Board Thread:Suggestions forum/@comment-30830745-20180225111723/@comment-25841881-20180228221649

Madman198237 wrote: Tolkien doesn't use the word "darts" exactly as we think of it. I always imagined it was used in the sense of just any old projectile. And the atlatl is a spear-throwing device. It throws spears.

Which Tolkien might of course be referring to as "darts".

Something I WILL complain about, though, is that if they were going over the walls they almost certainly weren't spears (range is too great), and the atlatl is a Native American weapon and not a common one at that, so we probably wouldn't see it in Tolkien's work. At least, not in the hands of Orcs or northern Men. Well, yeah, I was just using that as an example to point out that it really doesn't mean crossbows. The justification for crossbows is loose, as is the justification for atlatls. Neither is likely.. And if crossbows existed, then they should've had a much more profound impact on the world than they did. We don't see any form of tactics facilitated by crossbows, or any form of troops definitively using crossbows, or any other indication that they truly have effected a change.