Old Fine Lobi Slingshot Catapult – Carved Wood – Burkina Faso

Carved wood. Height 17.2 cm × width 7.8 cm ( 6.77 × 3.07 inches ). Weight 49.4 g ( 1.74 oz ).

The Lobi are an ethnic group originating from what is today northern Ghana. Beginning around the late 18th century (ca. 1770), many Lobi groups migrated westward and northward into present-day southern Burkina Faso and, later, into northern Côte d’Ivoire.

The name Lobi derives from two terms in the Lobiri language: lou (“forest”) and bi (“children”), meaning “Children of the Forest.” Early Lobi settlements were established along the left bank of the Mouhoun River—also known as the Black Volta—which today forms part of the natural boundary between Burkina Faso and Ghana.

Within Lobi cosmology, the Mouhoun River holds profound symbolic significance. It represents a liminal boundary between the world of the living and the world of the ancestors, comparable to the River Styx in classical mythology. According to Lobi belief, the spirits of the deceased must cross the river to rejoin their ancestors in the afterlife. For this reason, the riverbanks play a central role in initiation rites, and the animals and fish inhabiting the Mouhoun are traditionally regarded as sacred. The animist worldview brought by the Lobi during their migration remains deeply embedded in their ritual practices and sculptural traditions.

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