From the sixth millennium BCE, however, comes the first confirmation of a change in ethics, again from the site of Çatal Hüyük. Excavations have uncovered a series of daggers made from flint—their blades are broad, pressure-flaked on one side and ground on the other, while the handles are made of bone. One example among them is exquisite, with the handle winding down in the form of a snake (figure 1.1). This is no butcher’s knife, but the ornate and prized possession of a warrior. It was designed for the thrust, and, as such, uniquely fabricated for the personal combat of man against man. It is also obvious that this is a warrior’s blade because it is designed for stabbing, and not for cutting. The method used to slaughter animals in the sixth millennium BCE is the same used today: the arteries in the neck are cut and the animal is allowed to bleed to death. In contrast, the most successful way to eliminate an enemy on the battlefield was, and is, to stab him in a vital area. This sort of grand-guignol logic has convinced many hoplologists (those who study weapons) that the “dagger of Çatal Hüyük” was the weapon of a warrior, used in hand-to-hand combat, and not the ritualistic tool of a butcher or primitive priest.
Figure 1.1. Knife made of flint with bone handle. Çatal Hüyük, Central Turkey, sixth millennium BCE, Ankara Museum. (Drawing based on museum photograph.)
Weapons like this dagger are not easy to manufacture. They require time, effort, and know-how, and we have turned up no earlier blades so evidently designed with balance, form, and function clearly in mind. This blade was created by a man who knew how to fight with a knife. Now, in the early days of organized agriculture, all men were hunters, farmers, and warriors; circumstance and necessity dictated action on an individual basis. But as weapons of destruction became more and more powerful and focused, the need for specialized ability and particular skills developed accordingly. The men who were more inclined and able to use weapons were the ones for whom they were fabricated. And so a warrior class began to take form, though it would not appear in full bloom until the Bronze Age.
We believe that people back then were less twisted than they are now (civilization always has a way of making things both better and worse). The desires and intentions of people, good and bad, were more out in the open. The dagger of Çatal Hüyük cries out its story to us: these men—who were not the animals we have come to see them as—realized that the bloodshed they were causing was a terrible thing. Perhaps their shamans had been warned of the consequences through spirit mediums. So they tried to keep the fighting among themselves: a warrior fought only a warrior, and they fought by mutual consent. Certainly there was a large portion of ego involved as well (“I will fight only those who are worthy of me”).
But the dagger we are discussing is not a butcher’s tool, and there are other weapons that lend themselves better to simple execution. A spear, for example, is much safer than a dagger. Even a stout club or ax is better, and less costly to make. This dagger is a warrior’s back-up weapon, something that he used in battle “up close and personal,” a weapon that lent itself for use in a duel. In short, these men wanted to give their enemy a fighting chance—and thus the duel was born along with the warrior class.
The second weapon of this kind that has turned up as archaeological evidence comes from Egypt, and dates from the fourth millennium BCE (figure 1.2). This knife, whose blade is also made of flint, has been clearly designed for slashing and cutting, not for stabbing. Nevertheless, its handle is decorated with carved images of warriors in hand-to-hand combat. We therefore believe that this knife also belonged to a warrior, though some will argue that its use was ritual slaughter due to the shape of the blade. (Suffice it to say that the “cut vs. thrust” argument in knife dueling still goes on today.)
Figure 1.2. Knife made of flint with ivory handle from Gebel el-Arak. The relief on the handle depicts hand-to-hand combat between Egyptians and a foreign intruder. Nile Valley, fourth millennium BCE, Louvre Museum, Paris.
