Paper Boomerang Book: Build Them, Throw Them, and Get Them to Return Every Time
to thwart evil spirits who were thought to appear as birds and harm the dead But the king was well protected Tutankhamen was an avid duck hunter and he too used throwing sticks He was buried with many well preserved samples of them The image below depicts ancient Egyptians duck hunting in the marshes in the 15th century B C The photo was taken inside the tomb of Nakht an Egyptian official who was buried at the The ban Necropolis on the west bank of the Nile River The ancient Egyptians also used a hieroglyph in their writing system that resembled a throwing stick Native Americans of the southwestern United States and northern Mexico including the Hopi Zuni Navajo and Paipai Indians had similar throwing sticks called rabbit sticks for hunting small prey These devices have also been found in India Europe North Africa Canada Indonesia and Australia They also have been found in Iraq along the upper Tigris River where they were used by the ancient Assyrians and Babylonians Excellent examples of wooden nonreturning boomerangs have been nicely preserved in peat bogs across Europe and possibly a few in Australia along with some unlucky men and women who fell in with them Some of these European bog boomerangs date back to approximately 3000 B C The oldest physical evi dence of boomerangs in Australia was found at Wyrie Swamp in 1973 by Hans van Schaik the owner of the bog He had the good fortune of being hospitalized with a kidney stone in the same room with Roger Luebbers an archeologist When van Schaik told Luebbers what he had found Luebbers started digging The boomerangs found at Wyrie date back to 8000 B C The boomerang shown below is 26 7 inches long and weighs 0 8 pounds This type of throwing stick was used for hunting and
a OSUREBOUND An ancient Egyptian hunting ducks with a throwing stick As for returning boomerangs other ancient peoples may have had such devices but the strongest evidence for their place of origin is in Australia The indigenous people of Australia have inhabited the continent for approximately 60 000 years so they had ample time to experiment with both returning and nonre turning boomerangs Physical evidence of boomerangs in Aus tralia dates back as far as 10 000 years and since wood does not last forever the earliest boomerangs may date back further
9 a A throwing stick hieroglyph Australian nonreturning hook boomerang Recent History In Australia the first written account of the flight of a returning boomerang was made by Francis Louis Barrallier a French born surveyor and engineer who explored Australia for the British at
the start of the 19th century On its Web site www boomerang org au the Boomerang Association of Australia quotes Barrallier's journal entry from November 12 1802 They throw it on the ground or in the air making it revolve on itself and with such a velocity that one cannot see it returning towards the ground only the whizzing of it is heard The origin of the term boomerang can be traced to the Turuwal people who inhabited the area near modern day Port Jackson the harbor of Sydney Australia Apparently these people only referred to the returning throwing stick with the word boomerang they used other words to refer to nonreturning throwing sticks According to the Boomerang Association of Australia the first written account of the word bou mar rang was made in 1822 In the United States in the 1950s the general public did not think about boomerangs very often people regarded them mostly as curiosities But an article in the November 1968 issue of Scientific American magazine The Aerodynamics of Boomerangs by Felix Hess helped advance their popularity Hess covered the physics well and the accompanying photos which depicted boomerangs in flight enabled designers to begin thinking about more advanced designs In the early 1970s boomerang expert Benjamin Ruhe gave several lectures and conducted workshops with the Smithsonian Institution in Washington D C Before they left the workshop attendees were given unfinished boomerangs Back home they would carve them using the skills they had learned Herb Smith one of the first high tech designers of boomerangs attended the 1976 workshop He is renowned for his advanced designs and long throws and he inspired a generation of boomerang enthusi asts to perfect their own designs Modern Boomerangs Modern boomerangs both returning and nonreturning come in many different shapes The boomerangs on pages 7 9 are all
