[HN Gopher] How to grip Bronze Age swords
___________________________________________________________________
How to grip Bronze Age swords
Author : speckx
Score : 85 points
Date : 2024-10-23 20:45 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bookandsword.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bookandsword.com)
| A_D_E_P_T wrote:
| What is sometimes lost in these analyses is the fact that man in
| Classical Greece was a good deal smaller than present day man.
|
| > _" The Metapontion necropolis ... revealed that the average
| height of adult males was between 162 and 165 cm (5'3.5" - 5'5"),
| that of females between 153 and 156 cm, and with a body weight of
| approximately 60-65 kg for males and 50-55 kg for females; in
| other words, the findings of earlier examinations were soundly
| confirmed in this respect."_
|
| > _- Kagan, Donald, and Gregory F. Viggiano, eds. Men of Bronze:
| Hoplite Warfare in Ancient Greece. Princeton University Press,
| 2013._
|
| The 2023 paper " _Stature estimation in Ancient Greece:
| population-specific equations and secular trends from 9000 BC to
| 900 AD_ " also corroborates this -- it posits a mean in Classical
| Greece of 162cm (5'3.5"), and in Bronze Age Greece at 163.1cm
| (5'4"). The mean is approximately the same, by the way, even in
| Late Medieval British men. (162.1cm.)
|
| This sort of thing often warps historical re-enactment. A katana
| designed for a 5'1" samurai is not going to be a proper fit for a
| 6' iaido practitioner in Iowa. A Naue II sword with a small grip
| may have simply been designed for a small man, who would have
| gripped it quite normally, and not in ways that seem exotic or
| unusual, e.g. index finger over guard.
|
| Incidentally, the proper way to perform the analysis in OP is
| with anthropometric modeling in CAD programs. This can be
| informed (but not _totally_ ) by hands-on experimentation, and
| would give a statistically useful range of potential results.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| You see this with all sorts of stuff. All sorts of machinery
| one would stand at and operate is short. The human spaces of
| things operated by crews are frequently too cramped for proper
| operation with the same size crew. Children in particular were
| way smaller back then so job duties and equipment customarily
| given to young teens and pre teens don't work with equivalent
| modern people even after controlling for waistline.
| hprotagonist wrote:
| also, societies are generally _just fine_ trading discomfort
| for profit.
|
| a fine example is ceiling height in colonial american homes:
| sure people were somewhat shorter then on average, but also
| and more importantly, smaller rooms are easier to heat, and
| the tall lumber is worth far too much to waste on stupid
| things like houses, so you suck it up and stoop when you're
| indoors.
|
| interpreting the dimensions of historical goods is tricky.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| Colonial American homes are not so short ceilinged that the
| average person, even today, needs to watch their heads.
| Ducking in doorways isn't a big deal.
|
| Yes, standards for comfort were different back then but you
| don't see things get built that are actively hard to use
| unless there is some very serious thing you get from the
| tradeoff (like the deck heights in ships) because things
| need to be used to produce results. In a world where stuff
| is expensive and labor is cheap things get build such that
| the ability to apply labor to them is not a bottleneck. For
| example a work station that can be effectively operated by
| larger people tends to permit smaller people to work really
| fast without conflicting as much if the situation demands
| it. Some tool that operates by human muscle power and is
| just the right balance of mechanical advantage vs speed for
| the smallest man in normal conditions can be worked by a
| woman or child in ideal circumstances or a normal may may
| be able to work it for extended hours under normal
| conditions. Whether the tradeoffs make sense depends on the
| application.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| Amusingly, though, modern homes sometimes are.
|
| When we were house shopping, we saw a house whose
| basement ceiling was perfectly serviceable, albeit maybe
| a little cramped, for the family living there - none of
| whom appeared to be over 5'6" - but I would have to stoop
| the entire time I was in the (fully finished! as an
| entertainment/living room!) basement. I think the ceiling
| was something like 5'10".
| cafard wrote:
| A college friend, about 5'2", married a guy 6'2" or 6'3".
| He had enough money that they had a house built, and the
| architect or builder put in a room just for her, where
| nobody over 5'6" or so could stand up straight.