It is safe to say, then, that the warrior class has been in existence since the sixth millennium BCE. Such men assumed, for the most part, the burden of war. Perhaps the existence of the Çatal Hüyük dagger also specifies the millennium during which the martial arts took shape. Beyond our personal love and knowledge of the combative arts, submission wrestling, and history, we base this conclusion on the Greek language itself. The words máche (meaning “battle” or “combat”) and máchaera (meaning “knife”) both stem from the same root, mach (áχ), in ancient Greek—a poetically exact and particularly mathematical tongue. We believe that this is not coincidental: máche and máchaera are defined within the same context, a battle to the death between warriors using close-quarter combat weaponry—a knife, hatchet, sword, or spear. Consequently, these two words also define the development of the martial or combative arts—referred to here with the archaic word pammachon (a compound word formed from pan meaning “all” plus máche)—which are the product of hand-to-hand combat involving bladed weapons.
Incidentally, it is possible to make an interesting study of the martial arts simply by examining the play of words used to describe them. The expression used for “martial arts” in modern Greek—following the English derived from Latin—is polemikes texnes, the “arts of war.” But this is a fallacy. The Greek word for “war,” polemos (πλεος), is a compound term, stemming from the Greek noun for “city,” polis, and the verb ollymi, “to destroy”; in other words, war in Greek means to “destroy a city.” Conversely, looking at the Chinese ideogram wu (figure 1.3), which today is used internationally to represent the martial arts (wu shu is the term for “martial arts” in Chinese), we see that the figure represents a castle. A castle never moves to attack; on the contrary, it is constructed for defensive purposes. Perhaps a better translation of the term wu shu would be “methods against warfare.”
Therefore it is better to speak of “defensive” or “combative” arts instead of “martial” arts. We will return to this topic in chapter 4 where we will examine the esoteric path inherent to the combative arts. Suffice it to say that the ancient Greeks did not think very highly of Ares, their god of war, who in turn became the Roman Mars, from whom arises the word “martial.”
Figure 1.3. The Chinese character wu, which represents a castle and is widely used today to refer to the martial arts.
The Impact of Bronze
In addition to the emerging concepts of the duel and personal battle, materials technology offers confirmation of the emergence of the warrior class. The ascendancy of the warrior class in early society is inexorably tied to the dominance of bronze both as a material and a commodity of exchange.
From the beginnings of the third millennium BCE, bronze changed the tide of human history and laid the foundations for the social conditions that led to the authority of the warrior class. The method of processing bronze was a prized secret. In addition, bronze was expensive and sought after. Since the weapons made from this new material were more effective than the stone weapons used until then, bronze weapons were assigned to those who, in practical terms, were more capable of using them. These were the elite of the warrior class, the heroes and demigods of the Bronze Age, the fastest and strongest of ancient society. The Greek Hercules, the Babylonian Gilgamesh, the Jewish Samson, and the Indian Arjuna were all of the class of the male warrior elite, heroes who, as we shall see later, fought with divine force.
Indeed, it seems that the appearance of bronze weapons coincided with the gradual disappearance of the matriarchy. As male kings and heroes became dominant, the female goddesses of the earth were gradually replaced by the male sky gods of the warrior class: Zeus, Indra, Horus, and Thor—all gods of the heavens, of thunder and lightning. Máche replaced spirituality as the driving force in society; smelted bronze, the stones of the earth.
Bronze is an alloy of copper, bearing roughly 5 to 10 percent tin. Copper was used long before the Bronze Age began, without effecting social change, hence it is to the second main component of bronze— tin—that we must look in order to
get an idea of the extent of trade at that time. Copper knives and hatchets had become popular throughout the ancient world beginning in the fifth millennium BCE, but due to the relatively soft density of copper, they were more status symbols than functionally useful objects. In fact, good quality obsidian weapons and tools were much more effective than copper ones (so was well-napped flint, for that matter). As copper metallurgy improved, so did copper axes and knives, but it was not until the discovery of bronze that metal weapons suddenly became de rigueur. Bronze weapons were far, far better than their stone counterparts—and everyone wanted them.
