Please describe Aztec sling projectiles

We don’t think they did. They just used plain stones as the most effective projectiles. ‘The stones thrown by the slings were not casually collected at the battle site but were hand-shaped rounded stones stockpiled in advance, and these were also sent to Tenochtitlan as tribute’ (Hassig 1988:80). Slings made of maguey fibre completed the trio of projectile weapons (the others being the atlatl and the bow-and-arrow). The Nahuatl term for sling is tematlatl (‘stone flinger’). Mexica youths would have grown up already experienced at handling slings - being sons of farmers, they would have taught themselves to kill small game in the fields to contribute to the family dinner. John Pohl describes how it was made: ‘The weapon could be simply finger woven of maguey fibre, anywhere and at any time. A five-foot loop of cord was passed through a thong to hold the projectile in place. One end was wrapped around the three index fingers and the other was held between the forefinger and the thumb. Momentum was built up by swinging the loop over one’s head four or more times and releasing the thumb at the point in the arc when the thong was oriented toward a target. Employed in actual combat, the sling was capable of propelling small oval stones specifically selected for their aerodynamics straight through a man’s skull in excess of a range of 200 yards’ (2001: 16-17).

Matlatzinca slingers; Florentine Codex Book X. Note the central character with a sling tied round his head (see below)

The Florentine Codex is specific in naming the tribe with the highest reputation as slingers: in Book X we read ‘Especially were they named Matlatzinca [because] they were adept with the sling. The boys always went carrying the sling. Just as the Chichimeca always went carrying the bow, these also always went carrying the sling, always hurling stones with it.’ The people of Matlatzinco were named Quaquata (plural) - Quatatl (singular) means ‘one who wears a sling about the head [see first picture above]’. Matlatzinco is a term used in Postclassic times to refer to the Toluca Valley in the western part of the State of Mexico, a cold, barren region; ‘therefore these Quaquata were also very strong, rugged, hard, sinewy. And also, since from a great distance they sent sling shots which wounded, they thus provided little tranquility in the land and in war...’ (Florentine Codex Book X, p. 182).

Artist’s impression (illustration by Adam Hook) of the Aztec siege of Coixtlahuaca (Oaxaca region) in 1458 CE