Martial Arts Studies

history of martial arts is difficult to reconstruct. Inherent patterns of human aggression which inspire practice of mock combat (in particular wrestling) and optimization of serious close combat as cultural universals are doubtlessly inherited from the pre-human stage, and were made into an "art" from the earliest emergence of that concept. Indeed, many universals of martial art are fixed by the specifics of human physiology and not dependent on a specific tradition or era.

Specific martial arts traditions become identifiable in Classical Antiquity, with disciplines such as Gladiatorial combat, Greek wrestling, Pankration, or those described in the Indian epics or the Spring and Autumn Annals of China.


Adapted from the Wikipedia article History of martial arts, under the G. N. U. Free Documentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki