Rumi Maki Peruvian Martial Arts

[A.M.]

Not even Iron Age cultures. The Japanese did not have a sophisticated striking system until recently, for example (again, it all goes to the fact of focusing on armed and armored combat.) Boxing and Savate didn't start to take place until the Industrial age.

Pure striking is an afterthought, something developed as a sport or as a military drill, as a back up system. And it takes generations, centuries to arrive to a complex non-armed striking system from a rudimentary system, a secondary add-on to a armored/unarmored form of combat to be used in situations where you have entered too close of a range to use your weapon effectively. In such situations, you don't square off, you clinch and wrestle and try to use your hands or another weapon to dispatch your adversary.

At that stage, it's rudimentary and basic (that is, sufficient to do its job), not complicated.

It takes a particular cultural context, certain stability or a established martial culture, to support the development of complex unarmed striking arts. Almost every single attested and documented complex non-armed striking art that we know off today was developed way past the Iron Age.

Things are first developed by necessity. Refinements occur later and only when conditions allow it.

What I meant to say is that striking arts seem to come from cultures that have passed the Iron age stage in technological development

For what I have read Its seems that technologically speaking the Inca culture was just beginning to work with copper and that there primary weapons were clubs, spears and slings (I think they had bows and arrows but I'm not sure).

From what I also understand is that martial arts coming from Aborginal Hawaii and the Maori are also all weapons and grappling based and those cultures never worked with metal either.

India, China, Japan, Indonesia, Thailand, Cambodia, Greece, Rome ect. Had metal tools and weapons.

But maybe I'm wrong.

[Teh El Macho]

I'm not sure if you noticed my comment about the Japanese LACKING a complex empty-hand striking art until recently - more precisely within the last two centuries, at the end of the Edo period and the beginning of the Meiji period, after two centuries of peace AND the widespread introduction of firearms.

Whatever we see in empty-hand striking MAs now did not start developing until within the last 3-4 centuries taking the shape they have now until fairly recently.

My guess is that the introduction of firearms and the establishment of professional armies rendered armed and armored close combat obsolete. What remained either dissapeared, or turned into a relic, or turn out into a folk or sports MA within a civil context.

That's how we got the complex striking arts we have today.

[tamunangero]

The attempts to place the development of striking arts within a historical framework dependent on the development of technological benchmarks is very thought provoking and is worth developing. In Minoan Crete ( Bronze age) about the 13th century B.C. there are some famous murals at the palace of Knossos that shows two young men having a standup fist fight with some type of wrapping or gloves.

In Homer, Odysseus engages in some fistic matches with his wifes suitors after coming home from Troy, again Bronze Age material.



Historically speaking I find interesting Robert Davis' 1994 book 'war of the fists' that discusses the mass stick and fist fights that took place on some of the bridges of Venice from the 9th to the 17th centuries. An interesting comment the author makes is where when these fights begin to gain in popularity, I believe Davis wrote, Croatian and other ex-soldiers and ex-sailors would take part and begin to swing on the opposing faction barehanded as if they were swinging a cutlass. However the skilled Venetian fighters by that time had developed a more linear punch that made short work of these newcomers, beating them down or throwing them off into the water.

It is almost irresponsible to project events in one past historical age and use them to explain anothers historical past, but this passage seems to me to have an explanatory power. For example looking at the Dambe matches on 'you tube'. What I see is people fighting with their right fist as if they trained using an overhand thrusting spear. I also heard that Hsing-I was based on spear fighting.


One could make an argument that the replacing of weapons with empty hands was one response among many to domesticate intra-communty violence, while at the same time preparing young men to fight at close quarters, and keeping up the courage and pain tolerance of the young men of fighting age. But again this begs the question of if there were any communities that had not used metallurgical technologies or had access to them that engaged in fistic practices. It would be these ideas I would take down to Peru to investigate the existence and practice of Rumi Maki. Right now I am saving up to make another trip to venezuela and research garrote larense some more.

Has anybody on this thread read the article on the Inti Raymi festival in the book on ancient South American Indigenous warfare that came out a couple of years ago?

[Teh El Macho]

It is almost irresponsible to project events in one past historical age and use them to explain anothers historical past, but this passage seems to me to have an explanatory power.

Not necessarily. In the situation where one does not have any evidence or document on martial arts of a particular region and time other than organized warfare among tribes or nations, and taking into account the decimation of peoples and replacement or amalgamation of their traditions, the only thing one has is to observe and note generalities in martial art development around the world. Then you use those to extrapolate.

Martial art development has always occured as weapons first, wrestling second, rudimentary striking third and ultimately refined forms of striking.

The narrative regarding the Croatian sailors fighting with the Venetian boxers seems to support this. Croatians of the time had rudimentary striking, perhaps none at all, and thus resorted to movements natural of wielding a weapon.

Venetians, on the other hand, had achieved a refined, more technical form of strinking. However, they did not came to it from thin air. They must have taken, at some point, unrefined, non-technical haymakers and swings relying on what they were more comfortable: weapons.

In the absence of any evidence of quality when it comes to Rumi Maki's authenticity (which is the topic under discussion here), the only thing one can assume that the nature of a regional martial arts (that is above the instinctual, looping haymakers, slaps and hammer fists) would most likely had resembled a wrestling form or a stick form.

It would be very hard for me to believe that a society would produce a refined form of striking (as supposedly claimed by the Rumi Maki proponents), let alone remain until today without passing through the stages of weapon and wrestling (which not only did not survived, not even in records of the time, but Rumi Maki did?)

Occam's.

Has anybody on this thread read the article on the Inti Raymi festival in the book on ancient South American Indigenous warfare that came out a couple of years ago?

Nope. What's the title and the author? An ISBN number for it would be great.

[Cy Q. Faunce]

In Homer, Odysseus engages in some fistic matches with his wifes suitors after coming home from Troy, again Bronze Age material.

No, he used arrows and spears.

[Teh El Macho]

No, he used arrows and spears.

Word.

[El Neko]

Hey Tamunangero, a little off topic but, under who are you trainning Garrote Larense?

[Teh El Macho]

^^^ Ha, I was just about to PM you bro :)

[A.M.]

I know this is off topic but is Garrote larenese strictly stick fighting or is there a unarmed component to it?

[tamunangero]

[DCS]

As per odysseus, I am sure somewhere before the killing of his wifes suitors he fought them with his fists, I will have to look it up.

Odisseus fought Irus, but he wasn't one of Penelope's suitors.

[El Neko]

Ok, I knew that Livio Girotto was a student of maestro Mercedes Perez (I didn't know about Sanoja), I have had talked to Livio in a couple of occasions and he's a really nice guy, the reason why I asked you is because everybody I have talked to about Garrote are students or part of Livio's group.

Are u venezuelan?