[Aztlan] K2352

[Allen Johnson]

Yes Sam, you may ;)
  I agree that with as much schooling and as much first hand knowledge as these people had to violent encounters, they would easily know if an artist knew what he was doing.  I have noticed in my few years with studying and training in various  European martial art and then cross training and competing with various other martial arts forms (mostly Asian) that alot of the base techniques and especially grappling is markedly similar.  In my opinion, the reason is that we are all human beings and working with the same tool as it were in this reguard.  There are only so many ways you can use this fleshy tool to effectivley fight another one.  To those that study and use it to great effectivness, all seem to arrive with the same basic techniques.  I have a collegue who is in the US military and did a comparative study on the techniques they teach in their Army Combatives classes and how identical they were to German Medieval texts.  It was astonishing.  So alot of my ideas and
 theories come from, what biomechanically works effectivley.
   
  As far as native American martial arts go, I have done little to no research into that area.  As far as I know, there are few who profess to practice and train in historic Native American fighting styles.  Many will show you the finer points of tomahawk fighting and throwing and things like that, but what do they back up their ideas with.  i dont know...havent looked into it.  But it certainly would be a worth while approach.
   
  -Allen
  

Sam Edgerton <Samuel.Y.Edgerton at williams.edu> wrote:
  Hi Allen (if I may): What's really interesting here, for me anyway as a 
hobbyist sports historian, is that not only does warrior A in K2352 know 
the proper wrestling holds (I'm especially impressed that he knew to grab 
B below the knee, not above the knee joint as so may neophyte grapplers 
try, only to have the opponents easily shake free) but the Maya painter 
surely knew his wrestling too - which means as you suggest that there must 
have been a Maya training school, from which A learned the right tricks 
while B is caught off-guard. Beginners always try for a choke hold which 
looks great in phony pro wrestling, but will utterly fail and get you 
immediately pinned if you try it on an experienced free-style (Olympic) 
wrestler. Wrestling, after all, is one of the oldest if not the oldest 
one-on-one sports, not only in the classical Western world, but very much 
so (and still practiced still today) in Asia from Iran across southern 
Russia through the various "-stans" around Siberia and China, the very 
place where American Indians were supposed to have hailed from some 13000 
years ago before they crossed the Bering Straits. Wouldn't it be 
fascinating if they brought some of these ancient wrestling moves with them 
to the Americas?
Sam Edgerton




 		
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