There are Bronze Age mines for copper malachite ore in France, Britain, Ireland, Spain, Slovakia, Yugoslavia, Austria, and Cyprus. But tin does not occur naturally in the Mediterranean, or in Egypt or Mesopotamia. There are some minor deposits in Anatolia, Italy, and Spain—but where did the tin come from that was used in, say, the third millennium bronzes found in the royal graves of Ur and in the city of Susa? We know now that Near Eastern cities imported tin from the East, most likely from Afghanistan, and that trans-European commerce exploited tin deposits in Cornwall, England, and southern Brittany in the early second millennium BCE.
The archaeological record tells us that by the fifteenth century BCE, organized, long-distance trading was established throughout the world.2 This trade linked the far reaches of northern Europe to the southern shores of India, and, I suspect, to places far beyond. We know, for example, that all the amber found in Mycenaean and Minoan Greece is of Baltic origin—and we know that ebony and hippopotamus and elephant ivory were moved throughout the world in considerable quantities. And royalty in ancient times often exchanged valuable gifts from far-away locales—hence the presence of Near Eastern seals and jewelry in Mycenaean Greek graves, and vice versa.
Furthermore, trade was democratic, not something reserved just for royalty. As early as the third millennium BCE, before the Bronze Age proper, quality stones for use in tools and weapons were traded liberally throughout Europe and the Near East. Obsidian from the Mediterranean, dolerite from Brittany, and flint from England, Germany, and Poland flowed around the continent. Pottery was traded from east to west and south to north, and Lebanese wood specifically became known widely as a reliable construction material.
Swords and Warriors
Beyond materials, cultural innovations also made their way from place to place: the yoke plow, alcoholic beverages, and the bridle are all prime examples. One other artifact, something most important to this text, made its way through ancient lands: the sword. It is the journey of the sword that provides strong archeological evidence of the existence of the warrior elite, primarily because early swords were essentially dueling weapons—and the duel was an important concept for these men, both in times of war and peace.
Though we will see that ritual duels with weapons took place almost five millennia earlier, the first archeological evidence of a mock duel with simulated weaponry comes from Egypt, in a reference to ceremonial stick-fighting dated to 2300 BCE. A later depiction (dated to 1400 BCE) shows two warriors dueling with sticks held in their right hands and second pieces of wood attached to their left forearms as shields (figure 1.4). The reference indicates that such duels took place almost a millennium earlier. Though it is doubtful that the first swords were manufactured in Egypt, the concept of the nonlethal duel is well represented in ancient Egyptian culture, and Egyptian military tactics may have led to the development of the sword in the first place.
From the sixth millennium BCE onward, elite warriors fought out their wars, dueling, for the most part, among themselves. Their principal weapons were the bow and javelin; their primary close-quarter (CQ) combat weapon was the spear. But bronze knives became important when they became available in the third millennium. We can surmise that, due to cost and logistics, javelin points and arrowheads continued to be made of stone or bone until bronze became more commonplace. Close-quarter combat weaponry, however, quickly turned to bronze, inasmuch as bronze weapons were more effective and durable. Bronze weapons also became a prize, to be taken by the victor of a duel to the death.
Figure 1.4. Mock duel in honor of the God Horus. From Grave 19 at Thebes, Ancient Egypt, 1400 BCE. (Drawing by Sir Richard Francis Burton, from the Book of the Sword.)
Because bronze knives were used within CQ combat range, and strength played a decisive role in battles, warriors of lesser size and strength looked for methods of victory based on technique, speed, and the delivery of a blow with precise timing. By the third millennium BCE, it is clear that combat techniques that took advantage of the opponent’s weak spots had been developed (millennia later Homer would call these techniques kerdea, “methods used to win”). It is interesting that the bronze ax and the shield were the principal weapons of CQ combat at the time; perhaps metallurgical limitations and material logistics played a role in this choice.
In Europe, together with the classic single-edged and double-edged hatchet, a unique new weapon was developed. This was a bronze double-edged knife attached perpendicularly to a long wooden shaft, forming a weapon that would come to be called a “crow bill” by modern hoplologists. Such examples have been unearthed in Ireland, England, central Europe, and the Balkans, and were prevalent from 2300 to 1600 BCE (figure 1.5). A possible use for this weapon may have been to reach over an opponent’s shield to strike while, at the same time, on the return stroke, hooking onto the lip and forcing it down so that another man might attack with hatchet or spear.
