Another theoretical question: what are those Central African swords used for anyway?

[fearn]

Originally Posted by Freddy

[snip]

Just for the record : this sabre knife is not called 'mambele' but 'MAMBELI'. The 'mambele' is the sickle knife of the Mangbetu (as I showed earlier) also known as 'trumbash'.

To be correct the big knife, I'm showing above, was used by the Bandia- or Boa-tribes in Congo.

The big sabre knife measures 83 cm, in a straight line from the tip of the blade to the bottom of the handle. The inner curve is very sharp, as is the broader top of the blade (both edges). These were used, as Tom stated correctly, to hit an opponent using a shield. I wouldn't advise anyone to try to grab it by the point. The outer edge of the blade is 5 mm thick, giving the blade its strength. The crescent-shaped piece near the handle had a leather strap tied to it, which was fastened a the loop on the bottom of the handle. In this way, the weapon was secured in the user's hand. This is functional, no ?
The warriors using these knives carried big, woven shield. No body armor was used. I don't think these warriors bothered with fencing. They just tried to hit each other above and round the shield.

Hi Freddy,

These mambeles are neat weapons, but I do have to disagree with the idea that they're totally unique to central Africa. Even ignoring the Ethiopian (etc) shotels, they look like they're functionally quite similar to Japanese and Indonesian sickles (kama and arit respectively). Unless the mambele is so front-heavy that you have to swing it like a pick-axe, there's probably quite a bit that you can do with it. For instance, you can swing it like a pick (stab with the tip), hook and slice with it (cut with the inner and outer edges), and use the outer hook to hook things out of the way to make an opening (basically, use a backstroke with the hook to move a blade or shield out of the way, then, slam the tip down through the opening). If that hook is sharpened on the short edge, it would make a decent gut hook.

Also, the fact that these blades have knuckle guards suggests that they're worried about getting their fingers lopped. To me, that suggests some basic "fencing" was going on. In other words, these may be more sophisticated than they look.

Anyway, there's a lot of diversity in the shape of kamas and arits, and it might be worth investigating karate or silat books for ideas about other possible strokes.

Thanks for showing them, and thanks for the website.

Fearn

[fearn]

I'd also post this image of what I regard as the epitome of the "weird Central African knife"--this knife from the Yanzi, and 30 cm long. The image is from www.mambele.be.

Comments about functionality?

Fearn

[ariel]

RE: FEARN'S EXAMPLE.
I can hear a uniform "No comment....." followed by a long, long silence.This thingie is something New York decorators try to hang on your wall to give the apartment a " casual and funky ambience".
If this is a weapon, then an Art Deco vase is one too: both can cut accidentally..
I had a mambeli; it is a most awkward sword money can buy. It is heavy, grossly unbalanced, impossible to hold and the metal is of the poorest quality. But the blade decorations were quite fun, if one likes primitive art.
The idea of the "around the shield' attack had been floating around for quite some time and discredited time after time after time. I would advise the proponents to actually try it using a garbage bin cover in place of a shield.
I did: it was totally useles from the functional point of view but my wife almost died laughing.
Central African swords are great pieces of primitive art, on a par with Benin bronze and kente cloth.But as weapons they are grossly inferior to virually everything coming from Europe and Asia

[Rivkin]

Originally Posted by fearn

Comments about functionality?
Fearn

Well, this photo illustrates why we all heard about machete massacres in Africa, but never about "the night of fat mambeles"...

[Conogre]

