that strap and then released, gaining a sling-like benefit. If true I can see a range and height benefit. If you get a chance to re-test, try about a foot of leather, string or rope on the tail. Barry

I can bury a playing dart into an oak tree, all the way up to the grip, at 20 feet away. Former baseball player I’ll bet with good training a hard overhand throw would be absolutely devastating!