The National Library of Canada provides an authorized mirror of this e-publication. The base document, however, is the one at http://ejmas.com/kronos. Most recent update: December 2004. Copyright © 2000-2004 Joseph R. Svinth All rights reserved.

Kronos; A Chronology of the Martial Arts and Combative Sports, represents my idiosyncratic interpretation of the history of the martial arts, combative sports, and associated philosophical topics. If you have suggestions for improvement, please let me know. If you think you can do better, please do so.

The periods covered are:

The bibliographies are at:

Online references, a summary of recent changes, and general housekeeping information are found at:

If you prefer reading traditional print format, then please see the abbreviated chronology in Thomas A. Green, Martial Arts of the World: An Encyclopedia (ABC-CLIO, 2001). Meanwhile, if you prefer reading articles arranged topically rather than chronologically, then please see the essays in Green's encyclopedia and the chapters in Thomas A. Green and Joseph R. Svinth, editors, Martial Arts in the Modern World (Greenwood, 2003).

Finally, if you want to see how Kronos has evolved over time, then please see the first edition, which appears online at http://ejmas.netfirms.com/kronos.

***

Sixth century:

Greco-Babylonian personal horoscopes appear in India. The source of introduction was probably Athenian or Alexandrian scholars avoiding Byzantine and Roman persecution.

Members of the Nazca culture of southwestern Peru and northern Chile build hundreds of petroglyphs. The Nazca made these stone etchings by removing the surface layer of the desert and lining the cleared area with stones. Animal shapes are probably the oldest Nazca designs while the geometric shapes are probably newer. There are many theories concerning the original purpose of these stone patterns. Because the Nazca petroglyphs are best viewed from the air, the most famous explanation is perhaps Erich von Däniken’s theory about them being extraterrestrial landing sites. A more pedestrian (and plausible) theory suggests that the petroglyphs were viewed from nearby hilltops during part of some divination ritual. Thus the date used here: while the Nazca culture dates to the first century BCE, it did not start building major underground aqueducts in the Atacama Desert until the sixth century CE.

About 500:

Atlatls, or spear-throwers, become standard military weapons in Mayan armies. The reason was that these doubled the maximum effective range of hand-thrown spears. (In 1993, the world-record javelin throw was 300 feet, while the world-record spear throw using an atlatl was almost 617 feet.) As this made killing men little different than hunting animals, it offended religious leaders. Therefore swords, clubs, and javelins continued to be the standard military weapons elsewhere in the Americas.

501:

The King of the Burgundians introduces trial by battle into Western Christianity. The idea was to invoke the judgment of God concerning hard-to-prove charges, such as those involving incest or cuckoldry. For, in King Gundobar’s words, "people might as well risk their bodies as their souls." Proxy fighters were allowed in these fights, with the proviso that after the battle the loser would have his hand chopped off and his employer would be hanged.

507:

A plausibly dated Yamato emperor appears in Honshu. But even that is being generous, as despite Japanese propaganda the man would be better described as a clan head or tribal chieftain than an emperor.

About 510:

The Chinese replace their large stone gongs with large bronze gongs. These instruments were used for curing illness, chasing away evil spirits and robbers, and sounding military retreats. The idea appears to have been borrowed from some iron-working Mongolian tribes that the Chinese called the T’u-chüeh, or Turks.

About 525:

A Roman Catholic abbot named Dionysus Exiguus introduces Easter tables that assumed Christ was born 753 years after the founding of Rome. On Christmas Day, 800, Charlemagne made Dioynsus’ Easter tables the standard for the Carolingian empire, and in 1627, a French Jesuit named Denis Pétain used them to divide human history into BC and AD. Pétain’s system entered common use in France about 1650, and international use soon after.

525:

The Council of Oxia prohibits Christians from consulting sorcerers and diviners, or using any methods of divination that used wood or bread.

529:

The Byzantine Emperor Flavius Justinianus forbids the teaching of Neoplatonic philosophy and numerology in Athens and Alexandria. He also orders everyone who refused to become Christian to surrender his or her property and leave the government. Many scholars fled to Syria and Iran, where they could continue their astrological and scientific research unhindered.

About 530:

According to tradition, an Indian monk known as Bodhidharma (literally, "Carrier of Wisdom") introduces southern Indian moving meditations to the inmates of the Shaolin monastery in Honan Province. These meditations are often cited as the inspiration for northern Shaolin boxing. While this relationship is probably mythological, the idea that monks had a responsibility to exercise was clearly in the air, as Saint Benedict was simultaneously introducing the idea of Christian monastic labors into France and Italy. In both France and China, prayer services, or matins, occurred every three to four hours. To increase the power of prayer, simultaneity was encouraged. Nonetheless, there was a problem here. Not only were hours of different length during the summer and winter, but sundials didn’t work in the dark and water-clocks froze in the winter. Meanwhile, guards ("watches") sometimes fell asleep or got distracted, and so forgot to light one-hour candles or incense sticks. More importantly, none of these devices was useful for making the precise astronomical observations that astrology required. So research continued into ways of making more accurate timekeeping devices, research that resulted in the invention of mechanical bell-ringers during the eleventh century and mechanical clocks during the thirteenth.