|
| Frank Lloyd Wright was not tall. We toured a home he had
| built somewhere in LA, and I think that anyone over about
| 6'3" would have wanted to avoid thick-soled sneakers. I
| said to the docent, Not a lot of Lakers receptions here?
| He agreed.
| bluGill wrote:
| Wood was plentiful and cheap in colonial America so tall
| lumber wasn't worth much more than shorter. You had to cut
| far more trees than the house and barns needed anyway (one
| reason log cabins were popular - they were made of waste)
| to make room for the fields. However it was still a lot of
| work to cut the wood (log cabins required you to square all
| the logs - round logs will roll off each other and make for
| large gaps, square the logs and they stack well and have
| smaller gaps between them - you could use round for the
| sides, but typically you wanted all 4 sides square to make
| nicer rooms), so you often would say good enough when the
| room was shorter just to avoid the labor.
|
| In Europe wood was much more expensive (they had been using
| it for 1000 years or so). The natives in America had
| different practices and so didn't typically use wood the
| way settlers did.
| throw0101a wrote:
| > _However it was still a lot of work to cut the wood
| (log cabins required you to square all the logs - round
| logs will roll off each other and make for large gaps_
|
| Square logs are not needed if you notch your round logs:
|
| * https://www.logcabinhub.com/log-cabin-notches/
| mattlondon wrote:
| The notching is great for the hypothetical 100% circular
| log, but there will still be undulations and curves and
| twists and weird bumps and lumps etc that would make for
| quite large gaps between layers. You would need to either
| flatten/groove the entire length of the log, or find some
| other way to fill the gaps. I am no expert but I have
| vague recollection of watching westerns etc where there
| appears to be clay packed into the joint between the logs
| which I guess would make a decent join.
| bluGill wrote:
| They did use clay, but the logs were still squared off so
| they fit.
|
| Westerns were generally filmed by people who had never
| lived in or seen a log cabin (or if they did the walls
| were covered with something else and so they didn't know
| what was inside) and so they are not a good guide to what
| was really done.
| bee_rider wrote:
| In their diagrams it looks like some of the logs still
| have flattened tops and bottoms for some of the designs.
| Doesn't the average thickness of the wall depend on the
| flatness of the logs? (If they are perfectly round
| geometry-universe cylinders, I guess they will only be
| touching along a one-dimensional line).
| bluGill wrote:
| That is a modern take. Even back then they would have
| known it was not a good idea. People in the past were not
| stupid, they knew it was a bad idea to save too much
| labor.
| hprotagonist wrote:
| > tall lumber wasn't worth much more than shorter.
|
| it absolutely was -- you sold it to the motherland for
| ship's masts and boards.
| bluGill wrote:
| There are more than enough for all those needs.
| hprotagonist wrote:
| https://newenglandhistoricalsociety.com/new-hampshire-
| pine-t...
|
| kind of.
| bluGill wrote:
| Yeah, that didn't last for long and different areas hit
| it sooner than others.
| tokai wrote:
| Soviet MBTs are a great example of this. Even after
| selecting for short tankers, they are still very
| uncomfortable.
| Mistletoe wrote:
| We went to Hot Springs Arkansas once and were upstairs in a
| historical gymnasium and it was hilarious how low everything
| was. Punching bags and rings and stuff that were about nose
| high and we were looking over the top of all of it. They said
| it was because everyone was so short back then.
|
| We take for granted all the advances in better nutrition and
| other things we just experienced in the 20th century. An
| unprecedented era in human history we don't thank our lucky
| stars to have been born in enough.
|
| Some good discussions with references here.
