Dmitri wrote:It's all about the need for it, i.e. how much time you actually spend training. The "ancients" were just humans. If anything, I would say we have a big advantage over them in the amount of accumulated knowledge and the immediacy of access to most of it, globally.
So if one were to train hard enough, they would be at least as good as anyone else in the past -- provided similarity in all other aspects/contributing factors, e.g. genetics, nutrition, etc. Consider how the various World and Olympic records have been consistently going up and up, over time.
GrahamB wrote:What were your thoughts on the Hagakure?
"The Hagakure’s is an interpretation of how the samurai ought to live as envisioned after a hundred years of enforced peace. It cannot be considered to be representative of the ethos of the medieval warriors. And as the doctrine of a member of a warrior class in peacetime, it must be remembered that the Hagakure is one man’s vision. As a Buddhist monk surrounded by young samurai in search of a group identity, Yamamoto was scarcely going to wax on about the barbarism of the real samurai, assuming he even knew about it. He was attempting to help his young charges get on in life and raise their self-esteem at a time when the samurai class was in decline. This was a neo-Confucian period. The emphasis had gone from literature and the pratice of martial arts to manners and social decorum according to your position on the social hierarchy. In the Rules for the Military Families, martial practices were no longer emphasized. Martial arts was irrelevant. This was the context in which the Hagakure was written."
If that's true it kind of ruins the film Ghost Dog - lol
MaartenSFS wrote:Because of this I believe that it is possible for us to become better fighters than those of the past - especially when it comes to weapon arts, as the ancients would have engaged in battle far less than we do now. I'd go as far as saying that in my relatively short time of studying swordsmanship that I've done more sword fighting than most would have in their entire lives.
MaartenSFS wrote: If we took the best of all modern armed and unarmed martial arts, trained them as one art, using modern training equipment and science, and experimented for two or three generations that we'd have the upper hand for sure.
cloudz wrote:After Sparta it was all down hill anyway.
GrahamB wrote:I wonder if the ancient Romans used to sit around after an orgy, drinking wine and eating grapes having a debate about whether the sport wrestlers in the arena would beat one of the legionaries who had to use their shit for real on the battlefield?
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