About 535:

Korea’s Silla Dynasty converts to Mahayana Buddhism. The Korean aristocracy’s appreciation for the Buddha’s philosophy is unlikely, as just seven years earlier, some Korean aristocrats had murdered a high noble (I Ch’a-don) for too strongly advocating conversion. About the same time, however, the Korean aristocrats also replaced female sword-dancers with male sword-dancers, and moved to limit the power of female shamans. Therefore, Buddhism was more likely a request for divine protection and a way of limiting female power within the court.

540-590:

Fifteen successive waves of bubonic plague spread from Egypt throughout Eurasia, killing at least a third of the world’s population. These plagues crippled governments and undermined people’s faith in their old gods, and serve as a partial explanation for the spread of new religions such as Islam and Tantric Buddhism during the following century. Witness, for instance, the way that the Byzantine Saint Cyprian converted to Christianity after his astrology failed to thwart a plague near Antioch.

About 543:

Egyptians fleeing Byzantine persecution introduce Nestorian Christianity into Arabia and Ethiopia.

About 549:

An Alexandrian monk known as Cosmas Indicopleustes completes a geographical text called Topographia Christiana, or "Christian Topography." In it, Cosmas used Biblical exegesis to show that the earth was the flat floor of a gigantic, vaulted temple instead of a spherical ball located at the center of a geocentric universe. As his theory was both mathematically and theologically improbable, it was widely ignored during its own time. The theory was rediscovered in the 1870s, and used by Darwinists as an example of how the Catholic Church, which was then strongly opposed to evolutionary theories, had acted throughout its history to retard science, scholarship, and learning. That is a calumny, of course, but people with ideological axes to grind rarely have qualms about stretching truth to prove a point.

About 550:

Due to Buddhist prohibitions against gambling with dice, Indian aristocrats give up dicing for another gambling game known as chaturanga, or "the four corps." The immediate ancestor of chess, chaturanga was played on a board whose checkerboard pattern symbolized fate (or irrigated fields), and whose pieces represented infantry, cavalry, archers, and elephants. The Byzantines and Arabs introduced the Normans to the game during the eleventh century, and by the mid-thirteenth century, there were chess books in Italy and Castile. The European game was of course revised to suit local conditions. The Indian vizier, for example, was a weak piece, but in the European game, this became the most powerful piece on the board (and the only female), namely the queen. Likewise, in Italy, elephants became castles, while in thirteenth-century Scandinavia they became berserkers.

During an exhibition held at the court of the Liang Dynasty Wu Ti emperor, a Buddhist monk called Tung Ch’uan ("Eastern Fist") uses unarmed techniques to disarm armed attackers. What these techniques were is unknown. Therefore, while this exhibition has been cited as proof of the early existence of Shaolin temple boxing, it could as easily have been a religico-magical preparation for a Liang Dynasty attack on some enemies living north of the Yangtze River. Meanwhile, in Western China, artists commemorate Chinese victories over Avars, Uighurs, Mongols, and other nomad groups ("bandits") by painting murals on the walls of Dunhuang Cave 285. The story of the 500 Bandits' conversion to Buddhism is a popular theme in later Chinese theatricals, and so represents a possible source of inspiration for Chinese boxing styles.

Japanese soldiers start experimenting with Mongol stirrups and Chinese siege technologies.

Gothic clergymen write court histories describing German history as having been as heroic and noble as Roman history.

552:

Christian missionaries smuggle silkworms into Europe.

About 558:

The Avars introduce Mongol stirrups and Chinese trebuchets into Eastern Europe. The Avars were a western Siberian people related to the Huns that the Byzantines brought west to serve as a buffer on their northern frontier. Before the advent of stirrups, Western European cavalrymen mounted their horses by vaulting into the saddles, and obtained firm seats using four-cornered saddles and severe bits. For a trained rider, sticking pigs or peasants with a lance was not that difficult without stirrups. What stirrups did was make it easier for heavily armored men to mount their horses, and then to gain the advantage needed to knock other armored men from their saddles. This method of fighting, which emphasized meeting force with force, greatly appealed to the Germans and Celts, with their long history of force-on-force confrontations.

562-594:

A major worldwide drought occurs. Ice core samples from in South America show that precipitation was 30% below normal throughout the period.

