Swords

A sword is a long-edged piece of metal, once used as a cutting and/or thrusting weapon in many civilizations throughout the world. more...

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The word sword comes from the Old English sweord, which cognates to Old High German swert, Middle Dutch swaert, Old Norse sverð (cp. modern Scandinavian sværd/sverd/svärd: Danish sværd, Norwegian sverd, Swedish svärd) Old Frisian and Old Saxon swerd and Modern Dutch zwaard, from a Proto-Indo-European root *swer- "to wound, to hurt".

A sword fundamentally consists of a blade and a hilt, typically with one or two edges for striking and cutting, and a point for thrusting. The basic intent and physics of swordsmanship has remained fairly constant down the centuries, but the actual techniques varied among cultures and periods as a result of the differences in blade design and purpose. The names given to many swords in mythology, literature, and history reflect the high prestige of the weapon (see list of swords).

History

Bronze Age

Humans have manufactured and used bladed weapons from the Bronze Age onwards. The sword developed from the dagger when the construction of longer blades became possible, from the early 2nd millennium BC. Swords longer than 90 cm were rare and not practical during the Bronze Age as this length exceeds the tensile strength of bronze. It was not until the development of stronger alloys such as steel that longswords became practical for combat.

The hilt at first simply allowed a firm grip, and prevented the hand from slipping onto the blade when executing a thrust. Bronze Age swords with typical leaf-shaped blades first appear near the Mediterranean and the Black Sea, and in Mesopotamia. Swords from the Nordic Bronze Age from ca. 1400 BC show characteristic spiral patterns. Sword production in China is attested from the Bronze Age Shang Dynasty

The Naue Type II Swords which spread from Southern Europe into the Mediterranean, have been linked by Robert Drews with the Late Bronze Age collapse. (See )

Iron Age

Iron swords became increasingly common from the 13th century BC. The Hittites, the Mycenaean Greeks, and the Proto-Celtic Hallstatt culture (8th century BC) figured among the early users of iron swords. Iron has the advantage of mass-production due to the wider availability of the raw material. Early iron swords were not comparable to later steel blades; being brittle, they were even inferior to well-manufactured bronze weapons, but the easier production, and the better availability of the raw material for the first time permitted the equipment of entire armies with metal weapons, though Bronze Age Egyptian armies were at times fully equipped with bronze weapons.

Read more at Wikipedia.org