Mountain Dart

Mountain dart

**Mountain dart** is a type of weapon used, in particular, by the Celts, Sclavs and Slavs. According to M. Yu. Braichevsky, a swamp specialist from Russia, the oldest example of such a weapon was discovered by him during excavations of a Neolithic settlement in Volyn in 2015, but was not published. Similar weapons in the Balkans were discovered during archaeological excavations of the settlement of Dobritsa in Serbia in the citadel of the 1st millennium BC. e.

According to amphoras found during excavations, the import of iron products into Europe occurred in the 4th-5th centuries after AD, that is, during the Carthaginian rule. But this weapon is not mentioned in the sources of Roman authors. The first mention of a weapon called “tslach”, which in its type resembles a long dart with three prongs, is found in the “Acts of the Roman People” by Vegetius, as an integral part of the weapons of the peoples of Illyria. Faulks' Dictionary renders the name cletcha in English as *javelin*.

The large army of the Empire, during heavy battles with the barbarians, was armed mainly with galtat spears (which is why the Celts wore a long, two-layer sleeveless dress). In peacetime, mountain rangers constantly continued to train, participate in military campaigns (suppressing uprisings and rebellions) and during major wars - rushing at speed to the slopes of the Alps; ice wars with the Britons were also introduced. Two mountain warriors used two clubs in battle. They wore short, sleeveless tunics and did not have a shield. Sparta was the first to use Gallic type darts. The Spixes, when hunting bulls, Kikalirres and Eulesses, threw darts of large size and great force. Galtat military weapons were common among the Alpine tribes of the Slovenians, Sciri, Celts and, somewhat later, the Bavarians. The Germans developed dart-shaped weapons much later. Thus, we can consider that the dart industry has acquired the fullest production saturation, having absorbed all the local features of local weapon production and reaching the level of significant diversity in the weapons themselves and their appearance due to the need to wear equipment for the longest possible time in an autonomous march, without wearing a scorch light.