About 563:

Irish missionaries introduce Roman Catholicism into the Scottish Highlands; Saint Columba, the patron saint of poets, plagiarists, and computer pirates, is the hero of the story.

About 570:

An attack on Mecca by the Yemenis and Ethiopians is stopped by smallpox. This plague is significant partly because it coincided with the birth of the Muslim apostle Muhammad, and partly because of the elephants the Ethiopians reportedly had in their van. (I say reportedly because from the stories it is not entirely clear whether those elephants were real beasts or instead the elephant-headed standards of Indo-Ethiopian court astrologers.)

The T’ien T’ai school of Mahayana Buddhist moving meditations develops in China; its most famous teacher was the third Patriarch, Chih-i and its principal scripture was the Lotus Sutra. This system was known for its enthusiastic use of the sudden realization method of enlightenment, and when introduced into Japan during the ninth century as the Tendai school, it became particularly popular with the monks of Mount Hiei.

About 575:

The Chinese invent kitchen matches. These do not become popular in Europe until the nineteenth century.

About 580:

The Welsh hero Long Shaft dies in Yorkshire. In the twelfth century, the German troubadour Wolfram von Eschenbach converts this semi-legendary figure into Percival, the self-castrated hero of the search for the Holy Grail.

585:

French churchmen debate whether women have souls. At least that is the postmodern feminist view of the debate, which was actually about whether the Old French word vir meant the same thing as the Vulgate Latin word homo. (The decision was that it did not.)

587:

A Yamato archer named Yorozu becomes the first Japanese hero to commit suicide as a way of showing his master that while he might be killed, he could not be defeated. As the historical veracity of the source documents is dubious (the story was not written until the eighth century), the story may be allegorical rather than literal fact. Regardless, the Japanese were hardly the only medieval warriors to take their obligations and honor so seriously. For example, Harold Godwinson’s huscarles (personal bodyguard) fought the Normans to the death at Hastings in 1066 rather than try to escape to Scotland. And in 1301 and 1567, some besieged Rajputi knights opted to kill their wives and children, then ride to their deaths, saffron lance pennons and robes streaming, rather than sneak out the back door disguised as Muslims. Such heroism was not entirely self-effacing. For one thing, to this day many people prefer a quick, glorious death to a long, meaningless life marred by guilt or shame. And for another, the standard early medieval practice upon capturing a town was to castrate or blind any male prisoners, then gang-rape their women and sell their children into slavery. Not that this has changed much over the years. During the 1530s, the Afghan Sher Khan castrated the sons of a dead Rajput prince and gave the man’s daughters to some itinerant minstrels so that they could make them dance in the bazaars. Military rape-gangs were also a feature of World War II and the Afghan and Balkan warfare of 1980s and 1990s.

588:

Japanese musicians living in Korea’s Paekche kingdom start learning Chinese stick-drumming techniques. The musicians’ motivation may have been military, as the both the Chinese and Korean militaries used drums to banish ghosts from encampments and flutes to turn cowards into heroes.

589:

A north Chinese hero named Ch’in-hu wins a strategically important victory during "a tiger year, a tiger month, a tiger day, a tiger hour." From an astrological standpoint, such an attack required considerable courage, as tiger days and years are not normally a time for taking chances. On the other hand, from a pragmatic standpoint, all this meant was that Ch’in-hu used elite cavalry formations to mount a pre-dawn attack on the morning of February 20.

About 590:

Arab warriors start riding their horses into battle. (Previously they had ridden their animals to the battlefield, then dismounted and dueled with swords before crowds of scantily clad female admirers.)

590:

The Christian Synod of Druim Ceat orders British women to quit going into battle alongside their men. The ban must not have been especially effective, since the daughter of Alfred the Great is remembered as the conqueror of Wales and the people who taught sword dancing to the Ulster hero Cû Chulainn were female. Most Metal Age cultures have sword or sword-and-buckler dances. The dances are often associated with butchers, tanners, and metal workers. According to Xenophon, good sword dancing provided good training for war and showed individual prowess. Of course, as countless writers, from Homer to Saadi to Bat Masterson, remind us, this is not always true. ("Courage is of little use to a man who essays to arbitrate a difference with [a weapon] if he is inexperienced in the use of the weapon he is going to use," said Masterson in 1907. "Then again he may possess both courage and experience and still fail if he lacks deliberation. Any man who does not possess courage, proficiency in the use of [the weapon] and deliberation had better make up his mind at the beginning to settle his personal differences in some other manner than by an appeal to [violence].") Therefore, sword dances are, from a pragmatic standpoint, useful mostly for providing entertainment, improving physical fitness, and attracting sexual admirers. Whether women participate in these dances depends entirely on the culture doing the dances.

