YouTube Gold: Hunting By Boomerang

For many Westerners, boomerangs are something of a novelty. We understand the principle but what’s the point of it?

Or perhaps we like the word itself: he thought his strategy would win, but it boomeranged on him.

If you’re lucky, you might know someone, or at least see someone, who really knows how to throw one.

Boomerangs were invented by Aborigines in what is now Australia a very, very long time ago, and it was designed for hunting.

It must have been an amazing thing to discover. What were they doing?? Did they find one that vaguely resembled a boomerang and intuit what it was capable of? Was their some long-lost genius who grasped the aerodynamic priniciples?

At some point, however it happened, someone had to have the idea and the people refined it over time until it became a deadly weapon.

At its heart it remains a weapon and, in the right hands, a very effective way to hunt. In this video, Aboriginal men use it to hunt large bats, apparently Flying Foxes. These men are hunting for food to feed their families and they’re superbly good at it. In a world where you don’t have supermarkets or people to bring your food to you, you have to take care of yourself, and clearly they do that very well.