One common thread that keeps surfacing is the lack of a style of martial arts in Africa, and I strongly suspect this is grossly untrue.
Almost invariably, when you have a warrior caste and intertribal warfare that's gone on for long periods of time the warriors were extremely skilled with their own weapons and accoutrements, both offensively and defensively.
With so little known about the people themselves and their strange (to us, at any rate) weapons, I would say that the loss of knowledge in specific martial art styles is probably all but gone in many huge regions without it ever having been recognized at all beyond the most rudimentry observations.....in all the "ignorant savage" stereotype seems to be even more universal in Africa than it was in N. America.
As to the "urn/fan" shaped knife, I think almost all would agree that piece in particular is an excellent example of a weapon having evolved into another function altogether.
Speaking of that knife though, what about the widely seen African tendency to create huge, often gigantic knives and spears as currency, such as the Nkutshu?
I've seen functional appearing spears with the heads so exaggerated as to make them unusable, and even the same spearhead alone fully 5'-6' long!
Those obviously took a LOT of skill and effort to create, yet were quite common and widespread, even stranger when you consider that time is often at a premium in a subsistance level society.
Three uses seem obvious, 1) the visable prestige, 2) as a theft deterrent, and 3) a larger piece would be easier to keep from corroding, thus last longer for eventual reforging.
Many of the swords, in particular, inarguably end up inferior to the more traditional sword shapes with a much longer geneology in a direct, head to head comparison, yet were still highly effective against the weapons that they were designed to used against, with the real proof of this being that so much of the continent ended up as colonies, just as happened in N. and S. America where the only real resistances came about through vastly superior numbers, initially, then with "trade", captured and even traditional militia weapons later as native forces were incorporated into the often small governing occupation military.
In short, Fearn, yes, many WERE inferior to weapons of more advanced design in a direct one on one comparison.
Jeeeez....that WAS hard to admit! **grin**
Mike

[tom hyle]

Fearn, AFAIK that is a rank marker/rich (native) guy's art piece/religious item; I've seen that exact style (or that exact individual? Looking like a fat human, and some are the side view....interestingly, it is "upside down" in that regard, when compared to "legged" swords, etc.....) and others similar. The shape is similar to those Kuba ikulas without points, and also to an ancient Celtic (like the ikulas, much less wide) double-edged no-point sword I've seen. Given its likely heavy cultural/religious meaning in its original context......it seems due a certain respectful attitude.
Ariel, sorry to hear you don't know how to use a mambele; sorry to tell you that that has nothing to do with its effectiveness in knowing hands. It is a graceful and deadly sword, and particularly effective against sheilds. I don't find the short ones ineffective, either, BTW.
The quality of the metal as such is a playground for ethnocentrism/cross-cultural confusion. I don't know that it is relevant to this discussion, and I suggest we leave it aside; it's the metal they had; it's the metal they used.....
Freddy, I get into this with people from time to time; some of them "get" it, and some don't: Mambeli and mabele (still heard/read no justification for the concept that it's pronounced M'mambele, etc....). Mambeli and mambele seem very much like the same word. AFAIK it means "sickle", and is generally used for agricultural tools as well as weapons, with the distinction being contextual. Two very different types of sickle-sword, of course.......Ikula/iklwa is a fun thing to wonder about, too; more tenuous than mambeli/mambele, but still pretty likely, I would think.....theater and theatre are not different words.

[tom hyle]

I don't know; I think some of them (mambele sheild-walking throwers) ARE advanced designs. By and large, I do not believe that continents fall to swords, but to economics, tricks, germs, and guns (when they are on one side, or tremendously more numerous/advanced on one side, though IMHO far too much credit is given to guns, too, and as to Eurpean ships and sailing ability during the expansion? I don't mean to be rude, but it is to laugh; compare the Indian Ocean; compare polynesia.......).

[fearn]

Hi Tom,

Do you (or anyone else reading this) remember the "african martial arts" video instructions that popped up about a decade ago? There was someone teaching stick fighting and wrestling from somewhere in Africa. That tape's probably still available somewhere. I've also seen some work done in Nigeria that identified a number of martial traditions (including several apparent ancestors for Capoeira, which I used to practice). So, I'm definitely not one of those saying that the Africans didn't have their martial traditions.

Mostly, I'm trying to understand their weapons in context. As I posted earlier, I'm beginning to suspect that spears and bows were the primary weapons for some groups, and these funky swords that we know so much more about were primarily social tools (rank markers, ritual tools, and art) and secondarily weapons.

One thing that gets this list in trouble is that we tend to focus on the swords, knives, and axes, because of their artistic value and striking shapes. A boringly functional spear (especially if it's hard to classify) will get a lot less attention from collectors. Ditto with those boring bows, although there's one example of a hunter whose everyday hunting bow shot as far as the competition bow a European hunter had on safari (Traditional Bowyer's Bible, vol.1).

