I grew up in Southern Africa and in Zulu class, we were taught that assagai was the word for any spear, but usually applied to the longer throwing spear and the Icwa is the short handled long bladed stabbing spear introduced by Shaka, used with large rawhide shields in massed formations. The name is supposed to be onomatopoeic, being the sound it makes when pulled from the victim. Not a sword. More akin to a poll arm? Perhaps a glaive?
@@dylanlaunspach2859 Same. The name is derived from the act of stabbing someone with the iklwa (pronounced eek-kwa). The first syllable is the sound the spearhead makes when entering a body, and the second is the sound it makes when pulled from a body.
I respect the Zulu for this reason. Unlike them, victims where I live continue to have their story spread around on the news and internet for up to 35 years. However in South Africa, their victims, stay silent.
Its a shortspear, no need to search for other terms. Shortspears of near the same proportions were used by european skirmishers from preroman times all the way to the pike and shot era, and even during colonial times for the marines and the like. For example the spanish term for a shortspear would be "dardo", and looking at them, while there were multiple types, the most common were practically identical, and they were widespread amongst both the Almogavars (light infantry) and jinetes (light cavalry) until those types of soldiers diseappeared and would still be used by sailors and conquistadors for the longest time.
@@alansmithee9769 Im kinda curious, would you happen to know any martials arts around africa? I only know about the Dambe fighting style in Nigeria, which I guess could also be more of a sport than fighting style, though im not sure.
@@nothingatall593 Look up Kemet martial arts and Nubian arts you can see on stele and tomb renderings of all types of arts combat that origins in Africa from that time. Axum - Ethiopia also have combat arts from antiquity. They took Nubian down in the early Christian era under King Ezana.
A presentation on African metallurgy would be interesting. Where did they get their ore and the coal or coke for heating? Bloomery or crucible? Did most tribes have an indigenous smelting technology or did they trade for blades? How did they forge? A broad review of the manufacture and/or acquisition of steel blades in Africa would be great. Cheers!
African traditional metallurgy👍🏾Africa is rich in iron ore, there are videos on UA-cam that show everything from collecting the ore to the final preparation of the tools.
Matt saying "to be blunt" when discussing pointy weapons, and finally "getting to [his] point" are definitely highlights of his use of the English language.
I have lived in South Africa for the past 3 years and I'm bathed in Shaka lore constantly. I've seen like 4 different Shaka movies/docs this year alone, getting the mysticism that absolutely surrounds the historical figure, but also a lot of facts. One thing I took a lot of interest in is Shaka wanted his spear shafts shorter and shorter, and his spear blades longer, like much longer than the one you own. He was unknowingly, inventing a sword like convergent evolution. I'm not saying that sword has to be a gladius. There were plenty of thrusting swords and some of Shaka's extra-short spears were a little too wide and beefy to not have been used to slash when needed. It has been fascinating me the past couple years and I've wondered what it would be like if this place was never colonized, where would the technology be now. Full tanged? Maybe handles instead of shafts? Where would the armour be? Would we have like medieval Zulu warriors by the 1900s? Iron was becoming a staple to pretty much all tribes and clans here when the Dutch and the English decided to show up. So at the very least, we could have had Zulu hoplites with breastplates and helmets at some point. I feel like the Shaka style would have gotten more and more extreme until it was separate from the spear category altogether, and there would have been Shaka swords and spears and who knows, maybe some Zulu bardiches or something. We can't expect the spear to be the only concept of metallurgy in speculative evolution of arms. But what's definitely not speculative, is Shaka's spear was definitely going somewhere, some place new.
This is great! More Zulu stories and African weapons please Matt. Also, please forgive me for I have sinned: I’ve just finished editing a video for tomorrow and I’ve made a point of comparing the Chinese Han dao to the Roman gladius 😅
11:23 I like how you bring up that point about using the lay of the land. The movie "Zulu Dawn" has given the idea that the Zulus just came on like a wave through withering fire, careless of losses.
The sequel/original film, "Zulu" is actually an amazing showcase of the Zulu's doing just that. The fight portrayed in Zulu Dawn was just a big last min Zulu charge since their hidden position had been discovered, so the just rushed the enemy before they could compose themselves and prepare
Great video. Do you think you could eventually do a video on the Zulu Battle Axe or the Ngombe Ngulu? It'd be cool to get an in-depth review of African weapons other than spears, especially swords.
The use of the gladius obviously changed over time but, as I understand it, the Roman legionaries would charge towards the enemy; stop, throw their light pillum; charge towards their enemy; stop, throw their heavy pillum; draw their gladius & charge towards their enemy; the gladius was then used, initially, as a stabbing weapon from behind the massed shield wall, then, when the wall broke into a melee, was used as a traditional cut-&-stab weapon. I don't know if the Zulus used long spears in conjunction with the iklwa (ixlwa), as the Romans used the pillae, but it was used in a similar manner when they ran into their enemy as a tight, cohesive formation. After that I think the Zulu warriors did what they had traditionally done, which was stab their enemy, but with a short-hafted weapon which was more agile in close combat. Similar but not identical.
Some Germans apparently used short spears that the Romans described as used in the same way as the gladius, so there is precedent for the comparison of short spears to the gladius.
I would love to see more videos on the various African warrior cultures. I don't know much about them, but love the range of different weapons and armour I have seen over the years. So anything and everything relating to arms and armour based in the African continent would be interesting!
There's so much to know. Just as much history as in Europe. I'd for example like to know how the Zulu only started using the bull formation under Shaka. It's not like flanking was a new tactic.
Some Congolese swords have a pretty gladius-like vibe to them, and there is another group that looks kind of kopesh-like (the Ngombe Ngulu swords). The Ethiopian shotel is also occasionally connected to the kopesh. And then that kind of naturally leads into the central African sickle swords. Would be interesting to hear about those and whether or not there is anything known about their origins and possible tentative connections to swords from the ancient world.
I used the trusty search engine to learn a little more about Ngulu (although I think Matt has shown one on his channel at some time) and clicked through to an example in David Atkinson's collection (I don't know who or where he is nor if he is a dealer in addition to being a collector, so won't link his site.). In his Central African section is a Salampasu, which looks much more akin to a Gladius.
@@Hiltok Yeah. I was thinking of Lunda Tchokwe swords in particular as I recently came across an example, but there is a group of similar swords from the area that I suspect all evolved from a common ancestor, so to speak. And going a bit further north, the Sudanese also have the Tebu swords that have a bit of a gladius like look.
It is necessary to note that despite being similar, these swords are not necessarily inspired by or have any relation with other swords, some actually have external influence, others evolved independently within the continent. The beginning of the Iron Age in Sub-Saharan Africa dates back to 1000 BC, some scholars believe even earlier.
@@weirdo4653 That's fair, the similarities may be superficial or might reflect some parallel evolution due to similarity in function. Although, given that both the Romans and Egyptians were highly influential in the north of the continent and the fact that there were trade routes throughout the region it is certainly not a crazy idea that there was an influence there. I've been searching for information on pre-19th century swords from the region but unfortunately I have not been able to find much to close the gap between antiquity and today. If you have good sources to share please do!
I have heard that term of "African/Zulu gladius" before, but I never took it literally, as comparing the physical weapons side by side. But rather by the way they were deployed. Closing in on the enemy in closed formation, shields "locked" and stabbing from behind that shield cover. That together with the rather nimble movements of the Zulu formation gave them an edge over all their native enemies as well as initially the British, the same way how the Romans switched from the phalanx type of formation to their manipel and later cohort based deployment...
In other words, they're not similar as weapons themselves, but they fill the same tactical role. It's a bit like calling tanks cavalry (with some hand-waving).
The completely earnest lack of outward irony when he says “let’s be blunt here,” when talking about swords and spears is a hallmark of why this is one of the best channels on swordtube.
The way I see it is that the gladius is the closest thing to an iklwa, and the scutum-gladius combination is the closest to the iklwa-ishlangu combination, but that by no means makes them the same. The English longbow is the closest European equivalent to a Yumi, and they were used in similar ways, but they're not equivalent either. It's just hard to study non-European weapons and tactics inside a Eurocentric paradigm. Sure there's a lot of things that are similar, but rodeleros and Teng Pai Shou had different duties in 16th century Pike and Shot. There's a big fight over whether the macuahuitl is a sword or a club, when it's both and neither.
