Did eastern martial arts come from the west?

[Nathan Calvert]

The cultures mentioned if you look are pre-Inca. Does it matter if it is a result of modern codification considering it comes from an ancient source. As for the categorization of this as "secret martial arts" this is no different from Renaissance martial arts before associations like ARMA as for your quote about the Spanish conquest this is a question of the authors knowledge of history not culture.

[Randall Pleasant]

The cultures mentioned if you look are pre-inca. Does it matter if it is a result of modern codification considering it comes from an ancient source. As for the catagoraztion of this as "secret martial arts" this is no different from Renaissance martial arts before assoniations like ARMA as for your quote about the Spanish conquest this is a question of the authors knowledge of history not culture.

One of the wonderful things about the United States is that we have the freedom to believe whatever we wish to believe. I'm happy that you believe. And I'm happy not believing.

[Maxime Chouinard]

I'm also a bit skeptical about Rumimaki and further more to it's tenous link to the Inca (a culture which has by then mosly dissapeared, and was revived artificially in recent times).

The Inca were clearly a great civilization. But technologically they were still in the Stone Age! Stone weapons vs. steel weapons! Why are there accounts of the Spanish killing thousands in one day? Because the Spanish could and did and the Inca could not stop them! It is nice that Juan Flores has pride in his culture but that is not reason enough for me to accept something that is clearly untrue.

It should have been : "...was not achieved by military supremacy alone". Pizzaro mostly made his way through diplomatic and political maneuvering. The battle of Cajamarca was won because of many other factors outside of technological superiority (strong paralyzing hierarchy and internal unrest, open tactics not suited to meet cavalry, disseases already spreading). The Spanish were not able to repeat that feat. The subsequent revolts had to be met with many native "mercenaries", as was the case of the siege of Mexico, which was much more costly to the spanish and took over eight months to end. Some open battles were even won by natives over Spanish forces.

Please read Gene's article At the Edge of Accepted Knowledge in Western Martial Arts.

A good article, although he mostly attacks wild claims of lineage, while ignoring that many martial traditions survived outside of sports. Jogo do Pau, Savate, Bastone siciliano, bataireacht. All of those could have been mentionned if only to present some examples of traditions who make sense and can prove an historical ancestry.

Anyway this is again diverting from the original arguments. Native americans had martial arts, wether of not they survived up to now does not change the historical facts.

[Corey Roberts]

I think it can be reasonably assumed that settled civilizations with a warrior class (i.e Aztecs, Inca etc.) probably possessed martial arts. Although we have no current evidence of such. However I do not believe that hunter-gatherers on the other hand, possess systematized methods of instruction in fighting skills. (i.e martial arts) They simply lack the organizational capacity at such an early stage in technological development. Does this mean that they don't know how to fight? No, but as we define martial arts as systematic codification of combative skills into an organized method of instruction, they are absent from societies that have not yet developed settled civilization. If we ever find historical accounts that nomadic and pre-settled tribes spent time effort and energy in developing a system for instructing their warriors in fighting skills then I will withdraw this hypothesis. But from what I can tell, the success or failure of a given pre-settled warrior in battle, was generally up to the random chance of that given warriors own natural talents, rather than any sort of specialized fighting education he received from his society.

[PeteWalsh]

Corey, would you classify wrestling as a martial art?

If so there is of course solid proof of it among modern hunter-gatherers (e.g. Amazonian tribes) and evidence of it among ancient hunter-gatheres (such as in the Aleutian islands, which is what Richard Rudgley was referring to - see earlier posts).

If, however, by martial arts you mean military systems taught for warfare then you might be right.

[Maxime Chouinard]

Personally I would classify wrestling as being a martial art, it is a technique for fighting, be it for war (Inu from Aleutian islands were heavily fighting for access to whales, and were equiped with armors for it, as they fought mostly using bows), sport or "duel". French settlers observed that they had specific types of wrestling and different holds from what they practiced in Europe.

War in prestate society was a very violent affair, Some groups were losing up to 60% of their population to it per year, no modern war can compete with such an amount. Their type of warfare, petite guerre or guerre sauvage was mostly inspired by hunting strategies and put to writing and practice by soldiers of the Marine franche (you can read De la Croix on this).

And as I said bow and arrow was a skill taught at an early age; methods of shooting were diverse, but were homogenic among ethnic groups. It shows that there was a systemized method of instruction. They did not just give them a bow and said: good luck kid. Now it could be argued that it was taugh mainly for hunting, which is partly true, but then so is it in Japan, where kyujutsu and yabusame are used for war and hunting and still considered a martial art.

[Maxime Chouinard]

Here's some types of Inuit wrestling (seems it is still practiced in Alaska): http://www.gamesmuseum.uwaterloo.ca/Vir ... estle.html

Here's how it was described in the 1943 documentary Eskimo arts and crafts: “an Oriental form of wrestling, a primitive ju-jitsu, which came with the Eskimos when they came from Siberia.”