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1ao9uhc/.
| ..
| flir wrote:
| > Children in particular were way smaller back then
|
| I noticed this in the records of the Royal Navy in the 19th
| century - after a few years of the Navy feeding them, a lot
| of those kids had just shot up.
| nabla9 wrote:
| Franks, Arabs and others always commented how tall and
| beautiful Vikings/Norsemen were. They were on average about 170
| - 174 cm, shorter than today.
| A_D_E_P_T wrote:
| Yeah, that's not far from today's 50th percentile height in
| the US Army, which is 175.5cm.
|
| Our Ancient Greek would be in the second percentile. This has
| serious implications for hand breadth and how they might use
| a sword with a grip not far from 3" long.
|
| See: https://ibb.co/LRhMbVW
|
| (From "2012 Anthropometric Survey of US Army Personnel")
| Tor3 wrote:
| One data sample - the Norse settlements in Greenland: Average
| for men was 171cm, but many were 184-185 cm (wikipedia).
| Women's average height was 156 cm.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Several years ago, I visited Mikulcice, where the former
| capital of Great Moravia (9th century AD) was excavated. In
| the museum, most of the skeletons were < 170 cm. One, though,
| stood out at 183 cm. According to DNA, this skeleton belonged
| to a Nordic man.
| Freak_NL wrote:
| Would anthropometric modeling result in a better analysis than
| letting someone proficient in swordplay of the right size
| (i.e., tiny) handle the object and expound on the issues and
| feel of the weapon? The model would have to reason like a
| (skilled) swordsperson to be able to be of use beyond
| establishing the physical limits.
|
| "Oh no, they could never have held them like that, because
| [jargon]. See? [demonstrate]"
| A_D_E_P_T wrote:
| Probably, because with modeling you can test a wide range of
| different hand+limb sizes and motions; you're not limited to
| the feedback from one tester, which, as the OP notes in its
| discussion of the "German" grip, might have preconceived
| notions about swordplay not shared by the Greeks.
|
| Modeling can be informed by real-world use, though,
| certainly.
| t-3 wrote:
| The assumption that many or most people using swords were
| skilled or had anything near formal training is probably
| wrong though. Most people who didn't make a living with
| weapons for generations probably learned to fight by
| wrestling and hitting each other with sticks like modern
| children still do, and learn the rest through practical
| experience.
| jjk166 wrote:
| In the bronze age the only people who had swords were
| almost certainly making a living with the weapons. These
| were expensive items, comparable to a car in modern days -
| it wasn't astronomically out of reach but it would be a
| major purchase for anyone who wasn't rich. They were often
| intricately designed for aesthetics and were prized items.
|
| People who didn't fight for a living (and even many that
| did) would use much less expensive and skill intensive
| weapons.
| ants_everywhere wrote:
| People were smaller, and also child soldiers have always been a
| thing. It would not be unheard of after battle to kill grown
| men, enslave the women, and force the boys to become soldiers.
|
| If this was common enough, we should see evidence of regiments
| of child soldiers with smaller weapons and armor.
|
| I'm sure historians consider this, but it's so unpleasant to
| think about that it slips most people's minds.
| themaninthedark wrote:
| I think if you are going to force the boys to serve in your
| military in order to further your conquest, you would
| probably not equip them with armor.
|
| Most of the anecdotes that I remember seem to suggest that
| you kill the men and boys as a boy will grow up to be a man
| who remembers what you did to him.
| bluGill wrote:
| More importantly (but even more unpleasant to think about)
| is boys grow up to want women, so by killing the boys you
| get more girls for your harem. (it would not be unusual for
| a 45 year old man to take a 14 year old girl). Girls from
| your tribe probably get some protection from the worst of
| this, but girls (and women) you capture from a different
| tribe are your to enjoy in whatever way you want.
| hammock wrote:
| A less cynical version of the same point is that fertile
| women are vital to the continuation of a tribe, while
| boys are expendable (and most valuable in war, verily)
| isk517 wrote:
| I wonder how much was about building a harem compared to
| replacing women lost during childbirth.
| o11c wrote:
| We _should_ be careful about statistics for "age at
| first marriage". Common flaws are to look only at
| "nobles" (who marry for political reasons), to look at
| the lowest recorded/permitted age as if it were typical,
| and to assume when menarche happens (which depends highly
| on nutrition).
|
| But one way or another, polygyny must necessarily be
| linked with killing men. The birth ratio is practically
| fixed in the absence of sex-selective abortion.