It is so important to emphasise the style of fighting mostly used in Southern Africa at the time compared to what Shaka taught. when the Zulu moved to close in fighting it completely threw the other tribes. People very very rarely did close in hand to hand fighting, nearly every fight was a spear throwing contest, and the first side to run out of stuff to throw, backed off. They packed up their stuff (homes, livestock and all) and just left the area if they lost a fight.
Thank you for this video! Iv'e been 8nteresyed in the similarities & differences of Zulu Ilkwa & Roman Gladii for years & it's great to hear someone else reaffirm what I have concluded.
One source I read indicated that Shaka further taught his men, when they confronted enemies who ALSO carried shields, to use their shields' edge to "claw" the other fellows' shields out of proper guard position, thus exposing an enemy's body to the thrust.
Also my understanding. I believe that during the migration era in Europe it was pretty common to treat the shield as part of aggressive attacks in other ways, but it all makes sense. I'm not an expert, but thought you might be interested in the comparison.
The approach to war is where Shaka is most similar to the Romans (something like convergent evolution, I suppose). The shield technique of the Zulus was to snag the shield of the opponent with your own, and pull, thus twisting the enemy's flank toward you whilst shielding you at the same time, and then drive the icwa in just under the lowest ribs, I think. (And then pull it out, and it makes a sucking noise, it's said.) The "c" is a dental click, suggesting it's quite a soft sound, but audible. I've heard somewhere that the Romans did essentially the same thing, at least in some manouevres. I've also been told that in fighting against spear throwers, they did the "tortoise" trick, shielding themselves against the falling spears. And then there was total war. Caesar didn't just defeat the Gauls, he set out to destroy them. Under Shaka, that's what the Zulu started doing, too. (Contrast that with Xhosa further South. I basically exist because the Xhosa didn't kill women and children. In one of the frontier wars an ancestor of mine was stabbed very thoroughly to death in front of his wife and children on the farm, the farmstead was burnt to the ground, and all the cattle were carried off, but his wife and the children were just told to leave. Off into a night where there were still things like hyaenas, so they weren't "perfectly spared", but Shaka's enemies all had to die. No exceptions. If the wild animals didn't eat my great-great-something-granny, she was free to live on, because that was the Xhosa custom. War is for men, not for children.) Yes there are some very "up to date" scholars, who claim it wasn't so, but I don't trust them, myself, just to put it bluntly. I suspect that what they do is they impose their own ideas on what a "good person" or a "Great King" should be on history, and thus treat simple facts of people of the past being Of The Past, with their own values (and would quite possibly have felt outright contempt for the secular-christianized stories they're made to become to suit modern tastes in righteousness, were they presented with this) as slanders. The Badpeople told Badstories about the Goodpeople to make them seem like monsters, so this needs to be "debunked" (so making a big splash in Historiography, too). There's an element of slander in some of the old accounts, so I hear. There are apparently letters that can at least be interpreted as a kind of conspiracy to tell the story as badly as can do - as slanderously - and here I'm thinking of Henry Francis Fynn's accounts of his experiences of the Court of Shaka. Apparently letters have surfaced that he sent to others, in which there's what can be taken to be some kind of plot to distort the truth of what took place there. And then I suppose the maxim of _falsum in unum, falsum in omnia_ is assumed to apply. So vacuously the space left behind in the ashes of the debunking one can fill in whatever replacement story one likes. It would take lots more slander to make Shaka a less Caesar-like dictator, though. There's a place called Cannibal Cave in the Drakensberg. Because once people practiced cannibalism there. It wasn't some cult. They were driven to it by desperation. No-one who dislikes how unchristi-secular-nicepersonly that makes the history that this kind of fact suggests happened other than by total war, scorched earth, and such universally human sicknesses has stepped up to correct the place name. If Shaka was really just a nice guy and a visionary and whatever you decide to impose on him as the right kinds of values for the Great King, one has to wonder why Mzilikazi went all the way to Zimbabwe to get away from him. Or Soshangane went all the way up Mozambique to the Limpopo. Or why the Angoni went all the way to Tanzania. Sorry, I've gotten distracted by scraps of things I might have even misheard. As far as I'm aware, Shaka was just Shaka, not whatever labels can be stuck onto that. He lived in his circumstances; did things his way. That included "total war". For some aspects of a litigious view of history, some of the facts of all that are inconvenient, and I'm pretty sure that if there was indeed misrepresentation in the few sources we have, the replacements for those are outright fiction.
Hi Matt I would love to see an episode chronicling the rivalry between the classical French and Italian schools of early modern fencing, a comparison and contrast of their methods, styles, applications, weapons, particularly their foils and the history and development of such, and why the French method ultimately became the dominant style which defines virtually all modern Olympic fencing. That would be a very interesting and enlightening watch
The Zulus had 6000 guns at Isandlwana. Most of them very lousy trade muskets that couldn't hit anything, but there wasn't a shortage of firearms alongside the spears.
Dan Wylie’s “Myth of Iron” is a pretty good popular history introduction to just how uncertain we should be about what we think we know about Shaka and that era of nation building.
Your argument about the stick tangs is the best one I've heard against the zulu short spears being used for slashing. I think you have to think about their big shields as an local environment adaptation of the full armor of european history, as plate armor got better and more common, the size of the shields shrunk, but in Africa in general, the heat would make plate armor less helpful, and with the zulus specifically, their tactics of running 50 miles and then being in any kind of shape to fight, let alone win battles, would preclude full suits of armor, or maybe even shields made from heavier iron vs. Leather. As a person who has run ultramarathons, this part has always been the most impressive feat, even more so than that which makes them so fascinating to most history nerds: defeating an army with rifles, by an army with predominantly short range weopons.
From multiple things I have read the Zulus who fought at Rourke’s Drift were a reserve unit that broke off from the main army fighting at Isandlwana and were not involved in that fight. Therefore they did not collect any of the Martini-Henry rifles at Isandlwana to be able to use them at Rourke’s Drift and that the rifles used at Rourke’s Drift were older types of rifles already in the possession of the Zulus who broke off and went to attack Rourke’s Drift.
Yes also from what I've read the Zulus already owned firearms prior to the Anglo-Zulu War (or the British invasion of the Zulu Kingdom which it really was) but the problem was that they were not trained in their use, specifically how to use the sights, so fired way too high. Also they had been sold pretty much obsolete muzzle loaders whilst European armies already used breech loaders. This was common practice at the time i.e. Europeans selling obsolete weapons to African nations. Melenik II of Ethiopia who defeated the Italians at the battle of Adwa in 1896 and thus prevented his country being colonised had not only purchased artillery from Russia, but had also paid Russian instructors to train his men in their use. I'm not sure if that was the case with rifles but he seemed to know what he was doing.
I think you literally hit the nail on the head about most of the arguments and heated discussions going around these days when statements like this happens. People are too quick to assume one thing and jump into a rabid argument about how a statement is wrong, when it was never meant that way in the first place and i for one can very much see the argument that the impact the weapon and tactics had on the zulus, could be compared to the gladius and the romans, even if they are completely different types of weapons.
In my readings I found discussions on tribal combat in Europe and Africa my mostly spear armed warriors. The combats were more like a series of individual fights and often did relatively little harm to the participants. In Europe armies became larger and fighting was between groups of warriors. As you described the Romans tactics broke up the tribal groups and were able, to disrupt the larger formations so they could not use their pikes and long spears effectively. The Zulus started with tribal combat and inconsequential results to concentrated fighting and tactics (horns of the buffelo, etc) which killed more of the enemies.. Enjoyed your presentation.
The Iklwa is really an example of the way that, really, spears and swords are just the same thing but on a spectrum of blade-to-shaft ratio. Is the blade longer than the shaft? It's a sword or knife. Is the blade shorter than the shaft? It's a polearm. The iklwa is near the middle but decidedly on the 'spear' side, and some weapons like the _nagamaki,_ are examples that almost fall right in the middle!
A series of comparison videos like this could actually be quite illuminating. Selecting disparate iconic weapons, separated by time, geography and culture, but sharing a common aspect. Whether that would be tactical use, cultural significance, type of soldier (or not soldier) who would use them, or who knows what kind of connection.
@@ronin47-ThorstenFrankIIRC, african slaves came mainly from Angola, Guinea, not from South Africa (despite already being slaves of other africans). In brazilian portuguese we have several loan words from african and indigenous origin. I'll look into the azagaia origin, if I can find anything.
They seem to be the same word, of ultimately Berber origin both in Spanish and Portuguese. It is Afrikaans (Dutch) word, not Zulu one, in context of Southern Africa.
Now I am starting to have questions about Zulu military formations. If the assagai was the equivalent of the Roman gladius, was the rawhide shield the equivalent of the scutum? Did the Zulus fight in a close disciplined (rectangular or square) formation like the Romans?
@@tsmspace Arming sword is a side arm, which means more expensive main weapon. Zulus weren't able to procure enough firearms/supplies to swich to firearms yet. Same actually with sword itself, need a lot of iron/steel for that.
@@davidbodor1762 I disagree. a spear might be good, but they're very long and get caught up and hung up on everything, also they are dangerous if out of position (for someone around you) ... Therefore it would be strategic to know when to use which weapon, and there would be plenty of times when the best weapon to have out would not be something very long. (for example,, if you are covering someone else USING a long weapon, and need to be able to poke at anything that appears suddenly very close. _
Come to Suzhou, the Venice of China. Or, learn about the Yi people, the Spartans of China. Etc. - i get it, it somehow diminishes the one, while you place the other on a pedestal for some reason.
To me I did originally see it as like a gladius simply because the first example I saw looked like a short sword with an extended handle; nothing to do with Shaka or Caesar or comparisons to Romans. Not that I saw one up close, just a single example on a TV documentary, so it wasn't a lot of information and the example in question may have been misleading; there wasn't a lot of detail about its construction of cutting ability for sure.
It's funny I read the title of this video and thought "you know I never thought about it that way, but from a tactical standpoint there really are quite a few similarities". Then I watched the video wher Matt says basically the same thing, But of course he adds the all-important word to any discussion on historical weapons, say it with me kids: CONTEXT!
+scholagladiatoria *The Zulus packed shields that were lighter than the Roman **_scuta,_** which were able to withstand cuts and slashes.* The Zulus also used .75" L/40 flintlock smoothbores and rifles, which were easier to support with the expendables they had.
The Zulu spear although used in warfare was mainly used for hunting to help feed their family. The blades shape was meant to mimic a pointed leaf. The shape also prevented it from becoming stuck in the animal being hunted.
Likely brought to Brazi either by Portugese settlers/former sailors and/or (even more likely) African slaves. The Portugese language has a lot of foreign loanwords due to their former empire.
Yeah, the spear you showed at the start was a regular umkhonto (generic isiZulu term for a spear, as opposed to the imported term assegai). Iklwa (pronounced with a sucking, wet click in the middle as per its onomatopoeic origins) were often even shorter, with a long point and a short haft.
Love more stuff on African weapons, especially medieval ones (which, I know, the sources are limited on for anything south of the Sahara. That said, I'd also love an analysis of how the Roman legions managed fighting their most common enemy: other Roman legions! It certainly doesn't appear that the gear changed dramatically from the Marian Reforms through to Hadrian (beyond some brief flirtations with square shields and lorica segmentata). The gladius seems a poor weapon to use against enemy wearing mail.
Not really, it will stab through the mail no problem. Mail sucks vs stabbing........it's amazing vs slashing. Not that it mattered they were taught to attack weak points regardless like necks, under arms, faces, groins etc.
@@MrBottlecapBillNo, it won't stab through mail 'no problem' and mail didn't 'suck vs stabbing.' Why would they have adopted mail and used it for centuries when, as Matt pointed out, the vast majority of their enemies were armed with spears that stab?
Civil wars wouldn't have been the only time they ever fought enemies wearing mail or better armour. They'd have had plenty of opportunity to practice defeating or bypassing armour. And yeah, if you're well-trained to poke at the bits that aren't covered, it won't matter how effective the gear is at stopping the blow that lands in an unprotected spot.
A major difference that the Zulus seems not to have the concept of a static shield wall. The common story is they would send flanking forces, the horns of the buffalo, and also hit in the center of the enemy with the chest or head of the buffalo.
As far as I know, the Zulu at Rourke's Drift didn't see combat at Isandlwana. Hence, no looted Martini-Henrys from the battlefield. I could be wrong of course. And just for "fun", the Ik-lwa, was so called because that's the sound it makes when you stick it in and then pull it out. Apparently. Other than that, I totally agree with your main points.
Could you do a similar video on Aztec macuahuitl "Sword". The main problem being people want to especially online want to treat them as crappy swords when their far more comparable to an axe or club.
Excellent video! I concur with some other comments and would love to see more African weaponry on the channel. One question; why does African weaponry (mainly the pole arms you've shown previously) have such narrow shafts? That spear, while deadly I'm sure, looks downright flimsy. I'm sure you can become used to it, but it also doesn't look like the nicest thing in the world to hold either.
IKLWA have an thick handle and the shaft his finished by an pommel and the lenghth of the blade approaching 55/75 CM with the cone and 8.2 at 9 cm of wide the shaft lenght is 42 at 50 cm !
I have to say, a lot of Zulu spears were brought back to Britain in 1879, and a lot of those look very like the example I hold in this video - with a relatively narrow and long shaft. Also, it's evident from the examples brought back from Rorke's Drift and elsewhere that there was a lot of variation - many different sizes and shapes were in use.
I think that when you call a weapon to be "the X weapon of the Y group" it has the same effect as comparing one animal to another. You can say hyenas are the wolves of africa, and people typically gather that they fill a similar niche with a lot of convergent evolution. However, this obviously does not make hyenas into canids of any kind and they remain two very different animals. The same can be said here, it is a weapon to fill a similar niche, but "evolving" the stuff they had on hand. It isn't that the icwa is the gladius of africa or the gladius is the icwa of europe, both are short range massed rushing weapons that compliment a shield.
I'm not a specialist at all but tactics look completely different. Zulu used fast charge to prevent adversaries’ javelinы throwing. Romans couldn’t run fast due to the huge weight of their shields and were throwing their pilums during the attack. If we want to find an analogy to Zulu tactic we should probably recall Scottish highlanders’ charges, not roman’s tortoise.
I love these, but with lumpy organic hilts with a bit of a flare at the base. Those skinny smooth ones don't have any "data for the hands" for lack of a better term and I can't control them nearly as well. That one you're holding is terrifying and I'd never risk using it without wrapping it in a bunch of stuff. I do think a lot of the older ones were more like that and I'm pretty sure I'm not the first person to have that sort of preference. I'm better with a cool stick than a big tube.
It should be noted that the word "assegaai" is not native to any southern Bantu language. IIRC it's a word the British picked up from somewhere else in the MENA region.
Assegai is from the medieval Berber "zagaya" for javelin; the Spanish and Portuguese adopted it as a term for all African throwing spears, and the French and Brits then applied it to all African spears period. It really shouldn't be applied to Zulu weapons, especially not the iklwa which can't really be thrown with any kind of accuracy.
The Iklwa is the Zulu adaptation of the traditional assegai spear for close quarter combat. The weapon is created by the great Zulu warrior Shaka. According to some historians, southern African warriors would occasionally engage in close quarter combat by shortened the wooden shaft of their assegai spear to create an improvised weapon for close quarter combat. Shaka creates an actual weapon suited for close quarter combat. The iklwa has a much longer and larger spearhead with a much shorter wooden shaft. The weapon is designed for close quarter combat instead of being thrown at the enemies.
@@MrLantean There's really no such thing as a "traditional assegai." Short spears that could double as javelins are common across Africa, but there's no one design and "assegai" is a European mangling of a specifically North African term.
Well, Romans and the Zulus had a similar tactic of coming in close, as a unit, stabbing and presenting a shield wall to the enemy. And some historians called it a Meat Grinder effect.
No, they didn't. Romans did not form close stabbing shieldwalls. Romans largely didn't form shieldwalls. Romans did not fight largely by stabbing. The idea that they did originates from Vegetius, who not only wrote a century after the sword-and-javelin style of Roman warfare had gone extinct and several centuries after the specific army he was describing, but also had minimal military experience and got significant details wrong in his description of the Roman army of his own time. Actually reliable contemporary authors understood the Roman military of their time to fight in loose order and make heavy use of cuts and slashes - Polybius in fact suggests the two points to be significantly related. Moreover, meatgrinders have little metaphorical ressemblance to either Roman or Zulu warfare; both being systems being ones where combat is resolved in pulses of short, sharp close combat between intervals of standoff. At least to me, "meatgrinder" implies a prolonged, continuous, and highly lethal scenario; this describes essentially no historical combat, but for the reasons displayed above it manages to describe Roman and Zulu combat even less.
@@melanoc3tusii205 For me "meatgrinder" evokes modern battlefields like Verdun, Stalingrad, or Peleliu - not for the specific tactics, but because they were massive industrialized processes/machines that took in fresh troops at one end and expelled them as shredded meat at the other.
With cold weapons against rifles/muskets anything that slows you down from getting into melee is counter productive. A throwing spear is a pretty lousy weapon that occcupies your weapon arm, uses your momentum so the recoil and body mechanics slows you down, and then you have to change hands or draw your melee weapon after throwing - worse, from a throwing range the rifleman standing infront of you can't possibly miss... so this is the worst place to slow down.
Have to say it was not something I'd ever considered, but thinking about it before watching I decided, yes, it was used in a similar way as part of a tactical 'weapon system', really interesting vid.
They may not be that much the same but when Cold Steel made both, I did cross shop them as a weapon to use in home defense. I bought my previous girlfriend the ikwla for her birthday. In a hallway, the stabby short spear will be superior but the gladius and a shield may have worked for her.
A range of modern design analysis uses the words form and function in various combinations. They're actually harking back to "spear age" Aristotle, who juxtaposed Essence and Form. The Iklwa and Gladius are obviously different in form, as Matt has so eloquently explained. A look at their essence (especially when combined into a "weapon system" with large shields and disciplined units) reveals a similarity. Both permit trained troops to rapidly close with an enemy, minimise his opportunity to shoot, and use "inside fighting" to rapidly win the resulting close combat. If there's a Roman equivalent to Shaka, I'd nominate Marius, who introduced the cohort, regularised his infantry into a single type, and opened the legions to citizens without property. I find it fascinating when similar evolutions in fighting style develop in seeming isolation. One that happens over and over is the shift from defensive to offensive fighting. Infantry in particular seem to master their weapons, and warfare gets a bit more "gentlemanly" as both sides line up and fence (or firefight). Then somebody decides to give cold steel another go, and we see a phase of aggressive fighting breaking all those "well trained" and disciplined defensive armies. One that fascinates me is how both Europe and Japan concluded that primitive muskets called for an increase in spear/pike length. This in turn saw a decline in the shorter cut and thrust polearms until they were restricted to special troops. Thanks for reading this long ramble.
I think, if you chase it down, that "Assegai" derives from Arabic, and was originally applied to east African spears such as those used by the Masai and Tutsi to hunt lions.
It's from zagaya which is Berber. Az-zagayah was the Arab, the Spanish and Portuguese adopted it from there in the Middle Ages, and then applied it to all African spears when the colonial era kicked off.
I don't think I ever heard or considered the comparison of the Gladius to the Iklwa because they were similar in use (though I can see some applications, they are short-bladed weapons used in conjunction with a large shield after all), but simply because it was the iconic weapon that was believed to be a functionally large part behind the Zulu Nation's vast conquest... in the same way the Gladius is the iconic weapon aiding the Romans to conquer much of Europe and the Middle East. But it always irks me when people emphasize the Gladius as a thrusting weapon. I've seen testing... the Gladius is one of the poorest thrusting weapons compared to every other sword built for the purpose. It'll reach vital organs just fine, but it's so broad that it's difficult to call it purely thrusting. Still, a thrust with one would open a huge wound, but it would very easily chop off limbs. I recall reports of battles with the Romans ending with thousands of hacked limbs scattered about.
Great video as usual - yes the similarities between Gladius and Assegai begin and end with close range, large shield and stabbing. I'd be interested in hearing your take on Zulu battle formations and tactics.....did Shaka have European advisors? Not to diminish Zulu or other African tactical ability - if they changed and evolved on their own, that would be great also.
First of all, how and why do you think that Europeans would penetrate into the depths of Africa just to teach the Zulus how to fight in a mode of combat that had not, by that time, been employed in Europe for at a minimum several centuries, with formations that had not been used in Europe at all? This is such an absurd stretch that your following reassurance is rendered highly incredible. As for Roman and Zulu similarities, they end before the stabbing; Romans were among the least-stabbing combatants in the Ancient Mediterranean - obviously, it's immensely difficult for them not to have been when they used cutting-and-thrusting swords in close combat and everyone else preferred spears
My grandfather had an Allison-Chalmers tractor. He also had a '74 Corvette. Both vehicles had a gas powered engine, a steering wheel, 4 tires, 4 wheels, and a drivers seat. Are they the same kind of vehicle? Sure, from a certain point of view. But to normal people, they are completely different.
After thinking about it, there was likely a difference metallurgy of what Zulu blacksmith could forge versus what the roman arsenals could make. I am assuming that the spear heads were made of softer ferrous material. I will not use iron vs steel here, since defining such is not easy. It was my understanding that roman swords had harden edges and that would also make them superior for slashing and of course for stabbing too. I doubt that the zulus were importing solingen steel or sheffield steel. But, one never knows what traders were bringing in and the Zulu spear heads might have been decent steel.
Tepotzopilli are an obsidian equivalent to the generic leaf-bladed bronze, iron, or steel thrusting spear. Nothing about them suggests a glaive-like use.
the African nations at that time fought a more ceremonial thing to prevent to much loss of life Shaka basically said bump that and transitioned to all out warfare
I don't do historical African martial arts but now when I think of those moments when people use the Ilkwa to slice and cut through things almost as if it was a sword I sort of roll my eyes and sigh because nowadays I know that the Zulu definitely didn't use it that way and that the people who typically reproduce and use these things obviously take some creative liberties and reinterpretions with how they build and use Ilkwas and those people most likely never studied Historical African Martial arts.
I grew up in Southern Africa and in Zulu class, we were taught that assagai was the word for any spear, but usually applied to the longer throwing spear and the Icwa is the short handled long bladed stabbing spear introduced by Shaka, used with large rawhide shields in massed formations. The name is supposed to be onomatopoeic, being the sound it makes when pulled from the victim.
Not a sword. More akin to a poll arm? Perhaps a glaive?
I can second this, came to the comments to say exactly this
@@dylanlaunspach2859 Same. The name is derived from the act of stabbing someone with the iklwa (pronounced eek-kwa). The first syllable is the sound the spearhead makes when entering a body, and the second is the sound it makes when pulled from a body.
I respect the Zulu for this reason. Unlike them, victims where I live continue to have their story spread around on the news and internet for up to 35 years. However in South Africa, their victims, stay silent.
@@rachdarastrix5251what do you mean?I don't follow.
Its a shortspear, no need to search for other terms. Shortspears of near the same proportions were used by european skirmishers from preroman times all the way to the pike and shot era, and even during colonial times for the marines and the like.
For example the spanish term for a shortspear would be "dardo", and looking at them, while there were multiple types, the most common were practically identical, and they were widespread amongst both the Almogavars (light infantry) and jinetes (light cavalry) until those types of soldiers diseappeared and would still be used by sailors and conquistadors for the longest time.
African weaponry is a grossly under appreciated area of study. I'd love to see more on African blades in various forms.
same with African martial arts in general
@@alansmithee9769 Im kinda curious, would you happen to know any martials arts around africa? I only know about the Dambe fighting style in Nigeria, which I guess could also be more of a sport than fighting style, though im not sure.
@@nothingatall593
Look up Kemet martial arts and Nubian arts you can see on stele and tomb renderings of all types of arts combat that origins in Africa from that time.
Axum - Ethiopia also have combat arts from antiquity. They took Nubian down in the early Christian era under King Ezana.
Could you expand on Zulu weaponry to include the Zulu Axe and its use in battlefield tactics of the Zulu warriors.
A presentation on African metallurgy would be interesting. Where did they get their ore and the coal or coke for heating? Bloomery or crucible? Did most tribes have an indigenous smelting technology or did they trade for blades? How did they forge? A broad review of the manufacture and/or acquisition of steel blades in Africa would be great. Cheers!
Probably charcoal
African traditional metallurgy👍🏾Africa is rich in iron ore, there are videos on UA-cam that show everything from collecting the ore to the final preparation of the tools.
Matt saying "to be blunt" when discussing pointy weapons, and finally "getting to [his] point" are definitely highlights of his use of the English language.
Hey, you know why you can never win an argument against a spear? It's because spears always have a very good point 😃
There's an entire group of guys from India that defend that kind of wordplay, with swords!
THE PUNJABBY!
Why can you never escape from a sword?
They always cut to the chase! (EVEN THE GLADIUS!)
Lol😂
Edgy!
We just got back from a battle against the natives..
~Zulus?
No we won, but they put upna hell of a fight!
I'll see myself out...
I have lived in South Africa for the past 3 years and I'm bathed in Shaka lore constantly. I've seen like 4 different Shaka movies/docs this year alone, getting the mysticism that absolutely surrounds the historical figure, but also a lot of facts. One thing I took a lot of interest in is Shaka wanted his spear shafts shorter and shorter, and his spear blades longer, like much longer than the one you own. He was unknowingly, inventing a sword like convergent evolution. I'm not saying that sword has to be a gladius. There were plenty of thrusting swords and some of Shaka's extra-short spears were a little too wide and beefy to not have been used to slash when needed. It has been fascinating me the past couple years and I've wondered what it would be like if this place was never colonized, where would the technology be now. Full tanged? Maybe handles instead of shafts? Where would the armour be? Would we have like medieval Zulu warriors by the 1900s? Iron was becoming a staple to pretty much all tribes and clans here when the Dutch and the English decided to show up. So at the very least, we could have had Zulu hoplites with breastplates and helmets at some point. I feel like the Shaka style would have gotten more and more extreme until it was separate from the spear category altogether, and there would have been Shaka swords and spears and who knows, maybe some Zulu bardiches or something. We can't expect the spear to be the only concept of metallurgy in speculative evolution of arms. But what's definitely not speculative, is Shaka's spear was definitely going somewhere, some place new.
This is great! More Zulu stories and African weapons please Matt.
Also, please forgive me for I have sinned: I’ve just finished editing a video for tomorrow and I’ve made a point of comparing the Chinese Han dao to the Roman gladius 😅
It’ll be fun to scroll through the comments of that video haha
11:23 I like how you bring up that point about using the lay of the land. The movie "Zulu Dawn" has given the idea that the Zulus just came on like a wave through withering fire, careless of losses.
The sequel/original film, "Zulu" is actually an amazing showcase of the Zulu's doing just that. The fight portrayed in Zulu Dawn was just a big last min Zulu charge since their hidden position had been discovered, so the just rushed the enemy before they could compose themselves and prepare
Great video. Do you think you could eventually do a video on the Zulu Battle Axe or the Ngombe Ngulu? It'd be cool to get an in-depth review of African weapons other than spears, especially swords.
The use of the gladius obviously changed over time but, as I understand it, the Roman legionaries would charge towards the enemy; stop, throw their light pillum; charge towards their enemy; stop, throw their heavy pillum; draw their gladius & charge towards their enemy; the gladius was then used, initially, as a stabbing weapon from behind the massed shield wall, then, when the wall broke into a melee, was used as a traditional cut-&-stab weapon. I don't know if the Zulus used long spears in conjunction with the iklwa (ixlwa), as the Romans used the pillae, but it was used in a similar manner when they ran into their enemy as a tight, cohesive formation. After that I think the Zulu warriors did what they had traditionally done, which was stab their enemy, but with a short-hafted weapon which was more agile in close combat. Similar but not identical.
To be blunt I appreciate how you get to the point.
Some Germans apparently used short spears that the Romans described as used in the same way as the gladius, so there is precedent for the comparison of short spears to the gladius.
I would love to see more videos on the various African warrior cultures. I don't know much about them, but love the range of different weapons and armour I have seen over the years. So anything and everything relating to arms and armour based in the African continent would be interesting!
100%
we have heaps of European and Asian info (which is amazing) but it would be equally amazing to get some more African presentations.
There's so much to know. Just as much history as in Europe.
I'd for example like to know how the Zulu only started using the bull formation under Shaka. It's not like flanking was a new tactic.
Some Congolese swords have a pretty gladius-like vibe to them, and there is another group that looks kind of kopesh-like (the Ngombe Ngulu swords). The Ethiopian shotel is also occasionally connected to the kopesh. And then that kind of naturally leads into the central African sickle swords. Would be interesting to hear about those and whether or not there is anything known about their origins and possible tentative connections to swords from the ancient world.
I used the trusty search engine to learn a little more about Ngulu (although I think Matt has shown one on his channel at some time) and clicked through to an example in David Atkinson's collection (I don't know who or where he is nor if he is a dealer in addition to being a collector, so won't link his site.). In his Central African section is a Salampasu, which looks much more akin to a Gladius.
@@Hiltok Yeah. I was thinking of Lunda Tchokwe swords in particular as I recently came across an example, but there is a group of similar swords from the area that I suspect all evolved from a common ancestor, so to speak. And going a bit further north, the Sudanese also have the Tebu swords that have a bit of a gladius like look.
It is necessary to note that despite being similar, these swords are not necessarily inspired by or have any relation with other swords, some actually have external influence, others evolved independently within the continent. The beginning of the Iron Age in Sub-Saharan Africa dates back to 1000 BC, some scholars believe even earlier.
@@weirdo4653 That's fair, the similarities may be superficial or might reflect some parallel evolution due to similarity in function.
Although, given that both the Romans and Egyptians were highly influential in the north of the continent and the fact that there were trade routes throughout the region it is certainly not a crazy idea that there was an influence there.
I've been searching for information on pre-19th century swords from the region but unfortunately I have not been able to find much to close the gap between antiquity and today. If you have good sources to share please do!
I have been a Matt Easton fan and will continue to be...would love more on the comparison of spears throughout history and different cultures.
I have heard that term of "African/Zulu gladius" before, but I never took it literally, as comparing the physical weapons side by side. But rather by the way they were deployed. Closing in on the enemy in closed formation, shields "locked" and stabbing from behind that shield cover. That together with the rather nimble movements of the Zulu formation gave them an edge over all their native enemies as well as initially the British, the same way how the Romans switched from the phalanx type of formation to their manipel and later cohort based deployment...
In other words, they're not similar as weapons themselves, but they fill the same tactical role. It's a bit like calling tanks cavalry (with some hand-waving).
The completely earnest lack of outward irony when he says “let’s be blunt here,” when talking about swords and spears is a hallmark of why this is one of the best channels on swordtube.
Matt frequently only realizes his own genius after it has been screen-capped and shared as a meme.
The Zulu tactic of shield bash and stab was pretty identical to the Roman tactic for the gladius and scutum. So yes, the Iklwa was the zulu gladius.
The way I see it is that the gladius is the closest thing to an iklwa, and the scutum-gladius combination is the closest to the iklwa-ishlangu combination, but that by no means makes them the same. The English longbow is the closest European equivalent to a Yumi, and they were used in similar ways, but they're not equivalent either. It's just hard to study non-European weapons and tactics inside a Eurocentric paradigm. Sure there's a lot of things that are similar, but rodeleros and Teng Pai Shou had different duties in 16th century Pike and Shot. There's a big fight over whether the macuahuitl is a sword or a club, when it's both and neither.
It is so important to emphasise the style of fighting mostly used in Southern Africa at the time compared to what Shaka taught. when the Zulu moved to close in fighting it completely threw the other tribes. People very very rarely did close in hand to hand fighting, nearly every fight was a spear throwing contest, and the first side to run out of stuff to throw, backed off. They packed up their stuff (homes, livestock and all) and just left the area if they lost a fight.
The escalation in brutality must have been shocking if this was the starting point.
Thank you for this video! Iv'e been 8nteresyed in the similarities & differences of Zulu Ilkwa & Roman Gladii for years & it's great to hear someone else reaffirm what I have concluded.
One source I read indicated that Shaka further taught his men, when they confronted enemies who ALSO carried shields, to use their shields' edge to "claw" the other fellows' shields out of proper guard position, thus exposing an enemy's body to the thrust.
Also my understanding. I believe that during the migration era in Europe it was pretty common to treat the shield as part of aggressive attacks in other ways, but it all makes sense. I'm not an expert, but thought you might be interested in the comparison.
O yes please. Tell us more about Zulu formation tactics etc. Loved how you drew the analogy with Roman Legion tactics
The approach to war is where Shaka is most similar to the Romans (something like convergent evolution, I suppose). The shield technique of the Zulus was to snag the shield of the opponent with your own, and pull, thus twisting the enemy's flank toward you whilst shielding you at the same time, and then drive the icwa in just under the lowest ribs, I think. (And then pull it out, and it makes a sucking noise, it's said.) The "c" is a dental click, suggesting it's quite a soft sound, but audible. I've heard somewhere that the Romans did essentially the same thing, at least in some manouevres. I've also been told that in fighting against spear throwers, they did the "tortoise" trick, shielding themselves against the falling spears.
And then there was total war. Caesar didn't just defeat the Gauls, he set out to destroy them. Under Shaka, that's what the Zulu started doing, too. (Contrast that with Xhosa further South. I basically exist because the Xhosa didn't kill women and children. In one of the frontier wars an ancestor of mine was stabbed very thoroughly to death in front of his wife and children on the farm, the farmstead was burnt to the ground, and all the cattle were carried off, but his wife and the children were just told to leave. Off into a night where there were still things like hyaenas, so they weren't "perfectly spared", but Shaka's enemies all had to die. No exceptions. If the wild animals didn't eat my great-great-something-granny, she was free to live on, because that was the Xhosa custom. War is for men, not for children.)
Yes there are some very "up to date" scholars, who claim it wasn't so, but I don't trust them, myself, just to put it bluntly. I suspect that what they do is they impose their own ideas on what a "good person" or a "Great King" should be on history, and thus treat simple facts of people of the past being Of The Past, with their own values (and would quite possibly have felt outright contempt for the secular-christianized stories they're made to become to suit modern tastes in righteousness, were they presented with this) as slanders. The Badpeople told Badstories about the Goodpeople to make them seem like monsters, so this needs to be "debunked" (so making a big splash in Historiography, too).
There's an element of slander in some of the old accounts, so I hear. There are apparently letters that can at least be interpreted as a kind of conspiracy to tell the story as badly as can do - as slanderously - and here I'm thinking of Henry Francis Fynn's accounts of his experiences of the Court of Shaka. Apparently letters have surfaced that he sent to others, in which there's what can be taken to be some kind of plot to distort the truth of what took place there. And then I suppose the maxim of _falsum in unum, falsum in omnia_ is assumed to apply. So vacuously the space left behind in the ashes of the debunking one can fill in whatever replacement story one likes.
It would take lots more slander to make Shaka a less Caesar-like dictator, though. There's a place called Cannibal Cave in the Drakensberg. Because once people practiced cannibalism there. It wasn't some cult. They were driven to it by desperation. No-one who dislikes how unchristi-secular-nicepersonly that makes the history that this kind of fact suggests happened other than by total war, scorched earth, and such universally human sicknesses has stepped up to correct the place name.
If Shaka was really just a nice guy and a visionary and whatever you decide to impose on him as the right kinds of values for the Great King, one has to wonder why Mzilikazi went all the way to Zimbabwe to get away from him. Or Soshangane went all the way up Mozambique to the Limpopo. Or why the Angoni went all the way to Tanzania.
Sorry, I've gotten distracted by scraps of things I might have even misheard.
As far as I'm aware, Shaka was just Shaka, not whatever labels can be stuck onto that. He lived in his circumstances; did things his way. That included "total war". For some aspects of a litigious view of history, some of the facts of all that are inconvenient, and I'm pretty sure that if there was indeed misrepresentation in the few sources we have, the replacements for those are outright fiction.
Hi Matt
I would love to see an episode chronicling the rivalry between the classical French and Italian schools of early modern fencing, a comparison and contrast of their methods, styles, applications, weapons, particularly their foils and the history and development of such, and why the French method ultimately became the dominant style which defines virtually all modern Olympic fencing.
That would be a very interesting and enlightening watch
You gotta be frosty to charge a line of guys with rifles when all you have is a spear.
The Zulus had 6000 guns at Isandlwana. Most of them very lousy trade muskets that couldn't hit anything, but there wasn't a shortage of firearms alongside the spears.
Dan Wylie’s “Myth of Iron” is a pretty good popular history introduction to just how uncertain we should be about what we think we know about Shaka and that era of nation building.
Always thrilled when I see a new video up.
Your argument about the stick tangs is the best one I've heard against the zulu short spears being used for slashing.
I think you have to think about their big shields as an local environment adaptation of the full armor of european history, as plate armor got better and more common, the size of the shields shrunk, but in Africa in general, the heat would make plate armor less helpful, and with the zulus specifically, their tactics of running 50 miles and then being in any kind of shape to fight, let alone win battles, would preclude full suits of armor, or maybe even shields made from heavier iron vs. Leather.
As a person who has run ultramarathons, this part has always been the most impressive feat, even more so than that which makes them so fascinating to most history nerds: defeating an army with rifles, by an army with predominantly short range weopons.
Loving your content!
Glad you enjoy it!
From multiple things I have read the Zulus who fought at Rourke’s Drift were a reserve unit that broke off from the main army fighting at Isandlwana and were not involved in that fight. Therefore they did not collect any of the Martini-Henry rifles at Isandlwana to be able to use them at Rourke’s Drift and that the rifles used at Rourke’s Drift were older types of rifles already in the possession of the Zulus who broke off and went to attack Rourke’s Drift.
Yes also from what I've read the Zulus already owned firearms prior to the Anglo-Zulu War (or the British invasion of the Zulu Kingdom which it really was) but the problem was that they were not trained in their use, specifically how to use the sights, so fired way too high. Also they had been sold pretty much obsolete muzzle loaders whilst European armies already used breech loaders. This was common practice at the time i.e. Europeans selling obsolete weapons to African nations.
Melenik II of Ethiopia who defeated the Italians at the battle of Adwa in 1896 and thus prevented his country being colonised had not only purchased artillery from Russia, but had also paid Russian instructors to train his men in their use. I'm not sure if that was the case with rifles but he seemed to know what he was doing.
I think you literally hit the nail on the head about most of the arguments and heated discussions going around these days when statements like this happens. People are too quick to assume one thing and jump into a rabid argument about how a statement is wrong, when it was never meant that way in the first place and i for one can very much see the argument that the impact the weapon and tactics had on the zulus, could be compared to the gladius and the romans, even if they are completely different types of weapons.
Chris Hemsworth should play Shaka on the next remake. :)
underrated post
Shaka when the walls fell.
@@keirfarnum6811 Lol
In my readings I found discussions on tribal combat in Europe and Africa my mostly spear armed warriors. The combats were more like a series of individual fights and often did relatively little harm to the participants. In Europe armies became larger and fighting was between groups of warriors. As you described the Romans tactics broke up the tribal groups and were able, to disrupt the larger formations so they could not use their pikes and long spears effectively. The Zulus started with tribal combat and inconsequential results to concentrated fighting and tactics (horns of the buffelo, etc) which killed more of the enemies.. Enjoyed your presentation.
Definitely more African content please!
Thank you soooo much for doing some history of sub-saharan African weapons and history. It's much appreciated.
The Iklwa is really an example of the way that, really, spears and swords are just the same thing but on a spectrum of blade-to-shaft ratio.
Is the blade longer than the shaft? It's a sword or knife. Is the blade shorter than the shaft? It's a polearm.
The iklwa is near the middle but decidedly on the 'spear' side, and some weapons like the _nagamaki,_ are examples that almost fall right in the middle!
A series of comparison videos like this could actually be quite illuminating. Selecting disparate iconic weapons, separated by time, geography and culture, but sharing a common aspect. Whether that would be tactical use, cultural significance, type of soldier (or not soldier) who would use them, or who knows what kind of connection.
In Brazil, there is a spear used for boar (cateto, perhaps even queixada) that is called azagaia. Funny that Zulu spear sounds almost like it.
Likely brought to Brazi either by Portugese settlers/former sailors and/or (even more likely) African slaves.
@@ronin47-ThorstenFrankIIRC, african slaves came mainly from Angola, Guinea, not from South Africa (despite already being slaves of other africans). In brazilian portuguese we have several loan words from african and indigenous origin. I'll look into the azagaia origin, if I can find anything.
They seem to be the same word, of ultimately Berber origin both in Spanish and Portuguese.
It is Afrikaans (Dutch) word, not Zulu one, in context of Southern Africa.
Just right after I watched the Shaka Zulu miniseries, this gets posted.
The Shaka series needs a version without the Europeans, which was an idiotic and completely fictional storyline.
Now I am starting to have questions about Zulu military formations.
If the assagai was the equivalent of the Roman gladius, was the rawhide shield the equivalent of the scutum?
Did the Zulus fight in a close disciplined (rectangular or square) formation like the Romans?
Speaking of short spear the Okinawan Tinbe rochin buckler and short spear combo might be something fun to see in the future.
I have had the ERB Shaka Zulu vs. Julius Caesar song playing in my head during this whole video.
What the Gladius and the Short Spear have in common = Every soldier has one.
yeah but then why isnt' the short spear morel like an arming sword ?
@@tsmspace Gladius and Short Spear are a primary weapon, the arming sword is a secondary one.
@@tsmspace If you have to use your arming sword, things have already gone wrong for you in some way. If you can use your icwa, things have gone well.
@@tsmspace Arming sword is a side arm, which means more expensive main weapon.
Zulus weren't able to procure enough firearms/supplies to swich to firearms yet.
Same actually with sword itself, need a lot of iron/steel for that.
@@davidbodor1762 I disagree. a spear might be good, but they're very long and get caught up and hung up on everything, also they are dangerous if out of position (for someone around you) ... Therefore it would be strategic to know when to use which weapon, and there would be plenty of times when the best weapon to have out would not be something very long. (for example,, if you are covering someone else USING a long weapon, and need to be able to poke at anything that appears suddenly very close. _
Charging Matt with battle cry - priceless.
And Cpt. Context strikes again. Love the multi-directional approach a lot.
The idea that something or someone has to be the [blank] of [blank] in order to show how good they are always bothered me
Come to Suzhou, the Venice of China.
Or, learn about the Yi people, the Spartans of China.
Etc.
- i get it, it somehow diminishes the one, while you place the other on a pedestal for some reason.
To me I did originally see it as like a gladius simply because the first example I saw looked like a short sword with an extended handle; nothing to do with Shaka or Caesar or comparisons to Romans. Not that I saw one up close, just a single example on a TV documentary, so it wasn't a lot of information and the example in question may have been misleading; there wasn't a lot of detail about its construction of cutting ability for sure.
they do throw these things too
It's funny I read the title of this video and thought "you know I never thought about it that way, but from a tactical standpoint there really are quite a few similarities". Then I watched the video wher Matt says basically the same thing, But of course he adds the all-important word to any discussion on historical weapons, say it with me kids: CONTEXT!
+scholagladiatoria *The Zulus packed shields that were lighter than the Roman **_scuta,_** which were able to withstand cuts and slashes.* The Zulus also used .75" L/40 flintlock smoothbores and rifles, which were easier to support with the expendables they had.
The Zulu spear although used in warfare was mainly used for hunting to help feed their family. The blades shape was meant to mimic a pointed leaf. The shape also prevented it from becoming stuck in the animal being hunted.
we have a traditional short spear in the pantanal region of Brazil called azagaia, which in portuguese sounds a lot like asegai
Likely brought to Brazi either by Portugese settlers/former sailors and/or (even more likely) African slaves. The Portugese language has a lot of foreign loanwords due to their former empire.
@@ronin47-ThorstenFrank exactly what i was thinking, we have a lot of African influence here, be language, food or other traditions
Yeah, the spear you showed at the start was a regular umkhonto (generic isiZulu term for a spear, as opposed to the imported term assegai). Iklwa (pronounced with a sucking, wet click in the middle as per its onomatopoeic origins) were often even shorter, with a long point and a short haft.
Love more stuff on African weapons, especially medieval ones (which, I know, the sources are limited on for anything south of the Sahara. That said, I'd also love an analysis of how the Roman legions managed fighting their most common enemy: other Roman legions! It certainly doesn't appear that the gear changed dramatically from the Marian Reforms through to Hadrian (beyond some brief flirtations with square shields and lorica segmentata). The gladius seems a poor weapon to use against enemy wearing mail.
Not really, it will stab through the mail no problem. Mail sucks vs stabbing........it's amazing vs slashing. Not that it mattered they were taught to attack weak points regardless like necks, under arms, faces, groins etc.
@@MrBottlecapBillNo, it won't stab through mail 'no problem' and mail didn't 'suck vs stabbing.' Why would they have adopted mail and used it for centuries when, as Matt pointed out, the vast majority of their enemies were armed with spears that stab?
Civil wars wouldn't have been the only time they ever fought enemies wearing mail or better armour. They'd have had plenty of opportunity to practice defeating or bypassing armour. And yeah, if you're well-trained to poke at the bits that aren't covered, it won't matter how effective the gear is at stopping the blow that lands in an unprotected spot.
A major difference that the Zulus seems not to have the concept of a static shield wall. The common story is they would send flanking forces, the horns of the buffalo, and also hit in the center of the enemy with the chest or head of the buffalo.
Love the involuntary snigger when you said "bulbous knob".
As far as I know, the Zulu at Rourke's Drift didn't see combat at Isandlwana. Hence, no looted Martini-Henrys from the battlefield. I could be wrong of course. And just for "fun", the Ik-lwa, was so called because that's the sound it makes when you stick it in and then pull it out. Apparently. Other than that, I totally agree with your main points.
You are correct, the Rorkes Drift attack was made by the reserves that didn't get to fight at Isandhlwana.
I watched the excellent Zulu movie yesterday and wondered about these spears - I was surprised the spears were short
Could you do a similar video on Aztec macuahuitl "Sword". The main problem being people want to especially online want to treat them as crappy swords when their far more comparable to an axe or club.
The zulus were using rifles by the time of Isandlwhana. They weren't when Shaka (or Zulu leadership) developed the iklwa.
Good notes on the construction. At a glance it would look like the spearhead is plenty long enough to chop stuff up.
Excellently done.
I'd love to learn more about African cultural/technological/martial history.
Loincloths, Losing, and sub-80 IQ’s. That’s the gist of it. Oh and termite mounds, the largest structures in Africa.
Me too personally especially if he can go over different shields across the continent
Another wonderful video!
Excellent video! I concur with some other comments and would love to see more African weaponry on the channel.
One question; why does African weaponry (mainly the pole arms you've shown previously) have such narrow shafts? That spear, while deadly I'm sure, looks downright flimsy. I'm sure you can become used to it, but it also doesn't look like the nicest thing in the world to hold either.
IKLWA have an thick handle and the shaft his finished by an pommel and the lenghth of the blade approaching 55/75 CM with the cone and 8.2 at 9 cm of wide the shaft lenght is 42 at 50 cm !
I have to say, a lot of Zulu spears were brought back to Britain in 1879, and a lot of those look very like the example I hold in this video - with a relatively narrow and long shaft. Also, it's evident from the examples brought back from Rorke's Drift and elsewhere that there was a lot of variation - many different sizes and shapes were in use.
The Gladius is the equivalent to the Asagai you mean?
I think that when you call a weapon to be "the X weapon of the Y group" it has the same effect as comparing one animal to another. You can say hyenas are the wolves of africa, and people typically gather that they fill a similar niche with a lot of convergent evolution. However, this obviously does not make hyenas into canids of any kind and they remain two very different animals.
The same can be said here, it is a weapon to fill a similar niche, but "evolving" the stuff they had on hand. It isn't that the icwa is the gladius of africa or the gladius is the icwa of europe, both are short range massed rushing weapons that compliment a shield.
I'm not a specialist at all but tactics look completely different. Zulu used fast charge to prevent adversaries’ javelinы throwing. Romans couldn’t run fast due to the huge weight of their shields and were throwing their pilums during the attack. If we want to find an analogy to Zulu tactic we should probably recall Scottish highlanders’ charges, not roman’s tortoise.
I'd love to watch a video on Zulus shields
I don’t know if it’s true but I heard somewhere that they called it the Icwa because it’s the sound that is made when pulling it out of your opponent.
It's an interesting parallel, but of course there were also a number of different short swords in use throughout Africa.
I love these, but with lumpy organic hilts with a bit of a flare at the base. Those skinny smooth ones don't have any "data for the hands" for lack of a better term and I can't control them nearly as well. That one you're holding is terrifying and I'd never risk using it without wrapping it in a bunch of stuff.
I do think a lot of the older ones were more like that and I'm pretty sure I'm not the first person to have that sort of preference. I'm better with a cool stick than a big tube.
It should be noted that the word "assegaai" is not native to any southern Bantu language. IIRC it's a word the British picked up from somewhere else in the MENA region.
Assegai is from the medieval Berber "zagaya" for javelin; the Spanish and Portuguese adopted it as a term for all African throwing spears, and the French and Brits then applied it to all African spears period. It really shouldn't be applied to Zulu weapons, especially not the iklwa which can't really be thrown with any kind of accuracy.
The Iklwa is the Zulu adaptation of the traditional assegai spear for close quarter combat. The weapon is created by the great Zulu warrior Shaka. According to some historians, southern African warriors would occasionally engage in close quarter combat by shortened the wooden shaft of their assegai spear to create an improvised weapon for close quarter combat. Shaka creates an actual weapon suited for close quarter combat. The iklwa has a much longer and larger spearhead with a much shorter wooden shaft. The weapon is designed for close quarter combat instead of being thrown at the enemies.
@@MrLantean There's really no such thing as a "traditional assegai." Short spears that could double as javelins are common across Africa, but there's no one design and "assegai" is a European mangling of a specifically North African term.
Well, Romans and the Zulus had a similar tactic of coming in close, as a unit, stabbing and presenting a shield wall to the enemy. And some historians called it a Meat Grinder effect.
No, they didn't. Romans did not form close stabbing shieldwalls. Romans largely didn't form shieldwalls. Romans did not fight largely by stabbing. The idea that they did originates from Vegetius, who not only wrote a century after the sword-and-javelin style of Roman warfare had gone extinct and several centuries after the specific army he was describing, but also had minimal military experience and got significant details wrong in his description of the Roman army of his own time.
Actually reliable contemporary authors understood the Roman military of their time to fight in loose order and make heavy use of cuts and slashes - Polybius in fact suggests the two points to be significantly related.
Moreover, meatgrinders have little metaphorical ressemblance to either Roman or Zulu warfare; both being systems being ones where combat is resolved in pulses of short, sharp close combat between intervals of standoff.
At least to me, "meatgrinder" implies a prolonged, continuous, and highly lethal scenario; this describes essentially no historical combat, but for the reasons displayed above it manages to describe Roman and Zulu combat even less.
@@melanoc3tusii205 For me "meatgrinder" evokes modern battlefields like Verdun, Stalingrad, or Peleliu - not for the specific tactics, but because they were massive industrialized processes/machines that took in fresh troops at one end and expelled them as shredded meat at the other.
I'd love to see a similar video on the Scutum vs Zulu Shield.
I’d love to see more! I’m surprised at how sleek the authentic, historical example is. It almost seems flimsy. How long is the tang?
Has Matt ever spoken about the war hammer black spiked weapon on the wall next to the rapier? Looks nasty.
Has Matt ever spoken about the black hammer / spike on the wall next to the rapier? Looks nasty.
Be interested to know if they used a throwing spear just before the charge as it seems that could disrupt your opponents readiness to defend.
With cold weapons against rifles/muskets anything that slows you down from getting into melee is counter productive. A throwing spear is a pretty lousy weapon that occcupies your weapon arm, uses your momentum so the recoil and body mechanics slows you down, and then you have to change hands or draw your melee weapon after throwing - worse, from a throwing range the rifleman standing infront of you can't possibly miss... so this is the worst place to slow down.
Have to say it was not something I'd ever considered, but thinking about it before watching I decided, yes, it was used in a similar way as part of a tactical 'weapon system', really interesting vid.
They may not be that much the same but when Cold Steel made both, I did cross shop them as a weapon to use in home defense.
I bought my previous girlfriend the ikwla for her birthday. In a hallway, the stabby short spear will be superior but the gladius and a shield may have worked for her.
A range of modern design analysis uses the words form and function in various combinations.
They're actually harking back to "spear age" Aristotle, who juxtaposed Essence and Form.
The Iklwa and Gladius are obviously different in form, as Matt has so eloquently explained.
A look at their essence (especially when combined into a "weapon system" with large shields and disciplined units) reveals a similarity.
Both permit trained troops to rapidly close with an enemy, minimise his opportunity to shoot, and use "inside fighting" to rapidly win the resulting close combat.
If there's a Roman equivalent to Shaka, I'd nominate Marius, who introduced the cohort, regularised his infantry into a single type, and opened the legions to citizens without property.
I find it fascinating when similar evolutions in fighting style develop in seeming isolation.
One that happens over and over is the shift from defensive to offensive fighting.
Infantry in particular seem to master their weapons, and warfare gets a bit more "gentlemanly" as both sides line up and fence (or firefight).
Then somebody decides to give cold steel another go, and we see a phase of aggressive fighting breaking all those "well trained" and disciplined defensive armies.
One that fascinates me is how both Europe and Japan concluded that primitive muskets called for an increase in spear/pike length.
This in turn saw a decline in the shorter cut and thrust polearms until they were restricted to special troops.
Thanks for reading this long ramble.
And _this_ is why it's called a Schola!
I think, if you chase it down, that "Assegai" derives from Arabic, and was originally applied to east African spears such as those used by the Masai and Tutsi to hunt lions.
It's from zagaya which is Berber. Az-zagayah was the Arab, the Spanish and Portuguese adopted it from there in the Middle Ages, and then applied it to all African spears when the colonial era kicked off.
I don't think I ever heard or considered the comparison of the Gladius to the Iklwa because they were similar in use (though I can see some applications, they are short-bladed weapons used in conjunction with a large shield after all), but simply because it was the iconic weapon that was believed to be a functionally large part behind the Zulu Nation's vast conquest... in the same way the Gladius is the iconic weapon aiding the Romans to conquer much of Europe and the Middle East.
But it always irks me when people emphasize the Gladius as a thrusting weapon. I've seen testing... the Gladius is one of the poorest thrusting weapons compared to every other sword built for the purpose. It'll reach vital organs just fine, but it's so broad that it's difficult to call it purely thrusting. Still, a thrust with one would open a huge wound, but it would very easily chop off limbs. I recall reports of battles with the Romans ending with thousands of hacked limbs scattered about.
Great video as usual - yes the similarities between Gladius and Assegai begin and end with close range, large shield and stabbing.
I'd be interested in hearing your take on Zulu battle formations and tactics.....did Shaka have European advisors?
Not to diminish Zulu or other African tactical ability - if they changed and evolved on their own, that would be great also.
First of all, how and why do you think that Europeans would penetrate into the depths of Africa just to teach the Zulus how to fight in a mode of combat that had not, by that time, been employed in Europe for at a minimum several centuries, with formations that had not been used in Europe at all? This is such an absurd stretch that your following reassurance is rendered highly incredible.
As for Roman and Zulu similarities, they end before the stabbing; Romans were among the least-stabbing combatants in the Ancient Mediterranean - obviously, it's immensely difficult for them not to have been when they used cutting-and-thrusting swords in close combat and everyone else preferred spears
@@melanoc3tusii205 Zululand is hardly the depths of Africa, it was smack bang next to the British Natal Colony, which was on the coast.
the heads of long headed spears must need to be really thin in order to stay light and nimble
Zulu spears are cool.
My grandfather had an Allison-Chalmers tractor. He also had a '74 Corvette.
Both vehicles had a gas powered engine, a steering wheel, 4 tires, 4 wheels, and a drivers seat.
Are they the same kind of vehicle? Sure, from a certain point of view.
But to normal people, they are completely different.
Somebody has finally said it. I am Vindicated.
After thinking about it, there was likely a difference metallurgy of what Zulu blacksmith could forge versus what the roman arsenals could make. I am assuming that the spear heads were made of softer ferrous material. I will not use iron vs steel here, since defining such is not easy. It was my understanding that roman swords had harden edges and that would also make them superior for slashing and of course for stabbing too.
I doubt that the zulus were importing solingen steel or sheffield steel. But, one never knows what traders were bringing in and the Zulu spear heads might have been decent steel.
Another interesting spear to look into would be the Aztec Tepoztopilli, essentially an Aztec obsidian bladed equivalent to the glaive.
Tepotzopilli are an obsidian equivalent to the generic leaf-bladed bronze, iron, or steel thrusting spear. Nothing about them suggests a glaive-like use.
Very informative.
the African nations at that time fought a more ceremonial thing to prevent to much loss of life Shaka basically said bump that and transitioned to all out warfare
I don't do historical African martial arts but now when I think of those moments when people use the Ilkwa to slice and cut through things almost as if it was a sword I sort of roll my eyes and sigh because nowadays I know that the Zulu definitely didn't use it that way and that the people who typically reproduce and use these things obviously take some creative liberties and reinterpretions with how they build and use Ilkwas and those people most likely never studied Historical African Martial arts.