597:

Bodies are placed in the walls of a building at Canterbury, England. This was not necessarily a reminder of some bloodthirsty pre-Christian rite. After all, construction-project burials were also popular among certain twentieth century Mafia leaders, and nobody ever accused them of religious atavism.

Seventh century:

Sanhaja merchants from the Atlas Mountains of Morocco introduce camels into the Western Sahara.

Trade routes begin connecting the peoples of the Gulf of California with those of Arizona, New Mexico, and northern Mexico. Reportedly waterholes can be found every twelve miles along the route, and trade items included abalone, coral, turquoise, copper, and macaw birds.

About 600:

The T’ang Dynasty hires Punjabi and Bengali astrologers to teach Vedic astrology in China. This may have significance to the Chinese martial arts, as many subsequent martial art practice forms have rectilinear patterns whose designs are similar to those used by Vedic astrologers to cast birth charts and horoscopes. Practice inside tiled courtyards is another possible explanation, but defining social space using geometric methods was vastly more important to thirteenth century Muslims and sixteenth century western Europeans than seventh century Chinese.

Wari becomes an important ceremonial center in the Peruvian Andes. Wari’s economy was based on labor-intensive terraced agriculture, and to fight drought irrigation canals carried water long distances from high altitude sources. Wari’s aristocrats apparently developed the knotted string records that the Incas later used for communication. Color rather than knots was the primary method of encoding information. As with their neighbors the Tiwanaku and their successors, the Incas, the Wari cemented social relationships by drinking intoxicating beverages until everyone was in a state of unconsciousness. The deity of drinking (and death) was Wiracocha, the Staff God.

About 602:

Buddhists fleeing political repression in Korea introduce Chinese calendars, astrology, and soya plants into Japan.

606:

The Chinese start selecting civil servants based upon their knowledge of the Confucian classics. Among the subjects taught were archery (the pull was said to show character, and scholars were expected to hit the mark three times out of five) and knowledge of Sun Tzu’s Art of War and the Analects of Confucius. At its best, the system honed students’ minds to razor-sharpness via the requirement that they first master their material then provide well-crafted and witty oral and written commentaries on it. Meanwhile, at its worst, the caused students to spend decades memorizing to rote perfection one or two ossified compositions, a practice that has since been shown to stifle creativity. Still, there is much to be said for the system, as it was not significantly improved until the late nineteenth century.

609:

A Buddhist priest named Wongwang describes the laws of war for the Korean soldiers Kwisan and Ch’uhang. These were loyalty to the king, piety toward parents, sincerity toward friends, courage in battle, avoiding combat on holy days, and killing as few people or animals on either side as possible.

610:

On the first day of the lunar New Year, religious sectarians dressed as Buddhist monks attack the Chinese Imperial Palace. Three years later, other sectarians plot an attack on the carriage in which an imperial prince was riding. In both cases, the reasoning was that, since ordained monks were hypocrites and governments were corrupt, it was the duty of the upright man to overthrow them, and the result, unsurprisingly, was increased government distrust of popular Buddhism.

613:

The Council of Tours instructs Roman Catholic priests to tell parishioners that prayer cures illness better than any earthly physician does. Mary Baker Eddy revived the concept during the nineteenth century and called it Christian Science.

About 620:

The Byzantines introduce the Varangian ("Pledged") Guard. Before 1066, this mercenary force was filled with Slavs and Norsemen, the most famous of whom was the eleventh century King Harold Hardraada of Norway. After 1066, many members were English.

620:

Christian monks complain about Scandinavian attacks on Christian monasteries along the Irish littoral. This was nothing new: Frisian pirates had been raiding Britain for centuries. It had nothing to do with Christianity, either: Danish and Swedish "sea victuallers" remained a threat in Baltic regions until the fifteenth century. Christian propaganda notwithstanding, Irish monasteries were hardly defenseless. For one thing, the seventh century Irish were not a pacific folk, and a contemporary text called Mellbretha ("Special Judgments") described aristocratic youths engaging in charioteering, javelin and rock throwing, boxing, and wrestling. Second, Irish monasteries had their monks, many of whom had been soldiers before discovering that the monastic life provided a more comfortable living than soldiering. (Western Christian warrior-monks could be downright redoubtable, too. For example, Gozlin, the Bishop of Paris, is remembered for killing pagan after pagan with a sword during a Scandinavian attack on his city in 885. Meanwhile, the Norman Bishop Odo is remembered for crushing English skulls with a mace at Hastings.) Most importantly, however, these priests had their faith and their God. ("A mighty fortress is our God," said Martin Luther 900 years later.) Therefore, the infamy of these Viking attacks owes much to the spread of literate Christian priests throughout Britain and Ireland.

About 627:

The T’ang Dynasty T’ai Tsung emperor establishes the Chinese military training standard that required military crossbowmen to hit a man-sized target two times out of four at a range of 300 yards.

