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Justin Pasternak
Location: West Springfield, Massachusetts Joined: 17 Sep 2006
Posts: 174
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 Posted: Sat 17 Feb, 2007 7:59 am Post subject: The Origins of the Cutting Sword and the Thrusting Sword? |
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Could you say that the Cutting Sword had derived from the club or axe and the Thrusting Sword had derived from the spear?
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Bill Grandy
myArmoury Team
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| Posted: Sat 17 Feb, 2007 8:44 am Post subject: |
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Only in the most basic sense, and even then, I'm not so sure.
I imagine the sword came from the knife when someone decided to make one that could reach further. From there, variations appeared based on what they needed the weapon to do. Both cutting and thrusting actions are very natural, instinctive motions (punching and striking with the bare hands have both of these actions), so I don't suspect it took a lot of inspiration from other weapons. But who knows for sure?
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Jeroen Zuiderwijk
Industry Professional
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| Posted: Sat 17 Feb, 2007 11:26 am Post subject: Re: The Origins of the Cutting Sword and the Thrusting Sword |
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| Justin Pasternak wrote: | | Could you say that the Cutting Sword had derived from the club or axe and the Thrusting Sword had derived from the spear? |
Nope. The double edged trusting sword developed from the early copper/bronze daggers roughly 3500-4500 years ago (depending on location, earlier in the middle east then in Europe), which in turn developed from earlier flint daggers. As the swords grew larger, and got a better hilt construction, they became cutting as well as thrusting swords, either leafshaped or with parallel edges. After that, you've got about 3 millenia with swords developing back and forwards into thrusting, cutting or cutting&thrusting swords, depending on the requirements of the period.
Here's an example of an Irish early bronze age dagger:
A British/Irish middle bronze age thrusting sword (bronze "rapier"):
And a late bronze age / early iron age cutting and thrusting sword (Gundlingen type):
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Jeroen Zuiderwijk
Industry Professional
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| Posted: Sat 17 Feb, 2007 11:48 am Post subject: |
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| Bill Grandy wrote: | | I imagine the sword came from the knife when someone decided to make one that could reach further. |
Yeah, if you consider a double edged dagger as knife. However, swords have been developed from knives more then once, eventhough there were already swords in use. F.e. in the late bronze age, single edged knives appeared made purely for combat, rather then just tools. These grew longer, and became falcatas and related single edged sword. In the early medieval period again single edged knives (saxes) were introduced into combat, and developed into single edged swords (langsaxes, single edged Viking swords etc.). It's not just reach b.t.w. which drove these weapons to grow longer. For cutting you need momentum, and momentum you increase either by increasing weight or length (or both). In case of the first swords that were true thrusting swords, it was purely reach though.
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Justin Pasternak
Location: West Springfield, Massachusetts Joined: 17 Sep 2006
Posts: 174
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| Posted: Mon 19 Feb, 2007 9:25 pm Post subject: |
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So all-in-all the sword is essentially a variation of the knife with a very long blade.
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Jeroen Zuiderwijk
Industry Professional
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| Posted: Tue 20 Feb, 2007 2:06 am Post subject: |
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| Justin Pasternak wrote: | | So all-in-all the sword is essentially a variation of the knife with a very long blade. |
Yep, which you can trace back to the earliest flint knives used over a million years ago 
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This is a standard topic