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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Drifter Bob" data-source="post: 1760670" data-attributes="member: 17723">Many european weapons have the same origins.  The staff was basically a peasant weapon, and the flail was developed by peasants as a weapon from a grain threshing implement with nearly identical origins to the numchuku and related devices in Asia.  The Halberd and the Bill were both adapted from farm implements for use by peasants against knights.  The Partisan was an evolutoin of the old hunting boars spear, and the German Messer sword evolved from restrictions on peasants carrying swords (it was just a 'big knife')The difference between these and some of the equivalent Asian weapons is that A) Asian martial arts often emphasizes a mixture of armed with unarmed techniques, where WMA seems to assume that your enemy is armed and goes from there (though it does also include unarmed techniques, it doesn't seem to assume that one party is unarmed to start with) therefore many of the Asian weapons no longer seem to emphasize reach much, and B) much of the armed fighting taught in EMA has become stylized over the years as a sport or theater (i.e. Peking Opera) or as a kind of dance, since it has been used less and less for real fighting, just as modern Western sport fencing bears little resemblance to any real combat art.  WMA by contrast is currently practiced almost exclusively based on fencing manuals from 15th and 16th century masters so it is focused on fighting for real, on killing arts.There is currently a revival of interest in the original EMA techniques before they were 'watered down', incidentally, largely inspired by the successes of WMA fighters against EMA fighters in tournaments.Klingons are scary, and god knows Kirk is terrifying.  Even if he didn't talk that way, the fact that he could knock me out with one hand chop to the shoulder  gives me pause.  Plus, he has a thing for green haired women, and would likely stalk the women folk of Drifter Bob's sordid punk rock underworld... it would truly be a nightmare.  I won't even mention the slow motion karate of the borg....(shudder)DB</blockquote>

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