History of Martial Arts |
Posted: September 23, 2019 |
Martial Arts is a practice as old as time itself. Mankind has tons of proof contributing to the fact that martial arts are indeed an ancient practice that has developed into what it is today. This article is all about discussing the old traditions and customs that modern day martial arts has seemingly forgotten. We’re going to go over how it started way back in the B.C. times, it’s evolution through various parts of the globe and how two worlds came together to turn this art into a sport. Let’s get into it. The Start The oldest signs of a form of martial arts practice come from a cave in Eastern Spain. These cave paintings depicted people wrestling that are supposedly from the 10,000 to 6,000 BCE era. However, the first proper martial arts program was created during the Xia Dynasty by the Yellow Emperor Huangdi. He was known for this books regarding various areas of life. However, one particular book was on martial arts which were the very first of its kind. This tradition of martial arts was greatly evolved in China. Martial art practices from India were merged with the customs in China which ushered the art to its next step. Europe First accounts of martial arts in Europe were in Greece. The official term used in Ancient Greek was pankration which was a basically just mass murdering, it couldn’t even be called a sport since neither participant had any regard for the other person’s well-being. There wasn’t any concept of martial art uniforms during this time. Records of pankration were well-documented in manuals that historians have obtained over the years. Europe was fond of all type of fighting styles; sword and shield, two swords, melee weapons but most importantly, unarmed combat. Japan The Japanese martial arts were much more ‘humane’ as compared to the martial art being conducted in other areas of the glove. Japanese trained samurais were known to be noble and generous, always keeping their ‘code of conduct’ in mind. They fought, but only to safeguard their beliefs. They even had their own elegant martial arts outfits. During this era, martial art was declared an academic course and schools started teaching this skill to young students. The 19th Century This was the time when martial arts of the two sides, the West and the East were combined. The West had finally started conducting trading expeditions to China and Japan and during this time, various customs were traded as well. The very first Asian Martial Artist to teach within the boundaries of Europe was Edward Willian Barton-Wright who was a railway engineer that studied the art of jiu-jitsu while staying in Japan. The 20th Century World Fencing Championships were officially started in 1921 which was the first instance where martial arts was treated as a proper sport instead of just straight up brawling. The previous century, Asia had its effect on Western arts, but fast-forward a hundred years later, it was Asia’s time to learn a thing or two from the West. Hollywood had also started created films and movies based on Asian arts which really globally released the merged style of martial arts that took almost two centuries to brew. Today These days, martial arts is at its peak due to competitions such as UFC and PRIDE. There are also other organizations like WWE and NJPW that might not be considered martial arts per se, but most of their styles have deep martial art influences. Martial arts has had ups and downs over the course of its existence. However, one thing we can say for certain, the only direction the sport is going to heading now is up.
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