Hoplology

[a_ninja]

Hey I was wondering if any of you guys know of a site that explains hoplology( The study of the history of armed and unarmed combat) really well.

[SBN Doug]

I've always been interested. But so much propaganda is out there it's hard to filter between accurate data, and data meant to make someone's art look the most ancient.

All my reading was way back when I was deciding which art to take, and that was from those big vacant things...we called them libraries.

[bushido_man96]

I think that this is really a difficult thing to research. You can research the battles and wars of various cultures without too much difficulty, but finding out the styles of fighting that the cultures used is very difficult.

I am not sure where you would start, other than looking up the history of various current styles, and then going further back from their into armed warfare, and when the cultures that were battling came from.

It would be a tough road. Fighting has been around since the dawn of man. Have fun, and good luck searching!

[dete]

without examination of the lessons of history we are doomed to repeat the same mistakes of our ancestors

I believe one of our Presidents said something like that.

[Daisho]

while beginning with the current arts, and tracing back lineages would have it's advantages. jumping back and trying to find some of the earliest known organized struggles, and examining how they fought their battles would probably give you a more relevant starting point.

Major conflict and struggle from these early periods is not documented strongly from civil institutions (scribes, artists), however the groups with the strongest vested interest in documenting the conflicts of humanity to some degree of accuracy would probably be religious texts, considering victory, to many of the world's ancient religions, signified their spiritual superiority, and would be great propaganda for the masses.

That idea comes from facts like the ancient Egyptians believing that military use of the chariot, and archery were gifts from their god's and passed down to deliver victory.

Even books like the Odyssey which is primarily a book of the relationship between the god's of greece, and their interactions with their human subjects, is heavily laced with what we believe to be accurate descriptions of the battle for Troy.

In the far-east this connection could be even more evident, due to the fact that ancient religious temples were largely also the training grounds for armed and unarmed combat.

unfortunately i'm half-asleep as it is, and unsure if i'm making any sense (looooooooong day, lol).

[RyuKyuBushi]

http://www.hoplology.com/