| ants_everywhere wrote:
| > you would probably not equip them with armor
|
| yeah that's possible. I just meant to say if there is
| armor, it would be smaller
| gadders wrote:
| No wonder Maximus Thrax stood out:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maximinus_Thrax#Appearance
| jollyllama wrote:
| The post https://www.patreon.com/posts/ergonomics-of-113167023
| referenced by The Article mentions this
|
| >The Mystery of the Short Grips
|
| > Many modern observers are puzzled by the small size of Bronze
| Age sword grips, to the extent that some researchers doubt
| their functionality in combat altogether.
|
| > The first question that often arises is whether Bronze Age
| warriors had smaller hands due to shorter body height.
|
| > While it is true that average body height was somewhat
| shorter, the difference is negligible.
|
| > The remains of victims found in the Tollense Valley show an
| average height of around 1.70 m.
|
| > This suggests that their hand bones might have been slightly
| smaller than those of modern men, but as prehistoric people
| engaged in various crafts and manual labour, their hands would
| have been far more muscular than those of most people living in
| Western civilisations today.
| A_D_E_P_T wrote:
| > _While it is true that average body height was somewhat
| shorter, the difference is negligible._
|
| > _The remains of victims found in the Tollense Valley show
| an average height of around 1.70 m._
|
| The Tollense valley is in Germany, not Greece. In Greece, the
| average male height was (and still is!) a good deal shorter
| -- 162cm in the Bronze Age.
|
| This puts the Ancient Greek mean height in the modern 2nd
| percentile, which has hugely significant implications for
| hand breadth. I've checked against a US Army database, which
| you can see here: https://ibb.co/LRhMbVW
|
| Now imagine some of these swords were made for shorter-than-
| average men. A 3" grip would fit perfectly. It would not,
| however, fit in an average modern hand -- which could lead to
| very complex rationalizations as to how that short-gripped
| sword might have been used. Such rationalizations are
| ultimately misleading and unnecessary.
|
| For there's also a great deal of Bronze Age art that shows
| swords gripped quite normally. And this _directly_
| contravenes that Patreon post. See:
|
| https://periklisdeligiannis.wordpress.com/wp-
| content/uploads...
|
| https://www.thelanesarmoury.co.uk/photos/24766g.jpg
|
| https://c1.staticflickr.com/5/4304/35874906211_62611c697c.jp.
| ..
|
| https://thelanesarmoury.co.uk/photos/22103e.jpg
|
| _Edited to add:_ I 've checked this further. It's true that
| there are bronze swords from Germany and elsewhere that have
| been uncovered, of similar size and shape to bronze swords
| from the Hellenic world.
|
| Yet the average skeleton at Tollense appears to be 1.66m
| rather than 1.7m.
|
| > _Based on measurements on the most commonly represented
| skeletal element in the Tollense Valley material, the left
| femur, individuals at Weltzin 20 were on average 1.66 m tall
| (ranging from 1.60 m to 1.73 m; calculation after Pearson
| 1899), a value comparable to results obtained for other
| Bronze Age sites (Siegmund 2010)._
|
| (From "Warriors' lives: the skeletal sample from the Bronze
| Age battlefield site in the Tollense Valley, north-eastern
| Germany" by Lidke et al.)
|
| Ultimately, I don't think that this changes anything. There's
| no evidence to support any need for complex rationalizations;
| smaller men used smaller weapons with shorter grips.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| "The proper way?"
|
| Where is your research published I'm curious about this
| approach.
| A_D_E_P_T wrote:
| There's a lot of it. There's a "Digital Human Modeling"
| conference every year that publishes a summary of
| presentations as a ~600 page book.
|
| > https://2024.hci.international/dhm
|
| There's a pretty good summary of the current state of the art
| here: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/9781119
| 63611...
|
| This sort of modeling has become practically customary in
| many forms of product design.
| jjk166 wrote:
| At the same time though, warriors would not be chosen at random
| from the population. In pretty much every society you get a
| warrior caste who first of all were descended from the victors
| of some battle or another, selecting for one end of the
| physiological spectrum. Then members of this class tend to
| interbreed, leading to a genetic predisposition towards height.
| They likewise often have better access to nutritious foods than
| people in lower castes, which helps achieve taller heights (and
| is the primary reason for modern tallness). Even from this
| warrior class, not everyone would actually wind up fighting -
| military units would further select the tallest and strongest
| to be their elite forces.