Between 629 and 645:

A Chinese scholar named Hsüan-tsang takes 600 Yogacara ("Unifying Practice") texts from North India to China by way of Katmandu. These Indian texts taught that people view life as they wish it to be, not as it is. They also taught that logic was meaningless, that sin and goodness were meaningless, and that both faith and works were meaningless. Instead, meaning was found entirely within one’s own heart and nature. The development is important to the martial arts because the philosophy provided the basis for the Ch’an (Zen) Buddhism of China, Korea, and Japan.

About 630:

Narasimhavarman I Mamallan, the Tamil king of southern India’s Pallava Dynasty, commissions dozens of granite sculptures showing unarmed fighters disarming armed opponents. These sculptures might have been state propaganda. After all, Narasimhavarman and his sons were constantly fighting with their neighbors. Or they may have had religious symbolism, as the modern Indians have some violent dances honoring the goddess Kali that use similar movements. Or they might have shown an early form of varma adi, a southern Indian wrestling art since subsumed by kalarippayattu, that allowed kicking, kneeing, and punching to the head and chest, but prohibited blows below the waist. (The Agni Purana of the eighth or ninth century describes such an art, and Mamallan means "Great Wrestler.") Or they could have been all of the above or none: The Indians used their sculptures to tell stories, and it is presently impossible to tell whether those stories were true or fanciful.

633:

The Synod of Whitby decides that the Roman Church’s dating of Easter will be the British standard. The Irish held out for a different method of calculating Easter until 704, while the Welsh resisted until 768. Why did the Irish and Welsh resist? Probably because there were so many mathematical errors in the English Easter tables.

According to Arabic traditions, an Iranian general named Hormuz invites an Arab general named Khalid bin Al-Waleed to wrestle with him. Obviously one must be unarmed to wrestle, and when Khalid laid down his sword to wrestle, Hormuz’s men sprang from ambush to seize him. However, Khalid’s men were prepared for such an eventuality, and slew the perfidious infidel. Although Hormuz probably did organize an ambush, the structure of the story suggests folk theater rather than actual military practice.

About 636:

The eighty-first chapter of a Sui Dynasty history called the Sui Shu mentions the Eastern Barbarians, meaning the Koreans, Japanese, and Okinawans. About some people living south of Japan, the chroniclers wrote, "There are villages here and there, each with a headman called wu-liao. Invariably a good fighter becomes the wu-liao and controls the village… There are knives, pikes, bows and arrows, and things like swords. There is little iron there, and their blades are all thin and small. Bone and horn are generally used, to make up [for the lack of iron]. For armor they use plaited hemp or the thin skins of bears or leopards… The people of this country like to attack one another. They are strong and robust, and they run well. They do not die easily and bear their wounds well. The various districts live unto themselves and do not succor one another. When two bands of fighters face each other, three to five brave men come forward and leap and dance about, yelling and hurling insults at each other. Then they fight, shooting arrows at each other. If neither side can vanquish the other, they all run away." During the late nineteenth century, European scholars theorized that this passage referred to Taiwan rather than Okinawa, and after the Japanese popularized this idea after militarily occupying Taiwan in 1895. Twentieth century Chinese scholars, on the other hand, claimed that it referred to Okinawa. Most US scholars accept the Chinese interpretation.

About 639:

A Tibetan king known as Srontsen Gampo establishes the Tibetan capital at Lhasa and orders the Tibetan language to be written in the Kashmiri script of North India. According to tradition, the latter was done to please the king’s Nepalese wife, who wanted to see the king’s armies spread Buddhism throughout the world. It is also possible that Srontsen Gampo wanted to obtain translations of North Indian medical textbooks.

639:

The Muslims establish sunset on July 16, 622 CE as the starting point for their lunar calendar. The date was the day that the Apostle Muhammad entered Medina after being forced to flee from Mecca.

639-643:

A handful of Arabs conquers Southwest Asia. Their victories were due to various factors. First, the Byzantines, Sassanians, and Visigoths had already militarily exhausted one another. Second, the Muslims’ were initially willing to provide fair and equitable taxation to everyone (and religious freedom to those who were willing to pay extra for it). Third, they had Islam, the first multinational ideology to ascribe a profit motive to warfare. Of course, their better use of cavalry and siege artillery didn’t hurt their cause, either. Internally, however, Muslim merchants often resorted to wrestling matches rather than warfare. For example, the Apostle himself was something of a wrestler, and he twice threw a physically powerful Quraysh sheikh named Rukana ibn ‘Abdu Yazid in order to prove to him that his teachings were truly the revealed truth of God.

642:

The sons and younger brothers of some Japanese district officials are made to wrestle for the amusement of a group of visiting Korean ambassadors. The idea seems to have been to impress the Koreans with the strength of the Yamato infantry, as the wrestlers were men in their twenties and thirties, not youths in their teens.

