Ancient spear-throwing tool brings fun and history to Vermont competition

Addison, vt. – Celine Thouin has learned a lot as a student at Franklin Pierce University, and one of the skills it has maintained is the longest is how to use an old spear launch tool.

She was able to share this skill with her Vermonters colleagues on Saturday. Thouin, 38 years old and a veteran of the Franklin Pierce Atlatl team, was one of the dozens of participants in the Northeast Atlatl Open championship in Addison, Vermont.

Humans invented ATLATL thousands of years ago for use as a hunting tool launched. They were used to hunting massive animals such as woolly mammoths in the days long before the recording of history.

Now they are the passion of a group of fans of anthropology who see Atlatl as a way to find out about history and have fun.

“I think it’s just a low pressure sport. Really, really fun, “said Thouin, who won the 2020 competition and whose children are also enthusiasts of Atlatl. “It is also an experimental archeology, which is incredibly fun. We can use the same weapons that were used 15,000 years ago all over the world. ”

The competition took place at the historic site of the State of Chimney Point in Addison, near Lake Champlain and the Border of the State of New York. It was the thirtieth annual event and part of the Vermont archeology month, the organizers said.

The competition was open to all ages and allowed participants to draw precision and a distance. Launches over 800 feet (244 meters) have been recorded, although even a much shorter throw than it takes a good degree of competence.

For Douglas Bassett, former president of the World Atlatl Association and another participant in the event on Saturday, the history of Atlatl is as interesting as its use. He described it as “a stick by which you can throw another stick”, and he said it was used in the ancient world.

Bassett admitted to having no idea how to pronounce the name of the tool. Most sources say that it is aht-laht-l, but the exact pronunciation could be lost for the mists of time, he said.

“The language has disappeared because people have gone, so I don’t know much about pronunciations,” said Bassett. “But all kinds of languages, all over the world. It can be more or less on all continents. Even when the Antarctic melts, we may find proof of people who throw away spears too, with Atlatl.”