Fearn

[Tim Simmons]

Hi Fearn,I am really keen on boring plain spears and fighting sticks.Ssssh or they will all want one,if they can not see it, thats their problem.Tim

[Rivkin]

Originally Posted by tom hyle

Ariel, sorry to hear you don't know how to use a mambele; sorry to tell you that that has nothing to do with its effectiveness in knowing hands. It is a graceful and deadly sword, and particularly effective against sheilds. I don't find the short ones ineffective, either, BTW.

I think the biggest problem with martial arts today that you can say anything (like "japanese swords are the best in the world" or "mambeles are crap"), and there is no way to prove/disprove this, for most of the martial artists are not willing to spill the blood.

The only way to test how effective mambele is, is to start a match - Ariel with his favorite weapon (I would guess it's rapier or shashka ?) vs. mambele wielding Tom Hyle. I don't think that in this non-theoretical environment mambele will have much of a chanse.

[tom hyle]

Well, I'm not going to fight Ariel, but in light example:
A/ If we're choosing hand weapons, remember I get a shield; modern European swords and sword styles (rapier or sabre) are not very impressive against a sheild.
B/ If the oponant doesn't want one, too, that somewhat negates the greatest advantage/use of mambele (and any chance he has to live, if he's going to take just a modern European sword against sword and shield).......I might well would choose a sha'sh'qa or other sabre, though a nice machete is fine, too. Old, really curved sabres are good against sheilds, too, BTW, mostly for thrusting, although I assure you I do sharpen the false edge where there is one.
All kidding and examples aside, mambele is not actually the kind of sword I most like and enjoy; I most like and enjoy slashing swords, but the idea that mambele is not an effective form can only come out of a nonunderstanding of its use, IMHO; it is a deadly sword.
And Superman? Definitely faster than The Flash

[tom hyle]

I might add that a lot can be found out by attack tests/practice on plants, dead animals, unwanted furniture, etc. with either antiques or replicas or new blades of similar shape (Which I recommend, at least at first, as it is the unskilled/unpracticed/mis-aimed/off-angle/etc. attack that often harms the weapon, but also old wood, for instance, often gets weak and dry-rotted). And, of course, much can be gleaned from combining this with sparring with wooden/blunted/etc. weapons. Eventually, perhaps enough could be learned from such methods that the more skilled and able might be up to "playing" with live steel in limitted ways, without neccessarily cutting or stabbing each other, as is done when practicing many martial arts, much as with the revival of medieval European sword styles seen today in N America. Of course, they have texts to help a lot for that; would it be primarily Moslems who might have left a written record in Africa? I'd think so. Might some of their fighting techniques and weapons, as their language, etc. be Arab-derived/Arab-related? I think inevitably; thus the nimchas of the Swahili coast and the kaskara, with its Turko-Persic ( ) guard.......but there's surely still Bantu (etc.) influence, as well, so probably something useful could be learned there, as well as by investigating the possible African influence on machete, a thin, light-bladed sword developed primarily in the Caribean and the Americas, and primarily under the usage of primarily African slaves/captives. In Animist areas (especially) there may still be some traditional militia training; I know many rural "tribal" peoples maintain vestiges of such, often not so much for common defence now (which would likely be against a giant government or corporation, and thus largely impractical with traditional weapons), but as a matter of cultural memory and ethnic/ancestral pride. This brings me back to something I totally forgot that I was gonna say before I have this African sword. It was sold to me as a pygmy sword; I don't know what tribe it's from. It came in a Moro barong sheath (where I'd maybe have left it, but it was too long, and poked out the bottom or something like that, as I recall). It's a double-edged sword, wide and straight, and running down the center line of the blade are two jagged, toothy slots; first one, then solid metal for a while, then the other. I noticed that the spacing of the slots was such that the sword could be held before the eyes and peered through, like a mask. I noticed also that (though people have different size heads) the slots were spaced such that I couldn't look in the middle of my feild of vision, but would have to learn an unfocused gaze that thus sees all (as I did in my younger meditating days), and also learn to move the head about, so as to keep the blind spot in a different place; valuable lessons for war that could be learned in a dance that might be modernly classed as religious. I've since seen other similar swords, some with round holes, instead of slots. All speculation, but the kind of thing features can be for; learning-magic (a lot of traditional dances worldwide seem to have a martial training/display aspect), or whatever else, and that it'll just get harder and harder to find out about....