About 645:

The sayings of the Muslim Apostle Muhammad are collected by the orthodox ("Rightly-Guided") caliph ‘Uthman ibn ‘Affan. The result was four hand-written copies of the Qur’an. The name means "The Recitation," and refers to the 6,211 verses that the archangel Gabriel revealed to the illiterate Apostle.

645:

Fear of a Chinese invasion causes Japan’s future Emperor Tenji to seize control of the Yamato court. With his systematic imitation of the T’ang Dynasty Chinese, Tenji is sometimes credited with creating medieval Japanese culture and civilization.

About 646:

A still extant astronomical observatory enters use at Chomsongdae, near Kyongju, South Korea. The twelve stones of its base symbolize the months of the year, and from top to bottom, other stones represent the days of the months. The best guess is that its original purpose was to create Chinese-style horoscopes for the Silla Queen Sondok.

646:

According to tradition, the Taoist saint known as Ancestor Lü is born in China. Ancestor Lü is popularly credited with establishing the Complete Reality school of Taoism (which sought to integrate Confucianism and Buddhism) and with being the disciple of Chung-li Ch’üan. (The latter is the Taoist internal alchemist credited with creating the Chinese calisthenics known as pa-tuan-chin, or Eight Pieces of Brocade.) However, because the Complete Reality school is more concretely dated to the teachings of a very human philosopher named Chang Po-tuan who lived during the late eleventh century, pa-tuan-chin is likely of later origin, too.

About 647:

The White Huns settle in Northern India. Various Rajput ("King’s Sons") clans claim descent from these warriors. This seems unlikely. First, reliable Rajput genealogies rarely go back further than the eleventh century. Second, Muslim chroniclers do not start describing Hindu warriors as Rajput rather than kshatriya until the tenth century. Therefore, the Rajputs are probably not White Huns, but Hindus who got tired of the passive resistance that many Brahmans preached. At any rate, by the twelfth century there were thirty-six separate Rajput clans. They claimed descent from the sun and the moon. Kali, the dark goddess of destruction, was their favorite female deity, while Hara, or "Robber," was their favorite male deity. The men enjoyed hunting, fighting, and music, and kept their women in purdah. Their training included hunting, polo, and sword dancing. Although they did not eat beef or pork, they did eat fowl. Despite religious prohibitions, they drank wine, mead, and other spirituous liquors, and often ate opium. Their states prospered because Rajput leaders usually left day-to-day administration to teetotaling Muslims or Brahmans. Although the Rajput system of government resembled feudalism, it was not truly feudal. For one thing, the senior prince never directly controlled the subjects of his vassals, only the vassals themselves. More importantly, each state was relatively autonomous, and free to make or break alliances as its leaders wished. (Strict ethical codes prevailed in daily life, but national politics were separate matters altogether.)

About 648:

Following the marriage of the T’ang Dynasty princess Ch’ing Wen to the Tibetan king Srontsen Gampo, Ch’an (Zen) Buddhist temples begin spreading into Tibet. While the marriage was originally arranged to placate the Tibetans, whose soldiers were then busily pillaging northern China, the Chinese subsequently use the nuptials to justify their own conquest of Tibet.

648:

While looking through India for the ever-elusive elixir of life, a Chinese alchemist named Wang Hsüen-ts’e visits Bihar and Bengal. There, the forces of a local potentate named Arjuna attack him and his entourage. Undaunted, the Chinese pilgrim hires some Nepalese and Tibetan mercenaries and returns to capture the offending Indian monarch and carry off his valuable Buddhist texts.

Frankish laws begin regulating hunting, fishing, and logging in the royal forests. (The word "forest" itself dates to this era, and referred to the wild places beyond the walls and towns.) Rules against poaching in royal forests were severe. Charlemagne, for instance, imposed a fine equivalent to the price of 60 cows for snaring hares, while James II of Scotland made illegal salmon fishing a capital offense.

About 650:

Central American stone carvings show Mayan men smoking cigars while their vases show Mayan women giving Mayan men tobacco enemas. (Not to be outdone, the seventeenth century Danes recommended tobacco juice enemas as defense against tapeworm, while the eighteenth century French recommended intravaginal tobacco insufflations as a cure for female disorders.) The species of tobacco that the Mayans used was more hallucinogenic than modern tobacco, and was probably mixed with lime juice or hot peppers to make it even more potent.

About 660:

A general’s wife usurps control of the T’ang government. A violent, ruthless woman, she became the Wu Chao empress in 690, and ruled China until 705. During her reign, the Chinese fought (and usually defeated) the Koreans, Thais, Tibetans, and Turks.

