Ha! Sanity in this thread got restored, thanks gurugeorge and wombat! Interesting article about the evolution of sword fighting styles:
http://www.thearma.org/essays/nobest.htm
I’m still not sure what your point is, exactly.
I think you’re basically saying that in a hypothetical world where we would need swords again, there would be a brief period of time in which there would be insufficient data for modern sword engineers (note that engineering, as a discipline, is a huge advancement in and of itself) would not have enough data to design swords as well as past ones. If that’s the point, that’s damn specific.
Here’s a recap of my thoughts:
(1) modern materials and techniques can consistently make objectively better versions of any existing design that you hand to the right team, with enough money. Give them a specific ancient sword, tell them to keep the same general parameters and make it better. It’ll happen. More importantly, they’ll make them by the truck load.
(2) modern engineering and metrology will allow for the design of new swords to fit new hypothetical use cases, as needed, with a higher level of efficiency and sophistication than feudal methods.
A sword as a functional tool (separate from consideration as a piece of art) is like any other tool. Modern materials, modern science, and modern engineering will exceed feudal equivalents, assuming sufficient demand and capital to make the effort successful.
Look you woo woo monkeys, this has gotten out of hand. We can do everything better now when you’re talking about a contiguous chunk of basic manufacturing material. There is literally nothing superior in any aspect of ancient swords. They changed shape to reflect the fighting of the time, but my $20 digital caliper will measure the dimensions of those swords better than any smith could ever do, and then I can get it created with much better materials in a tiny fraction of the time. I can then shape it cold using powered grinders and polish it to a mirror while maintaining the integrity of the blade, then sharpen it beyond what any smith could do, using another several centuries of theory to decide on the final profile.
And then I could use materials Science to determine resonance frequencies to improve the ancient design, or at least confirm it, and then use X ray analysis to find any errors. It’s just not the same conversation once we move past the argument to antiquity or simple art. Function has been figured out.
This was done. One of those cable series that featured Tiny British Historian (bald, short, enthusiastic at handling weapons, I just forget his name at the moment and it will torture me until the middle of the night when I’ll awake with a start and proclaim it to the moon). Anyway, Tiny Historian would submit a challenge to a geek-artificer who would try to one up ancient weapons with modern designs. Repeating crossbows and the like. One challenge was to make a Katana. Modern high quality steel, ground to shape. Annealed and re-tempered via traditional methods (half-clayed for the quench, for example) to get the proper balance of hardness vs. flexibility, modern polishing - which he didn’t quite have time to bring to the full level - and he did it. In a fraction of the time it would take to make a high quality Katana by traditional means.
Of course, you still have to know how to use the dang thing…
edit in: Mike Loades, Weapon Masters
As far as using it, I’d agree that a medieval knight with his historical weapon would be far more effective than a modern equivalent, just because he knows what he’s doing and most people now wouldn’t. That said his weapon wouldn’t be better than a modern one in any respect. I mean we can look at old weapons, we can measure them and whatnot and replicate them at a higher quality. That doesn’t mean we could use them as well or anything, that old knight with his old sword would be superior to most HEMA people with modern gear, simply because he has the advantage of real training and experience that they likely wouldn’t.
But that was never really the discussion as far as I knew.
Sort of, yes.
Basically “best weapon” involves more than materials science, or engineering, it involves knowledge of how the weapon is going to be used - “best” in what context?
And there are more contexts than you might think. As I said, we can glimpse this from the remnants of what were once functional fighting styles that fell into disuse more recently in Asia (particularly China and Japan) than here in the West. There are at least 3 methods of power delivery in the Chinese (and to a lesser extent the Japanese) martial arts - a “normal” kind, more or less like boxing, using particularly hip power and momentum, a “spring loaded” kind that’s partly normal movement, but partly involves special conditioning of fascia and tendons via breathing exercises and stretching, to take advantage of their elastic properties, and an “internal” form, which involves the total re-training of the body (which is why you have those slow forms like Tai Chi - it’s a completely different way of controlling the body than the one we grow up learning haphazardly) and also the conditioning of the fascia and tendons. And there are mixtures and overlaps and sub-styles within those areas too. We can assume that the Western forms were just as sophisticated - although we don’t know for sure, but there are tantalizing similarities between the meat and potatoes of what’s found in the mediaeval/renaissance fight books and what you find in CMA or JMA. Form follows function and all that (but in this case it’s re. the body’s potentialities).
Now suppose there were such a scenario as the sudden need to design swords, some swords could indeed be made that are “best” in the context of “clueless thrashing about by unfit nerds on test dummies”, or even “semi-clued-up thrashing about by fit stunt co-ordinators”, or “semi-clued-up thrashing about by semi-fit ARMA bods”, or “partially knowledgeable use by highly conditioned masters trained in traditional Japanese koryu” Each of these three would mandate some slight differences in shape, materials, etc.
But none of them knows for sure how weapons were actually used to kill people (who were also trying to kill you) efficiently in their heyday, not even the very closest types we have (the koryu people or ARMA reconstructors).
Basically, the wheel would have to be reinvented, and styles of use, and styles of manufacture for those uses, would have to develop in a Darwinian arms race over a few hundred years.
A few hundred years?! Seriously, have you taken a modern engineering course? A hypothetical modern era that relied on flat pieces of metal to poke people will not generate an arms rate that takes a few hundred years to figure out how to make them pointier than the ones that we made 500 years ago.
I’ll agree with Lynch on this one: there isn’t some sort of perfect design that swords evolved into. Different regions, different available materials, different military styles, different needs favored certain weapons. But a rapier is not some sort of evolution from a long sword, despite coming into popularity later.