[Conogre]

Some of you seem intent with comparing African pieces to cultures that they had no contact with what so ever and making a pronouncement of "inferior", and while, if taken literally, you are correct, but to consider them "awkward" and impossible to use seems equally ridiculous.
When I got my first Potto knife, the fact that it wasn't much thicker than a 50 gal oil drum struck me immediately, but over time as I gradually figured out how to hold it in such a fashion that it became comfortable, the knife/sword won me over.
Swing into the end of a 2"X10" board so that it bites into the grain and the results are striking, to say the least.
Likewise, into meat or flesh, a la the "Cold Steel" demos and you find that you have a deadly piece of hardware whose lighter weight makes it VERY fast, and likewise the shorter length enables it to be swung, even in heavily grown areas, where as a long sword or such would end up tangled in the vines.
As to martial arts, if you're trying to use many of the African pieces in established forms from other, far removed parts of the world, I have no dobt that it would be awkward, but again, the point is what?
They weren't MADE to be used that way.
Even with martial arts themselves, it often ends up coming down to the skills and abilities of the fighter himself, for often the defenses are only truly effective against someone fighting in the same style.
I've seen Kung Fu masters laid out with a single punch from a professional boxer.
African weaponry as art, yes, beyond a doubt, but to discount the effectiveness in the society and terrain in which it originated seems to be nothing more than argumentative.
With enough ammo and the proper firearm, ALL bladed weapons are primitive and next to useless...same thing.
Mike

[tom hyle]

I do remember those videos, but I don't remember anything useful about them; I'd forgotten about that until re-reading this previous to bringing it to the top for locating reasons.

[Montino Bourbon]

I believe that the most functional weapons in Africa are;

A- The stick, in all its permutations, most especially the 'Knobkerrie' which was a stick carved from hardwood with the end like a knob; think "Golf club"

B- The spear, which was almost always QUITE functional, and was not always used for throwing.
The Zulu armies fielded by Chaka Zulu used a short stabbing-spear called an 'assegai' which was about a yard long. While previous conflict among the Zulus was more of a formal affair done with throwing-spears, and included the art of 'graceful dodging', Chaka went right in with the assegai and engaged at close quarters. His tactics were effective enough to give even the British a lot of trouble!

[tom hyle]

As to A/ there have been archaeological studies that claim to show (don't know how they account for looting, etc.) that the most common main offensive hand weapon on early medieval European battlefields were clubs. Daggers/shortswords (mostly dagger-knives; saxes used for work as well as fighting in civilian life), shortspears, and hatchets followed, and swert/spatha longswords followed distantly, being very expensive (the translated estimate I've read was about $20,000 1990ish US dollars as a floor.) and mostly restricted to professional soldiers (house Karls, etc.).

B/ First, I do not believe there is any meaningful evidence that Shaka Zulu had anything more to do with the iklwa than perhaps taking or being given credit for it, as famous and powerful men are wont to do. AFAIK assegei (and the Japanese Ashigaru) are derived from a Portuguese word for spear; that's what I've heard. The legend of the Iklwa is interesting. First, there is the cult of personality great man thing, which I start out by taking with a grain of salt (the name, supposedly given by a joyously vicious Shaka in imitation of the noise it makes in the enemy's body, which you can hear because you're close, is suspiciously similar to an old seeming Bantu word; Kuba is ikula and refers to a dagger or short sword; iklwa refers to a short spear often characterized as swordlike; hmmm......), as my historical studies and life experiece lead me to believe it is rarely if ever valid. Now, what we have here is a legend of the military superiority, often compared to ancient Latin tactics, of a short stabbing weapon over missile weapons. On the surface this does not seem usual, at the least (sensible or true at the most); the history of successful combat in war is a history of increasing your range. Particularly in open ground, it would be hard to even approach the enemy who is using missiles if you are not. I suspect the Zulus advanced under missile cover; I see an awful lot of Zulu (etc.) javelines and archery supplies. I suspect the organization (legendary stratification, rules, and discipline in traditional S African armies) and sheildwall (as well as disease vs. the Khoi/San, I am given to understand) are more responsible for the imperial/genocidal conquest of S Africa by the Zulus (etc.) than their supposed invention of the thrusting spear (and in addition to not believing Shaka did this personally, I'm not even sure it occured at all; one sees Congo region pommelled thrusting spears, for instance, and the thrusting spear is a pretty common phenomenon, worldwide. Likewise, though we might have recently read some characterized as unuseful, there are a lot of African spears with long, swordlike blades, and the Zulu iklwa rarely in my experience has so short a handle in reality as in legend.). I do note though that they had some success getting close enough on foot to kill gun armed European soldiers with handweapons, as did also some of the Madhi's army (Ashanti Osei Tutu on the other hand, had muskets and cannon, and hired European mercenaries to teach his army to use them.). It wasn't any magical power of their thrusting spears that got them close; that's for sure.
I've seen, BTW, (film of) modern Afars and Issas (estimate 1960; colour film) engaging in a ritualized rule-bound line-on-line javeline battle to settle a dispute; several injuries and one death. It was not and is not my impression that this is or ever was their only way of fighting, any more than N Plains people in N America settled all their disputes by lacrosse, or ancient Celts by hockey, or Philistines by single combat (especially not after that guy came out and shot someone in the head for a sword&spear fight), or tartars by (various forms of) polo; it's a traditionally available lesser option to "real" war. "The little brother of war" is Lacrosse's real name.

