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Message: <blockquote data-quote="John Morrow" data-source="post: 2097396" data-attributes="member: 27012">I think you are looking at Northern European technology while I am looking at Mycenaean technology, where the technology progression was different.  The Mycenaeans likely got their hacking swords from other parts of Europe late in the Bronze Age (it's a big part of Robert Drews' thesis in his book The End of the Bronze Age).  But older Mycenaean burrials certainly have the "rapier" style blade and Mycenaean art does depict people using thrusting weapons, both spears and blades.  For example:<a href="http://www.hartzler.org/cc307/mycenaean/images/42.jpg" target="_blank">http://www.hartzler.org/cc307/mycenaean/images/42.jpg</a> (man using dagger on lion)<a href="http://www.hartzler.org/cc307/mycenaean/images/45.jpg" target="_blank">http://www.hartzler.org/cc307/mycenaean/images/45.jpg</a> (battle scene in gold -- look at the middle figure with the long blade)<a href="http://www.hartzler.org/cc307/mycenaean/images/61.jpg" target="_blank">http://www.hartzler.org/cc307/mycenaean/images/61.jpg</a> and <a href="http://www.hartzler.org/cc307/mycenaean/images/62.jpg" target="_blank">http://www.hartzler.org/cc307/mycenaean/images/62.jpg</a> (two battle scenes with barbarians from Tiryns)All look like people stabbing with blades to me.  As for "relatively short-lived", how much time does that mean?  The thrusting blades may have been used for hundreds of years before being replaced by the superior hacking Naue Type II in the Mediterranean area. That doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the quality of bronze as a metal, though.  It has to do with making the blade and handle a continuous piece of metal (rather than riveting the blade to the handle) so it could withstand hacking and the benefits of hacking over stabbing when trying to hit an opponent (mentioned in the article).  My point is that they did seem to make long thrusting blades out of bronze use long bronze blades to thrust.  the limitation of the stiffness of bronze also makes it a less than optimal choice for slashing weapons.  As I pointed out, hit armor, bone, or opponent's weapon and you've got a bronze sword that's shaped like a boomerang.  Basically, bronze is not an ideal metal for long thin things like swords that are going to get slammed into hard things.  That's all they had, though, so they did use it for both long pointy blades and shorter hacking blades, both of which could become difficult to use after a blow or two.  I'm not disagreeing that bronze probably makes a better hacking sword than a thrusting sword.  I'm simply pointing out that the Naue Type II and other hacking leaf-bladed swords appeared late in the Mycenaean period and were a technological advancement.  Before that technological advancement, they did seem to use bronze for thrusting blades.(Edit: Spelling)</blockquote>

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