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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
>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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
> 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:
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 "Warriorsʼ 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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)
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.
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.
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.
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".
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.
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.
> 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:
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.
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.
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).
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
Several years ago, I visited Mikulčice, 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.
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.
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]”
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
Reminds me of "Bronze orientation day" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nyu4u3VZYaQ
Beat you to it. ;0)
Iron was a thing before the iron age, too. We just didn't have a cheap or scalable way to produce viable ore.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The king of kings’ chariot was a status symbol. Persian cavalry fought from horseback.
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.
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.
You probably look very kingly fighting from a chariot. Raised up platform, but also standing.
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.
Personally, I think I would rather face N Persian chariots, than 2N Mongols on horseback. I wonder if anyone has done a comparative test?
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.
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
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.
>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.
> But wasn't the reality complicated (as usual)
Yes.
Which further underlies the point that you shouldn't take the artistic depiction too literally.
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
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.
Mitchell and Webb, Bronze orientation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nyu4u3VZYaQ
Why wouldn't they field spears? They are easy to make and my understanding is that they are more useful in most battlefield combat.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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
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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 "Warriorsʼ 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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)
I wonder how much was about building a harem compared to replacing women lost during childbirth.
> 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
No wonder Maximus Thrax stood out: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maximinus_Thrax#Appearance
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.
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.
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.
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".
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.
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.
> tall lumber wasn't worth much more than shorter.
it absolutely was -- you sold it to the motherland for ship's masts and boards.
There are more than enough for all those needs.
https://newenglandhistoricalsociety.com/new-hampshire-pine-t...
kind of.
> 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/
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.
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.
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).
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.
Soviet MBTs are a great example of this. Even after selecting for short tankers, they are still very uncomfortable.
> 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.
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/...
Franks, Arabs and others always commented how tall and beautiful Vikings/Norsemen were. They were on average about 170 - 174 cm, shorter than today.
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.
Several years ago, I visited Mikulčice, 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.
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")
"The proper way?"
Where is your research published I'm curious about this approach.
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/10.1002/978111963611...
This sort of modeling has become practically customary in many forms of product design.
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]”
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.
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.