[fearn]

Hi Tom and Montino,

as to A), I'm not surprised about the club. Wood's generally cheap, even in places like England where all the forest land is owned and in production. The one thing I'd correct is the $20,000 sword. I think this came from the idea that a sword was worth a year's worth of wages to a peasant. In 1990's terms, a peasant earned $10-20,000 (they're called temps), and I think this is where the $20,000 idea came from. Personally, I think the better stand in for a medieval peasant is a third world peasant farmer, who gets by on $1/day. This means that swords cost about $365. If you look at what we're paying for swords these days, I'd say the cost hasn't changed much in a thousand years.

I'd also point out that, the more expensive metal is, the more of a status symbol a metal weapon such as a sword becomes.

So far as the spear goes, I'll simply agree with what was written above. I think most people have a bias against spears, and tend to ignore the diversity of these weapons.

Fearn

[tom hyle]

Actually, the estimate I read was based on the price of an automobile, and I think with a similar concentration of (expert) labour. The amount of wood alone that went into making charcoal for smelting and then for steeling iron was enormous, before the making of "coke" came in, and is, sometimes more than farming, creditted with deforesting much of Europe (and largely for weapons for war, no doubt; war drives technology; that it does, still.). The charcoal burners were very low-caste. Very very, actually probably outcaste would not be an inappropriate term for the view townspeople had of them. But the smiths were another matter; they were high end professionals; the mechanics or computer programmers of their day, and only the best of them specialized in longswords. In a way, there are these different worlds, though, as you say, so what's worth a year's wages in a poor country may be less than two weeks even for a semidisabled low-end craftsman/labourer like me in a rich country. But the cost of the steel is sooo different; AFAIK by now in India, PI, and China, to name a few we regularly see things from, they are now using industrial steel for cutlery, including swords (Some of the Phillipinos are working with sawsteel, and if it's recycled, it'd have to be folded "up" for the thicknesses I've seen, but I know it comes in round rods, too.....good stuff, sawsteel.....), and it is so very very much cheaper than handmade steel; if you had to buy 3 or 4 pounds of handmade steel now.....I don't even know what it'd cost; a lot, even if the craftsman paid himself poorly for his time (and many do). Even steel hand folded from industrial sheet/stock is very expensive to have produced in US. A few people make wootz; would it be OK for them or people who know about them to give a price idea? A guy in an iron age recreation science/tourist/museum-village in Scandinavia was making his own iron out of bog mud; maybe he still is; he was making knives from it and selling them etched; I don't know if or how many of them were/are steel. I'm sure there are others. The point is that it is a lot of work, and much of it expert, so while it certainly wasn't like only a very wealthy medieval German could own a sword, it was a thing for the professional class and the nobility, though poorer people did have saxes and later hangers and langenmessers, and sometimes longer swords made by blacksmiths who weren't swordsmiths per se, somewhat as we now have a Hyundai, or a beat up old '76 Ford.......fond memories there.....Holy Toledo; I'm getting something about pigs here........Pigs were part of the forest economy........I'm going to let that trail off and let it work on the back of my mind......