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Thursday, July 14, 2005
Martial Arts Evolution 4
Was reading in the local freebie newspaper in Manchester, UK, and for some reason, I guess out of human interest and a tenuous connection to the Olympics, on the back page, the feature photo was of two Mongolian wrestlers in Ulan Batur, who were battling for the coveted 'Elephant' trophy.
This 'Games' has its history in the military, dating at least as far back as Genghis Khan, and was a test of strength of the soldiers, factions, tribes etc. The games are based around wrestling/hand-to-hand, horseback and archery, all important battle skills of the roaming Mongolians.
This is the same as the original Olympics, where different Mediterranean countries or city states met on the battlefield of the arena with their best athletes, most likely made up of fighting men and perhaps aristocrats, one could presume. The events they competed in were, similarly, hunting or fighting skills, like javelin, archery, discus, running, wrestling, chariots etc.
So we know that at least for a couple of millenia, people have competed in events related to skills of warfare, but not on a battleground. So it wouldn't be foolish to presume that some, if not all, of the competitors had some degree of practice or training to be worthy of entering.
So Martial Arts, or fighting skills, have been around since the first humans learnt to engage in battle and practiced those skills, refined and polished them into a definable fighting system, theoretically unique perhaps to that village, town, city, country or just to a couple of individuals. Just because it has no attributed name, a fighting system is a martial art.
The Chinese words Wu Shu, means martial skills and they are commonly attributed to the esoteric forms we know from Shaolin. The refinement and peculiarity of those fighting forms have been distilled and tested and will no doubt always undergo evolutions and changes, but no matter what we hold as an image of a martial art, with what cultural attachments we apply to them, and how we view their use in society, a fighting system is created wholly for just one thing - Fighting.
This 'Games' has its history in the military, dating at least as far back as Genghis Khan, and was a test of strength of the soldiers, factions, tribes etc. The games are based around wrestling/hand-to-hand, horseback and archery, all important battle skills of the roaming Mongolians.
This is the same as the original Olympics, where different Mediterranean countries or city states met on the battlefield of the arena with their best athletes, most likely made up of fighting men and perhaps aristocrats, one could presume. The events they competed in were, similarly, hunting or fighting skills, like javelin, archery, discus, running, wrestling, chariots etc.
So we know that at least for a couple of millenia, people have competed in events related to skills of warfare, but not on a battleground. So it wouldn't be foolish to presume that some, if not all, of the competitors had some degree of practice or training to be worthy of entering.
So Martial Arts, or fighting skills, have been around since the first humans learnt to engage in battle and practiced those skills, refined and polished them into a definable fighting system, theoretically unique perhaps to that village, town, city, country or just to a couple of individuals. Just because it has no attributed name, a fighting system is a martial art.
The Chinese words Wu Shu, means martial skills and they are commonly attributed to the esoteric forms we know from Shaolin. The refinement and peculiarity of those fighting forms have been distilled and tested and will no doubt always undergo evolutions and changes, but no matter what we hold as an image of a martial art, with what cultural attachments we apply to them, and how we view their use in society, a fighting system is created wholly for just one thing - Fighting.