Figure 1.5. A warrior’s grave at Koscian, Poland. We can see the classic type of broad ax, a sword, and a crow bill with a long pole. Lĕki Male, Unêtice culture, twentieth to nineteenth centuries BCE, Museum Archeologiczne, Poznan. (Drawing based on museum photograph.)
In Egypt, the war hatchet was designed to be broad and wide, and perhaps signaled the eventual development of the sword, once metal-lurgical limitations were overcome (figure 1.6). The broad bronze war hatchet of Egypt was developed with one purpose in mind: to split shields in two and then to do the same to the opponent.
Inspired perhaps by Egypt, the weapons craftsmen of Mesopotamia created the first swords over the next few centuries. Curved and made of forged bronze, they resembled scythes. These weapons no doubt had a very specific purpose, since the warriors’ principal weapons remained the spear and bow. For the most part, noblemen and kings owned swords. In addition, these specific weapons were probably not very resistant to impact. A Sumerian carved relief from the third millennium BCE (sometime between 2400 and 2100 BCE) shows a warrior holding a hatchet and the sword-scythe of the Middle East.3
Representations of bronze swords with curving blades dating from the third millennium have also been found at the early Babylonian dynastic site in Tello. This indicates that Babylonian metallurgists may have been the first to come up with a technique for casting larger quantities of bronze, and that their bursars were the first to decipher the logistics of moving and refining large quantities of tin. In a tomb at Byblos in Lebanon, dating to the early eighteenth century BCE, examples of the real thing—swords in good condition—were first uncovered in the late nineteenth century. Quite a few have been found since then, more notably in Luristan in modern Iraq.4
The existence of these weapons is important for two reasons: first, they prove that bronze could be processed to make weapons of this sort beginning in the third millennium, and second (and more notably), they suggest a transition in the policy of warfare to include personal close-quarter encounters, or duels, with expensive bladed weapons. In essence, these swords would not have been particularly useful in the melee of Bronze Age combat (the spear and the bow were much more effective weapons); they only make sense if ritual dueling coexisted with uncontrolled warfare en masse.
Figure 1.6. Egyptian soldiers with shields and characteristic broad hatchets, which may have led to the development of the sword. (Drawing by Sir Richard Francis Burton from the Book of the Sword.)
These curved swords of the Middle East disappe
ared rather quickly, however, due to the emergence of a defensive countermeasure (and concomitant technological achievement): bronze armor, or armor made of processed leather reinforced with bronze plates. According to our current understanding, warriors began to use bronze armor during the seventeenth and sixteenth centuries BCE; this was when the standardized double-edged swords of the Bronze Age made their first appearance. Most people around the world would recognize these swords today, as their function hasn’t changed: they were basically designed for the thrust. The tip of this sword could slide between the plates of armor and wound an adversary, while the curved edge of its predecessor could not cut through bronze plates.
From western Asia the sword quickly made its way into Europe by means of Anatolia, the Aegean, and mainland Greece. By the sixteenth century BCE, the bronze double-edged sword, waspwaisted and rapier-like, had a similar shape and make throughout all of continental Europe, western Asia, and the Mediterranean basin. It was a treasured artifact whose mythos was to far surpass that of its predecessors: the spear, the bow, and the ax.
By the seventeenth century BCE then, Greeks, Egyptians, Mesopotamians, the tribes of northern Europe, the peoples of the Middle East—more or less everyone—used the same type of weaponry. This observation is of utmost importance, because, if the weaponry in a given geographic area (crisscrossed by commercial trade routes supporting the copious movement of merchandise) was the same, it stands to reason that the use of such weapons in those lands must have been essentially the same. For example, people today shoot the same pistol in the same manner in Sweden as they do in South Africa.
The Martial Arts of Ancient Greece Page 2