Chukchi wrestlers (inhabitants of Chutosky peninsula in Russia, had about the same lifestyle as Inuits, they most probably are the ones who populated the arctic: http://www.alaska-in-pictures.com/wrest ... ctures.htm

Wrestling from the Xingu tribe in the Amazonian area of Brazil: http://www.iwf.de/iwf/do/mkat/details.a ... atur=E+995

Don't know what to say more to prove that the hunter-gatherer was capable of martial creativity and succesfully passed down methods of fighting.

[LafayetteCCurtis]

Just thinking. I don't really get why the fact that Native American Empires crumbled under the feet of European invaders must imply that these cultures had "no martial arts." It's only necessary to posit that their martial arts was insufficient to defend them against Spanish invaders, especially if we use the most basic and most universal definition of "martial arts" as "systematized methods used in violent conflict with other human beings." After all, Aztec youths--both commoners and nobles--were conscripted into schools where one of the subjects taught was military skill; the nobles in particular had the dedicated calmecac schools where they probably would have learned the most advanced martial techniques and tactics known to the Aztecs of the day. Were there any similar institutions among the Incas, I wonder?

[Stacy Clifford]

OK, we had a long, LONG discussion a while back on our e-list about this very same subject, defining what martial arts are and who had them, also triggered by the Spanish vs. Aztecs question. The problem with answering it is that everybody has a different definition of "art" and "systematized". My contention is that almost all fighting cultures had some collection of martial skills in their collective knowledge, and some may have had a certain degree of systematic training, but only a few developed fighting into a true art. My own opinion is that an art is another level above just a set of useful skills. The martial arts we clearly recognize as arts add an abstract level of analysis to it, breaking down a collection of techniques into fundamental principles like footwork, timing, range, angles of attack, quadrants of the target, etc., all things which can be reassembled into new techniques by using logic. Saying that a culture didn't have martial arts doesn't (to me) mean that they didn't know how to fight or have any kind of formal training, it just means they didn't develop it to the highest level as an intellectual discipline and not just a physical one. I'm using a pretty stringent definition of art here, but that's how I see it, and you're free to disagree.

[Maxime Chouinard]

The martial arts we clearly recognize as arts add an abstract level of analysis to it, breaking down a collection of techniques into fundamental principles like footwork, timing, range, angles of attack, quadrants of the target, etc., all things which can be reassembled into new techniques by using logic.

Then bow and arrow definitely falls into your category, as it is taught with precise position of the feet, an exact way of pulling the arrow, and of course timing, range and angle is paramount to it's success. As for wrestling, I am not enough familiar with their practice to answer, but it is evident that a good wrestler would have to master those elements if he would want to win bouts and would later pass down this knowledge.

Categorizing a "true art" in this case is, in my opinion, very subjective. An art is by definition a set of techniques earned by practice, observation or study and is non-scientific in most cases (even if some try to be). Flintknapping is an art, a very specialised one, cave painting is another. These are traditional societies, and not much knowledge wasn't passed down from the other generation. It may not have been as complex as others, but then not all martial arts are and some base their efficiency on the fact that they teach simple and easy to reproduce methods.

[Nathan Calvert]

Just thinking. I don't really get why the fact that Native American Empires crumbled under the feet of European invaders must imply that these cultures had "no martial arts." It's only necessary to posit that their martial arts was insufficient to defend them against Spanish invaders, especially if we use the most basic and most universal definition of "martial arts" as "systematized methods used in violent conflict with other human beings." After all, Aztec youths--both commoners and nobles--were conscripted into schools where one of the subjects taught was military skill; the nobles in particular had the dedicated calmecac schools where they probably would have learned the most advanced martial techniques and tactics known to the Aztecs of the day. Were there any similar institutions among the Incas, I wonder?

The Inca had a school system made for the royal and wealthy classes of society. These privileged classes would learn religion, history government, physical education, and military techniques. as for the lower classes they would get military training from the nobles. it has been awhile since i really studied the Inca but i hope this is helpful to you

[Stacy Clifford]

Categorizing a "true art" in this case is, in my opinion, very subjective.

I completely agree, that's why the debate is almost impossible to settle. I also think there are macro and micro definitions of the term "art". Think about the "art of medicine" or "medical arts". It's not a single art, it's a whole collection of them, from the art of diagnosis to the art of surgery to the art of prevention, all related to each other through a common body of knowledge. Each smaller discipline is an art in itself, but I don't think any self-respecting Renaissance man would tell you that you truly know "the art of medicine" if you know a medical art or two but don't know the science that ties them all together. I look at martial arts similarly. Swordsmanship is an art that is martial (micro), but by itself it isn't the "martial arts" (macro), meaning the total art of combat. I know that sounds weird, but am I making sense? Going by this argument, I might say that the Aztecs and Incas certainly had arts of a martial nature which could be called "martial arts", but we can't say with any documented certainty that they had the larger, overarching scientific concept of an "art of combat" which we know the Spanish had. Thoughts?