HONDA 4

GuatemalansIingshots are carved and used by boys and men, shepherds and farmers who might spend hours sheltering and whittling under a lean-to during the rainy season. A marksman can bring down a bird or a squirrel at 30 yards. Any kind of bird or mammal that can richen a stewpot is fair game, as are predators of livestock like coyotes and wolves. Slingshots have likely existed since Mesoamerican people learned to harvest rubber, and rubber balls carbon-dated as early as 1600 BCE have been found at El Manatí in southern #Veracruz. But despite the likelihood they were common hunting tools and may have been carved of durable hardwoods, pre-Columbian slingshots did not survive the tropical climate. A man might carve and carry one slingshot in his life, or dozens. Why he carves an owl or a monkey might be due to having killed these, or aspiring to kill them, or it might be because they are his spirit animals, which he acquired at birth and carries as talismans through life.