|
| So if you find a sword, it's a pretty safe bet the person who
| wielded it was taller than average for the time period.
| A_D_E_P_T wrote:
| If anything, the analysis of skeletal remains has been
| criticized for the opposite reason. Here from the book "Men
| of Bronze: Hoplite Warfare in Ancient Greece":
|
| > "John Lawrence Angel, who in 1945 examined skeletal remains
| exhumed in Attica, put the average height of the Greek male
| in antiquity at no more than 162.2 cm, and of the female at
| 153.3 cm. It should be pointed out, however, that these data
| accrue from a rather scanty sample material: 61 male and 43
| female skeletons from Attica, as against a total of 225
| datable males and 132 females in all of Greece proper.39
| Similar results accrue from Angel's 1944 analysis of all
| ancient Greek skeletal remains known at the time: here, the
| result is given as 162.19 cm for males, with a range between
| extremes of 148 and 175 cm. The result for females overall
| remains the same. Angel, whose interest was primarily
| "racial" analysis, lists crania from Attica, Boiotia,
| Corinthia, and Macedonia; but unfortunately he does not
| indicate the distribution of more complete skeletons, which
| may have formed the basis for the calculations. Nevertheless
| it must be assumed that the average measurements actually
| represent the average, geographically as well as
| chronologically."
|
| > "The comparatively scanty material notwithstanding, we
| would be well advised to keep in mind that, in the words of
| Lin Foxhall and Hamish Forbes, _"this sample may be biased in
| favour of higher socio-economic groups since it is the graves
| of the comparatively wealthy that are most likely to receive
| attention from archaeologists." If this is accepted, it
| follows that the average Greek male was in fact likely less
| well nourished, and the skeletons examined by Angel may well
| belong in the absolute upper percentile._ "
|
| I'm not aware of any evidence to suggest that the skeletal
| remains of hoplites were substantially larger than the stated
| average. There are a few mass graves, e.g. at Himera, but I
| can find no height data. Perhaps they were taller by a couple
| of centimeters, but it strains credulity that it would amount
| to any more than that. For, as a rule, hoplites were
| freeholders and yeomen -- military service was a matter of
| social class and social standing -- they were not conscripted
| and sorted as though they were 18th century Austrians or
| Prussians: "Tall men to the halberdiers, short men to the
| artillery, giants to the Potsdam Giants." That wasn't the way
| of the Hellenes, and they wouldn't stand for it. The
| historical record is very clear on this point.
| pfdietz wrote:
| These swords were central to Robert Drews' theory in his 1993
| book "The End of the Bronze Age". Unlike the "systems collapse"
| theory popularized by Eric Cline in "1177 B.C.: The Year
| Civilization Collapsed", Drews explains the late Bronze Age
| collapse as due to changes in military organization and
| technology, with larger numbers of foot soldiers armed with
| relatively inexpensive bronze swords becoming dominant over
| armies based on smaller numbers of relatively more expensive
| chariots (with missile weapons). These changes undermined the
| ability of the elites of most of the societies of the region to
| defend against attack, and (so the theory goes) once it was
| widely realized the large stockpiles of wealth were vulnerable,
| it was game over. Those that survived (Egypt, Assyrians) moved to
| the new technology and organization.
| hermitcrab wrote:
| I read somewhere that the popularity of chariots in ancient
| times was mainly because horses were a lot smaller then. As
| horses were bred to be bigger and stronger (and agriculture
| better able to feed them?) the chariot gave way to armoured men
| on large horses.
| prh21 wrote:
| This change can be seen in the famous mosaic showing
| Alexander the great on horseback and the Persian king in a
| chariot. The added flexibility and mobility gave Alexander's
| army a significant advantage.
| hermitcrab wrote:
| A chariot probably works fine on an open plain. But it
| isn't very efficient use of men and horse if you have 2
| horses, 2 people and a chariot to give just one archer with
| extra mobility.
|
| It may have also been a class/cultural thing. A man on
| horseback is actively riding the horse, a man in a 2+
| person chariot is having someone else do the hard work.
