Oldest Martial Art?

[Kosho Gakkusei]

Intreresting link on this topic.

http://hoplology.com/weapons_detail.asp?id=8

_Don Flatt

 

[exile]

Intreresting link on this topic.

http://hoplology.com/weapons_detail.asp?id=8

_Don Flatt

Good stuff, Don—this chap has clearly done his homework. I'd suspect that stick/staff fighting arts were among the very first `civilan' (non-military-weapon) based combat systems to appear. Thanks for the link!

 

[Langenschwert]

(though I suspect that most of the training those chaps received would have been oriented towards weapons).

Hi Exile,

That wrestling was used as military training, even for those who use weapons is no surprise to me. The oldest manual in the Liechtenauer tradition in Germany states that "all swordsmanship comes from wrestling". Coming into very close bodily contact with the opponent happens a lot in armed combat. Presumably it happens even more often in the press of battle than a formal duel, so wrestling is a crucial skill to have for a warrior specializing in armed melee combat. It was probably noted fairly early in military culture that those warriors who wrestled well survived more combats than those who did not. At that point incorporating wrestling into military training becomes an obvious choice to those who design the training.

Best regards,

-Mark

 

[exile]

Hi Exile,

That wrestling was used as military training, even for those who use weapons is no surprise to me. The oldest manual in the Liechtenauer tradition in Germany states that "all swordsmanship comes from wrestling". Coming into very close bodily contact with the opponent happens a lot in armed combat. Presumably it happens even more often in the press of battle than a formal duel, so wrestling is a crucial skill to have for a warrior specializing in armed melee combat. It was probably noted fairly early in military culture that those warriors who wrestled well survived more combats than those who did not. At that point incorporating wrestling into military training becomes an obvious choice to those who design the training.

This makes sense to me, Mark. The typical infantry soldier in ancient or mediaeval times would have been hurled into an absolutely chaotic mass of twisting bodies—just as in a streetfight, where you're at the closest possible range almost from the get-go and you better not be relying on complex balancing skills or move which require the limberness and boneless flexibility of a ballet dancer or gymnast to perform (e.g., kicks to the opponent's head delivered from a foot away! :lol.

That point about the interconversion of wrestling and swordfighting skills is brilliant, btw—it's the mirror image of the point I was trying to make in an earlier post about how the empty-handed techs of Okinawan te were influenced by the Minimoto samurai's budo theories, in which moves with the sword in armed combat, and moves with body limbs in unarmed combat, should be essentially the same. This is the same idea coming from the other direction....

 

[Balrog]

I've been trying to find an answer to this question and I keep coming to dead ends. Which Martial Art is oldest? Any insight?

Probably Rock-to-Skull-Do.

 

[Steel Tiger]

That's a fair point, and the Korean example is certainly a good one: I suppose its at least possible with most representations of physical activity that they could be some kind of dance or other form of ritual, though to my mind the wrestling interpretation is a sensible one. In the case of the Beni Hasan murals, I'd say its a more than reasonable conclusion that the intention was to demonstrate wrestling manouevres. I wouldn't have thought there are too many interpretations of those images other than an instructional depiction of wrestling technique, but perhaps you'd disagree?

I would have to say that the Beni Hasan depictions are what they appear to be - a demonstration of wrestling manouevres. The reason behind the practice is what I would like to find out, fitness, competition, or combat. It is very likely that all three are involved.

The cult of the body beautiful cannot be discounted as a driving factor with ancient cultures either. The Greeks and Romans suffered from this obsession so I can see no reason why neighbouring cultures might not also.

The idea that they were simply conditioning exercises or a method of competition in peacetime is also plausible, although the distinction between 'sport' and actual combat in a military setting is not necessarily that clear. I'd cite the following quote from Josephus, taken from 'The Jewish War', Book III, Chapter V (written in the 1st century AD), as an example:



From that we can judge that the Romans at least tended to treat exercise as interchangeable with battle itself - an 'unbloody battle'. This matches the idea that you should 'fight like you train', very much the methodology of what today is called MMA (arguably a descendant of something the Roman's would have recognised, pankration). Today's military has incorporated martial arts like BJJ into Modern Army Combatives, partly due to their recognition that competition is a useful tool in military training. But it would of course be merely speculation on my part to suggest that the Sumerians or indeed Romans might have used wrestling in a similar manner.

Roman military training is well documented and involved practice with overweight weapons (a practice also seen in India, China, and Japan) to improve the dexterity of the soldiery. Given the way that Romans fought, the use of boxing and wrestling to toughen soldiers and accustom them to pain is not surprising. The Romans definitely embodied the "train like you fight" attitude. Many ancient writers (not Roman) have noted that they were vicious and cruel, showing very little in the way of mercy.

I agree, there is reason to hope, though again, a lot of luck will have to be involved. The problem is a general one with trying to develop a sound, empirically plausible picture of ancient knowledge systems. A good indication of the problem is looking at the state of the KMAs between the end of WWII and the late 1950s, the Kwan era. We still don't have any very good, detailed picture of what training practices were like, or how the transition from the Kwan founders' karate training during the 1930s to the post-occupation form of KMA took place. There are hints in interviews, and casual references to specific techniques or `sparring', but we still don't really know in any kind of historically precise detail what went on in the Kwans. Doug Cook, in his most recent book Traditional Taekwondo, makes the interesting observation that

Compiling an accurate history of this [Kwan-era] period, when taekwondo was in its formative stages, is difficult at best given the erratic nature of its documentation. Major occurrences were seldom committed to paper, and when they were, risked destruction at the hands of opposing forces. To this day, aside from articles appearing on the worldwide web, in academic articles and in magazines, history and tradition continues to to be transmitted by word of mouth... At the center of this chronological confusion is the creation of the various martial arts chools that evolved during the chaotic 1940s and 1950s. These schools came to be known as the kwans and the story of their similarities, differences, founders and politics, is pivotal to the birth of traditional taekwondo. It is a story few know in totality and even fewer have researched sufficiently to document accurately​

(p. 19). Now here we're talking about something that started little more than a half century ago! You have to wonder, given this state of affairs for a recent phase of a very popular martial art, in a fully literate era with every kind of information recording technology available, where we actually know the names of the people involved and much about their histories (though far from everything we need to know)—how come the history of this era is so bloody fuzzy?? Now extrapolate that fuzziness back over, decades or even centuries, but millenia—lots of millenia—and things start looking a bit grim, as far as a detailed picture of who was doing what how, and when. One of the problems with a lot of speculation about MA history is that it simply fails to take into account the enormous difficulty of meeting `burden of proof' requirements on specific claims about such a picture for any given time period. So at the time depths involved, we are going to need to be lucky indeed to come across the evidence we need to meet that burden of proof...

Perhaps we could encourage future MAs analysists and writers to carve their thoughts into stone. It would last for ages but would be difficult to disseminate.

The history of TKD is an excellent example of the problems that historians can run into when seeking to trace the origins of something. I would have to add to Doug Cook's analysis the idea of revision. It would seem to me that a lot of the fuzziness he referes to may be a result of people revising history. Their own role, their teacher's role, the role of their Kwan, all this adds to the problem of scant and destroyed documentation.

Looking at this from the perspective of an archeaologist I would have to say that we should take the Karate/TKD historical stream as a model which can then be laid down over other cultures to see if similar incidents and organisations occur. The history of Karate and TKD are quite straightforward compared to innumerable styles from China, Malaysia, or Indonesia. This makes it a good choice for such analysis.

You know I think I might just have found a subject for a PhD.