661:

Syrian political rivals assassinate ‘Ali ibn Abu-Talib, the son-in-law of the Apostle Muhammad. Non-Arab Muslims subsequently use this murder to justify the creation of the heterodox Shiite sect of Islam. The name "Shi’a" means "Partisans of ‘Ali," and refers to those people, who were generally poor, who supported the murdered son-in-law instead of his Syrian rivals. Shiite Islam differs from orthodox Islam in several ways. First, it claims that temporal leadership should be in the hands of the descendants of the murdered ‘Ali instead of Syrian clan chieftains. Second, it introduced the doctrine of sinless imams, or spiritual guides, into Islam. Finally, it taught that death in battle paved the way to Paradise. Famous martial Shiites included the Syrian Assassins and the Iranian conqueror Nadir Shah.

668:

The Chinese capture the Koguryo capital of Pyongyang. This leaves a political vacuum in Korea that Silla quickly fills. Why didn’t the Chinese also conquer Silla? Evidently the government was too well organized and the military too strong. Koreans also believe that the Silla warriors’ hwarang spirit bears some of the credit. So, what was hwarang? The name translates into something akin to "Young Flower Masters." The allusion is unclear. For example, it could refer to: a) an earlier women’s group that its members replaced politically, b) the flower of manhood the members represented, c) a flower that the Buddha once held aloft to admire, d) a Korean gambling game that involves fencing with reeds, or e) something else altogether. Either way, the followers of hwarang were said to refine their morals, learn right from wrong, and select the best from among themselves to be their leaders. Aristocratic youths were inducted into this organization while aged 14-18 years. Usually there were about 200 hwarang scattered throughout the kingdom, each with an entourage of about a thousand, and members frequently served as generals or political advisors.

About 671:

The Byzantines develop a liquid incendiary that the Franks called Greek fire. The invention is credited to a Syrian alchemist named Kallinikos. The dragon-headed tubes used to propel this combustible liquid, which was apparently a mixture of sulfur, naphtha, quicklime (calcium oxide, CaO), and liquid hydrocarbons, helped inspire subsequent stories about knights fighting fire-breathing dragons. The men who handled the Greek fire wore asbestos suits, which in turn were a source of inspiration for stories about magical shirts. Spun asbestos was usually serpentine chrysolite, meaning a fibrous variety of magnesium silicate.

About 675:

Aristocratic Frankish training for war included lessons in horsemanship, archery, and fighting with swords. Although some training took place in courtyards under supervision, most occurred while hunting. Wolves, bears, wild boars, and peasants were all fair game. Accordingly, we read about seventh century hunting accidents that probably were not accidents, and well-mounted Frankish nobles fracturing their skulls on door-frames while chasing peasant girls into their parents’ cottages.

680:

During a battle at Karbala, in Iraq, the third Shiite imam, al-Hussein ibn ‘Ali, disappears under a shower of arrows. To commemorate his martyrdom, the Shiites instituted a 40-day period of mourning in 1109. Known as Muharram ("abstinence"), this originally meant little more than hanging black sheets from windows. Nevertheless, over time people took to showing their piety in more sanguinary ways. For instance, in 1906, Sir Malcolm Darling described Indian Muharram activities as including "men wrestling dagger in hand; tumblers rolling on the ground or leaping in the air with jugglers slicing potatoes under a man’s chin as he lay prone." More recently, travelers to Iran were warned against photographing men in blood-spattered black shirts scourging themselves to the hypnotic chant of "Ya Hussein!" For Rajputs, the equivalent festival was Dussehra. On the tenth day of the Dussehra festival, Rajput men did sword or stick dances. "You treated the stick in exactly the same manner in which you treated a sword, with respect, touching it to your forehead," one elderly Rajput aristocrat told historian Charles Allen during the 1980s. "You could either use two sticks, one for offence and one for defence, or you carried a stick and a dhal, which was a shield made out of steel inlaid with gold or sometimes a tortoise shell. So it was a dance with a purpose behind it and not just a celebration. The drumming itself was very martial and gave you unbridled energy so that you could keep dancing and leaping for an hour at a time." The presence of sword and stick games during festivals seems fairly universal. For example, in sub-Saharan Africa, Fulani youths gather at an appointed place at the beginning of each harvest season and trade blows with sticks. The rules of their game, called shadi, are simple: first you get your blow, then I get mine, and then we’ll take turns until blood is spilled or someone winces or cries out. Fulani boys started playing this game as early as age seven and continued playing it until they were married. Avoidance was not really an option, as mothers withheld food, girls withheld love, and men withheld work from any boy who was too cowardly to take his blows like a man.

681:

Abu Hurayrata dies. During his life, Abu Hurayrata memorized many sayings of the Apostle Muhammad, one of which was, "The strong man is not the one who is strong in wrestling, but the one who controls himself in anger."

