Oxnate wrote on Sep 10^th, 2014 at 8:04pm:


How can you say that warriors didn't tend to do much writing? Where is your evidence of that? Now it's true limited sources survive, but that does not mean that a conclusion such as yours can be drawn.

Oxnate wrote on Sep 10^th, 2014 at 8:04pm:


My experience is that all traditional chinese martial arts have become more practical and less spiritual since becoming open to the west. You should remember that up to the middle of the 20th Century such knowledge was denied to westerners for spiritual reasons. Yet, even today honoring the dojo and your opponent is customry prior to a fight.

Oxnate wrote on Sep 10^th, 2014 at 8:04pm:

Again that is a conclusion that just cannot be made. It goes against all knowledge that we have of the ancient warrior classes.

You have to take all the older written records with a slight dose of salt. 

The fierce barbaric Norsemen were written about by mostly Irish Christian monks, who happened to be a favored target of said Norse when they went viking.

Roman accounts of the Huns that were burning down the countryside are also a little slanted.  And their accounts of Celts depended on whether the Celts were attacking them or defending against them.

Some were out and out thugs, some were, by the standards of the time, quite noble, but by our 21st century standards, still pretty brutal.

The spiritual side of the Eastern martial arts is there, just as it was in the Western, it's just that way too many people get their history lessons from movies and the movies don't mention the spiritual side in a Western film, mostly because the director didn't know it was there.  And if you look carefully, most of the sword fighting is Eastern, not Western, because very few people know what HEMA is.

JAG wrote on Sep 11^th, 2014 at 1:26pm:



I say that because we not many writings survived.  If more had written, then it would be likely that more would have survived.

And you can't assume that ancient Chinese martial arts were anything like Chinese martial arts 50 years ago. That is a conclusion that just cannot be made. It goes against all knowledge that we have of history.


JAG wrote on Sep 11^th, 2014 at 1:26pm:


I think Bill Skinner said it better, "Some were just people..."

http://chivalrytoday.com/series/real-knights/  This article gives a fairly balanced look at knights and chivalry.  And I'd like to point out that:  Quote:


Basically, the contemporary authors tended to depict them as thugs.  It wasn't until later that authors depicted them as 'noble'.

Just for completeness' sake: here's an image (perhaps ca. 550 BCE, a hundred years before the cup by Makron) showing a slinger with a basket or bag of stones on his left arm (Munich, Antikensammlung 340267). Posted elsewhere, but also belongs to this thread.

Yes, and very typical of the "Makron" style is that the rear foot changes orientation, rotating towards the target, upon release. It's smoothly done (you can also spin on the front foot rather than taking a step).

Edit: if you wanted it to be full Makron style, the slinger should look towards the target with his head, while turning away from the target with his body. This introduces an element of torque, which, upon unspooling, ensures dynamism and alignment in the release.

Look at the picture on the cup on page 1 of this thread. There are others. Power shoot: turn body away from direction of target but keep looking at target.

The picture you refer to illustrates not the "Makron" style torque in the body, but the use of a "man-purse" to store stones.

most of the depictions of slingers are done from models not actual slingers.

So any actual extrapolated slinging style is pretty much just wild guessing.

Although david's volunteered to go that one step further in carteheina (or however it's spelt) next year. And as well as wearing the bare legged costume he's going to do a naked battle charge wearing nothing but  a hat

I watched CA's vid that David Morningstar posted & his foot is not facing away from the target as seen in the pottery depiction. Rather, his face is looking back and his foot is similar to a Balearic foot position as seen with my own Balearic video.

I will continue to do more testing however because you may be on to something

Thanks Theoros for your continual exploration of slinging styles!