| hotspot_one wrote:
| You get an archer with extra mobility AND the ability to
| focus on hitting his target while someone else does the
| steering AND armor AND a bigger carrying capacity (more
| quivers of arrows, ...)
|
| yes, I know the stories of the amazing accuracy of
| horseback archers (mongol, native american, ...). Just
| saying that the 2-man thing may be more efficient than
| you give it credit for.
| hermitcrab wrote:
| Personally, I think I would rather face N Persian
| chariots, than 2N Mongols on horseback. I wonder if
| anyone has done a comparative test?
| bee_rider wrote:
| I think they are separated by around 1500 years, so I'm
| sure the Mongolian army would be scarier. But the
| Alexander-era Persians wouldn't have that choice, right?
| For example stirrups and advances in composite bows
| (they've existed for a long time, but were high tech
| things, so I'm sure every culture iterated on the idea
| and 1500 years of iterations add up) probably made
| Mongolian horse archers a lot better than the options
| they had.
| paleotrope wrote:
| Refusing the give fight to a chariot oriented army versus
| a non-chariot based army would seem to also be a big
| factor.
|
| If you don't have chariots and they do, just fight where
| the chariots can't.
| bee_rider wrote:
| You probably look very kingly fighting from a chariot.
| Raised up platform, but also standing.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| With artwork it's hard to tell if that's how it went down
| or if that's simple an artistic representation designed to
| imply something based on knowledge shared with the viewers
| and if the latter then that opens up more questions. Is the
| artist doing it that way because "chariots -> foreigners ->
| bad" or it could be "chariots -> old ways -> inferior" or
| it could be "chariots -> obvious favorites -> underdog won
| anyway"
|
| Kind of like how George Lucas made the empire look like the
| Nazis so you know who's good and who's bad in the first
| minute before you even know what else is going on or how in
| most artwork about the American revolution it's obvious
| which side is and isn't a professional army.
| hermitcrab wrote:
| >most artwork about the American revolution it's obvious
| which side is and isn't a professional army
|
| True. But wasn't the reality complicated (as usual)?
| There were French regulars on the American side and
| various militias fighting on the British side. And
| Indians fighting on both sides.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| > But wasn't the reality complicated (as usual)
|
| Yes.
|
| Which further underlies the point that you shouldn't take
| the artistic depiction too literally.
| luciusdomitius wrote:
| There is also this massive military campaign in China, just
| for the sake of capturing horses from a Greek colony in
| Afghanistan
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_the_Heavenly_Horses
| smogcutter wrote:
| The king of kings' chariot was a status symbol. Persian
| cavalry fought from horseback.
| Tor3 wrote:
| The simplest suggestion/explanation for the collapse I've seen
| is that it happened simply because iron became a thing. Unlike
| bronze, iron could be worked nearly everywhere by nearly
| everyone, and because of that the whole protectionist bronze
| weapons industry collapsed and widespread change in economics
| happened.
| pfdietz wrote:
| This idea doesn't work, I think; the timing isn't right.
|
| As I recall, both Drews and Cline go into this theory in more
| detail and dismiss it.
| Tor3 wrote:
| It seems to just barely be in time: Again, from wikipedia:
| "In Anatolia and the Caucasus, or Southeast Europe, the
| Iron Age began during the late 2nd millennium BC (c. 1300
| BC).[3] In the Ancient Near East, this transition occurred
| simultaneously with the Late Bronze Age collapse, during
| the 12th century BC (1200-1100 BC)."
|
| There could be additional contributing causes of course.
| monocasa wrote:
| The thing is that early iron was expensive, wasn't of
| high quality and didn't fare much better than bronze
| swords/armor, and there's essentially no evidence that
| the sea people had iron weapons.
| jjk166 wrote:
| "Simultaneously" meaning +/- a few centuries. As much
| time passed between 1300 BC and 1100 BC as between the
| first steam locomotive and the founding of facebook.
| bee_rider wrote:
| That's interesting--IIRC it is one of the main "pop
| history" theories. Of course what that means, I have no
| idea, we (non-academics) usually misunderstand history.
| seanhunter wrote:
| Reminds me of "Bronze orientation day"
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nyu4u3VZYaQ
| hermitcrab wrote:
| Beat you to it. ;0)
| throwaway19972 wrote:
| Iron was a thing before the iron age, too. We just didn't
| have a cheap or scalable way to produce viable ore.
| hermitcrab wrote:
| Mitchell and Webb, Bronze orientation:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nyu4u3VZYaQ
| throwaway19972 wrote:
| Access to cheap iron definitely is widely accepted an aspect of
| the bronze to iron age shift (well, obviously, but rather
| rejecting the idea that iron is "superior" to bronze in any way
| other than cheap access to iron even when the economic
| implications are so clearly visible in the archaeological
| record), but it's important to remember that virtually all
| aspects of life changed for people in the mediterranean around
| this time. It's very difficult to summarize the shifts as even
| potentially attributable to a single cause (like much of
| materialist history!).
|
| Cause and effect are very difficult to differentiate, and
| combined with the fact that this a) produced a profound
| cultural change in the region (e.g. the rise of Judaism, the
| writing of the Iliad, the language shifts that occurred over
| the ensuing centuries) and b) distinguishing migrations from
| invasions from cultural trends in the archaeological record is
| nearly impossible, I highly recommend against such reductive
| narratives. Other possibly confounding variables include the
| spread of horse technology, trade technology (i.e. writing),
| climate and agricultural pressures, etc.
| pfdietz wrote:
| I think it's quite arguable that the causation is the other
| way around: by disrupting long distance trade in tin, the
| collapse caused the use of iron, even if in many ways at the
| time it was inferior to bronze.
| throwaway19972 wrote:
| Definitely an argument worth making! It's hard to imagine
| that discovery of cheap iron production and the trade of
| tin aren't related (though, of course, it was in high
| demand all the way through until the modern age for other
| uses than weaponry).
| harimau777 wrote:
| Why wouldn't they field spears? They are easy to make and my
| understanding is that they are more useful in most battlefield
| combat.
| rawgabbit wrote:
| I agree. My understanding is that swords were largely
| ceremonial or reserved for elite soldiers who were well
| trained. I have a hard time believing cheap bronze swords
| were available to the rank and file. Most soldiers fielded
| spears and shields and provided the anvil while cavalry with
| short spears or swords were the hammer.
| t-3 wrote:
| They probably did, but spear shafts get reused and the heads
| get melted down. A sword is much more labor-intensive and
| expensive to produce (not to mention harder to use
| effectively), so less likely to be recycled for it's
| constituents and more likely to be found in the
| archaeological record.
| rawgabbit wrote:
| Another argument why 1177BC happened is the rise of Assyria.
| After the Hittites fought with Egypt at Kadesh they quickly
| made peace as they now feared Assyria more. The Hittite vassals
| also rebelled and are believed to be the core group of "Sea
| Peoples" who would terrorize the Mediterranean. The Sea Peoples
| were not unlike the barbarians who would later threaten Rome.
| They brought their wives and children with them presumably to
| settle in new lands after the collapse of the Hittite New
| Kingdom.
|
| https://luwianstudies.org/the-initial-sea-peoples-raids/
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hittites#New_Kingdom
| pfdietz wrote:
| Assyria was knocked back on its heels by the collapse,
| shrinking down to a core. It only became dominant later on,
| in the form of the Neo-Assyrian Empire. By that time the
| Hittite Empire was long gone, although the Neo-Hittites were
| around.
| rawgabbit wrote:
| When did Assyria collapse? Tiglath Pileser ruled over
| Middle Assyria at its zenith until his death at 1076BC.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiglath-Pileser_I
| pfdietz wrote:
| wikipedia says:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assyria
|
| > Tukulti-Ninurta I's assassination c. 1207 BC was
| followed by inter-dynastic conflict and a significant
| drop in Assyrian power.[62] Tukulti-Ninurta I's
| successors were unable to maintain Assyrian power and
| Assyria became increasingly restricted to just the
| Assyrian heartland,[62] a period of decline broadly
| coinciding with the Late Bronze Age collapse.[62] Though
| some kings in this period of decline, such as Ashur-dan I
| (r. c. 1178-1133 BC), Ashur-resh-ishi I (r. 1132-1115 BC)
| and Tiglath-Pileser I (r. 1114-1076 BC) worked to reverse
| the decline and made significant conquests,[63] their
| conquests were ephemeral and shaky, quickly lost
| again.[64] From the time of Eriba-Adad II (r. 1056-1054
| BC) onward, Assyrian decline intensified.[65]
| jjk166 wrote:
| One would think a shift to larger, less expensive armies would
| favor established, reasonably centralized states that could
| muster large, local populations over small forces of
| foreigners.