It’s absolutely clear-- you overly romanticize ancient swords. A few hundred-year arms race. I’ll give you this, the point you’re making is wilder than I even imagined.
It’s absolutely clear - if you think that “flat pieces of metal to poke people” defines what a sword is, you overly simplify ancient swords :)
Here’s a little sketch of one aspect of the arms race:-
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first of all, the physically least fit would be less likely to be able to kill the physically more fit, given neither uses anything but instinct and random thrashing about;
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next, amongst the physically fit, the ones who survived would be the ones who were able to leverage their body type, but fighting would still be largely instinctive;
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next, styles would develop around different body types and different forms of power delivery, and instinct would be honed and refined through training.
These three steps would at each stage mandate different shapes and materials composition of weapons.
For instance, at the most basic level, slashing swords are generally curved, and thrusting swords are generally straight with a taper. But what are you thrusting at? That will lead to different kinds of taper for straight swords. What direction are you slashing? Is it usually forehand or backhand, or both equally? Again, that will lead to different kinds of curvature. Or will you both slash and pierce? Again, different type of sword.
I’ll have a stab (ha!) at trying to define the disconnect there seems to be in this discussion currently. I start out with the premiss that modern technology of manufacture allows (if used fully) the manufacture of superior metal items…because, well ‘science’. I also start out with the premiss that once you have lost ‘knowledge’ in a particular field it takes time and effort to try to recapture it, especially in relation to ancient techniques (look at those darn accurate Pyramids, i wonder how easy it would be to construct them today using the same level of technology they had back then? etc).
Ok so that is my base line for this topic.
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We don’t need to reinvent the wheel in relation to swords. There are many still existing ancient historical swords we can scientifically analyze to not need the reinvention of the wheel in relation to that. The materials analysis we can do on those will mean we can now most of the time make a better sword, metallurgy speaking.
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We do need quite a bit of time to reinvent the wheel in relation to exactly how best to use a sword. The eastern traditions are stronger, the western near extinct (two basic lines (german and Italian (the english source i have looked at seems incomplete to the level of being near useless)) with rough detail of only two codified dueling approaches. Guys like Arma, and others that look to practice these known written down methods of western sword fighting are likely to add individual interpretation into the mix. The knowledge of the ancient sword masters was passed on from person to person and that line has long been broken (less so in eastern arts).
So i’m following this agreeing with everyone at the same time, in moderation. Gurugeorge is correct about the gap in knowledge and that it will take time to re-learn (say after the apocalypse when all modern technology and knowledge is gone) if we suddenly had to start using swords to steal oil in Iraq today.
But also with the examples of ancient swords we can scientifically analyze today, it would make it possible, with the right scientific modern approach, to make weapons of equal or better quality than they did in the ancient past (because science), excepting those rare still lost ‘magical’ weapons - those might be impossible to manufacture. If they exist.
Yeah that side of it I have no problem with, I have no doubt that modern science and technology can produce swords as good as or better than the “classic” best swords of the past, all I’m pointing out is science and technology alone couldn’t design “the best” swords from scratch (as it were - supposing, improbably, that materials tech and science were still more or less intact in a post-apoc scenario) - you need the other half of the equation, which is how the weapons are actually used, and usage is more complicated than thrashing about or sticking 'em with the pointy end.
Like lock and key - the material object the sword is the lock, visible and present, but for understanding what you are doing, you need the key too, the way it was used, and that’s lost to a large extent (although possibly reconstructable - e.g., as you say, ARMA people may be importing knowledge from Eastern arts in their reconstruction, but that’s maybe not such a bad thing, since those traditions are closer in time to what were once living traditions, and one may well be able to tease out something functional in that way, on the other hand, that type of triangulation has to be handled carefully if one is interested in authenticity as well as functionality).
Or again, it might be comparable to rote learning vs. actually learning, a difference revealed often revealable by the ability to paraphrase or precis. What I’m saying is that no smith today can “paraphrase” or “precis” classical swords, they can only copy extant examples and try to “improve” them in what (from the point of view of how they were actually used, now lost) is likely to be random directions. Millions more ways of missing a target than hitting it, etc.
I’m getting the impression that everybody is more or less in violent agreement at this point.
Who was better at making swords, early humans or early Klingons?
Obviously Klingons.
Arise, not-so-old thread!
I mentioned a buddy who was into historical sword fighting upthread a ways, and I noted that he preferred saber, but he also is still into the German Longsword stuff. Here’s a cool article/video of the tournament he participated in earlier this year (sadly, he’s not in any of the shots that I could see).
That’s a link to coverage of the Ray Rice story. May have a copy/paste error there.
Most annoying. Corrected now.
God help us if Rice had had a sword in that elevator…
I love swords, i’ve used swords (oriental and western), i’ve practiced martial arts, i’ve been in fights, i’ve played many contact sports and i’ve been a soldier. Having said all that i always find these kind of threads slightly uncomfortable (or threads on the subjects of those things i’ve done) because well they sort of are so ‘manly’? Kinda a bit butch, a bit related to the size of our John Thomas? (My god have i been compensating for something all these years, and what is more physically related to that than a mans sword!)
So yeah. I’ve had great fun with a bunch of this stuff, but i feel slightly creepy talking about it. Is that normal?
It would be abnormal if you didn’t. We don’t live in Narnia.
Does the current ‘gamergate’ controversy and some of the resultant discussion need to permeate every thread here, or are you just trolling?