Fast Fact Tag: traditional tools

No. Boomerangs could be weapons, but they were also tools and ceremonial objects. Reducing them to weapons alone hides much of their historical function.

The National Museum lists a wide range of uses: hunting birds and game, killing fish in trapped pools, fighting, digging for root vegetables, scraping ashes from fires, making fire, and being used in dance and music as percussion instruments when clapped together.

This wider use helps explain why boomerangs took so many forms. A heavy fighting stick, a bird-flushing returning boomerang, and a paired percussion instrument did not need identical shapes. Their functions helped shape their design.

The most accurate picture is therefore of a multifunctional technology: tool, weapon, ceremonial object and musical implement.