| bee_rider wrote:
| It really is remarkable how bronze swords just pop out of the
| ground in such great shape. There's something vaguely mystical
| about it, haha, like these are the long lost swords of the elves,
| protected from decay by spells (a man will of course prefer an
| iron sword, don't have to go all over the place to get the
| materials and it will easily last our puny ~20 or so fighting
| years unless we actively try to get it rusty).
| NHQ wrote:
| Refined metal craftwork that is awkward to hold like a weapon.
| You are gripping a narrative, you are swinging cartoon history.
| "Not even a sword."
|
| Bronze Age Battle Razors is a complicated explanation for such
| unwieldy items. The sharper blade of Occam indicates this
| narrative to be dull.
| legitster wrote:
| I find the idea that late Bronze age swords being designed around
| formalized fencing grips a somewhat preposterous assumption.
|
| While I have no doubts that these were luxury items for a
| sophisticated people, these were simpler swords that long
| preceded all ideas of sword dueling and even any practiced
| martial art in these regions by about 3000 years.
|
| These were rare and simple weapons of opportunity. Most swords
| would be used against people who didn't have a sword, and maybe
| had never seen one. There would have been no more formalized
| training or thought into using one any more than you would hold a
| stun gun if handed one for the first time.
| kybernetikos wrote:
| I'm not going to argue from history because I don't know it,
| but I know that humans love tools, they love tools so much that
| they'll often put more effort into acquiring them and talking
| about them than they do using them for their intended purpose.
|
| I'd be quite surprised if objects this precious didn't also
| have a mini industry of people talking about them, selling them
| and telling you how to use them properly, even in the bronze
| age.
|
| The bronze age spanned thousands of years. We went from
| computers to agile consultants in much less time.
| jjk166 wrote:
| Our modern formalized fencing grips were designed with the same
| purpose in mind - to allow someone to easily grip and move a
| metal stick. Assuming the anatomy of the ancients was roughly
| the same, and their goals were the same, they would likely come
| to the same conclusions about what was a comfortable grip.
|
| These peoples lives depended on their swords and their ability
| to wield them, particularly in the situations where the other
| person also had a sword and was familiar with them. In the
| bronze age swords were quite expensive, roughly equivalent to a
| car today - something most people could buy but a significant
| purchase for anyone who wasn't rich. Beyond being valuable
| tools, they were prized as works of art, often featuring
| elaborate engravings. In many societies swords would be passed
| on through generations, while in others they'd be among the
| most prominent treasures a person would be buried with. They
| undoubtedly put a great deal of thought into both their design
| and use.
| legitster wrote:
| > Our modern formalized fencing grips were designed with the
| same purpose in mind - to allow someone to easily grip and
| move a metal stick
|
| Fencing grips were developed with the primary purpose of
| getting a long reach in a 1 on 1 duel with another swordsman
| in an era when both were ubiquitous.
|
| Certainly a bronze-age sword was a state-of-the-art invention
| for it's time and commanded prestige. But I don't think it's
| safe to assume they would have adopted a 15th century sword
| technique. They would never have needed to! They had the
| best, easiest-to-use weapon around.
|
| To your point, I don't think a great Lord of the era would
| commission one of these swords, with a handle so clearly
| designed to be held at a 45-degree angle, just to hold it in
| an awkward angle or direction with the mushroom pommel
| dangling uselessly.
| jjk166 wrote:
| Fencing refers to multiple different styles of sword
| fighting. Even in the most restrictive sense - the specific
| modern sport of fencing - there are 3 styles, including the
| saber which is held at a 45 degree angle. In the article
| they are using fencing more broadly to refer to a wide
| variety of martial arts that involve swords.
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