682:

In an essay called The Canon on the Philosopher’s Stone, the Chinese alchemist Sun Si-miao becomes the first person known to have written that saltpeter, charcoal, and sulfur are explosive when mixed. Centuries of subsequent experimentation revealed that the optimum mixture is 75% potassium nitrate, 15% carbon, and 10% sulfur. (The oxygen required for combustion is contained in the potassium nitrate, which ignites at about 400 degrees Fahrenheit, and propellant gases generated include sulfur dioxide, carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, and nitrogen.) Sodium nitrate was also known as saltpeter. Under ideal conditions, sodium nitrate was also combustible, but because it readily absorbed atmospheric moisture, in practice it made a better food preservative than explosive.

The petty nobles of Korea’s Silla kingdom advocate the adoption of Confucian bureaucracies. Reasons included countering the preaching of Pure Land Buddhist monks (then upsetting status quo by saying that Paradise was for everyone, including peasants), limiting the power of females, and challenging the path to power enjoyed by Silla’s "true-bone" aristocrats.

685:

As part of his process of centralizing political power in Japan, the Yamato Emperor Tenmu bans the private possession of ballistae (oyumi) and other siege weapons. While this ban reduced the ability of major landowners to wage civil war, it also had the unintended effect of causing the Japanese to forget how to use and repair the devices.

About 690:

Saxon and Norse cattle thieves start wearing mail shirts. These ringed shirts were called hauberks, or "neck protectors," after the attached mail hoods that many men wore under their conical iron helmets. Hauberks extended below the knees, and were slit up to the crotch so that their wearers could move their legs. Nonetheless, most Anglo-Scandinavian warriors continued relying more on luck than mail. In some cases this was due to faith, while in others, it was due to the Norse battle frenzy known as berserkr ("bear-shirts"). However, usually it was due to the expense, as a good Frankish hauberk cost as much as a good war horse or 60 sheep. Post-modern ethnobotanists speculate that the berserkers’ fury was chemically induced. To support these arguments, they point out that Mexican shamans used honey to preserve and transport psilocybin mushrooms while Lapp herders made hallucinogenic drinks from the urine of reindeers that had been fed fly agaric. While possible, the speculation remains unproved. The berserk cult seems to have been associated with the Joms Vikings, a seventh century detribalized warrior society whose center was in Denmark. Its name was evidently the result of the bearskin coats that worn by fully initiated members.

About 694:

English legal codes define an army, or here, as any body consisting of more than 35 armed men. This is a reminder that post-modern street gangs are frequently larger and better organized than early medieval armies.

Uighur Turks introduce Manichaeism into northern China. Essential elements of this faith included laymen leading scriptural study classes, full-time vegetarianism, and an awareness of the dualistic nature of good and evil. While Manicheaen temples appear after 768, this was probably for translating Iranian astrological material into Chinese rather than converting people. Consequently, Manichaean influence was minimal in China until the 920s, when government repression forced the Zoroastrian priests to spread throughout the Honan countryside rather than stay locked up inside their monasteries. Historian Daniel Overmyer has identified Manichaean influence in the Buddhist White Lotus sect, so the intellectual challenge of the Iranian religion was not ignored by the Buddhists any more than it was by the Christians or Muslims.

695:

The Sumatran kingdom of Srivijaya sends ambassadors to China. Srivijaya stood in the Palembang River valley, and had been doing business with southern Indian Buddhists since the second century CE. Therefore, Western historians credit those Indians with introducing wet-rice agriculture, horses, plows, chess, and literacy into Indonesia. This causality is not entirely certain, as those same merchants appeared in Bali about the same time, and Balinese culture did not show significant Indian influence until the 1520s, when the island was invaded by Javanese Hindus fleeing Islamic persecution. A T’ang Dynasty history said that Sumatran infantry used bows, arrows, swords, and lances, and wore leather armor. Kings also had elephants, on which rode four men armed with bows, arrows, and lances. That said, Sumatran kings always had at least as much interest in obtaining victory through magical methods as through armed conflict. Tenth century artwork suggests that the swords were narrow and straight rather than serrated. Bows were longbows rather than Chinese crossbows. Shields were both oval and square. There may also have been some sword-and-shield dances done by women as well as men. Leaders indicated rank using parasols and peacock-feather insignia.

697:

Roman Catholic priests prohibit Irish women and children from appearing on contested battlefields. This institutes a cultural change, for in pre-Christian times, Irish women and children had often accompanied Irish men into battle.

The Adriatic city-state of Venice declares independence from both Byzantium and Rome.

Eighth century:

Vishnaivite monks living in Kerala, in southwest coastal India, are described as devoting their mornings to archery, singlestick, and wrestling, their afternoons to chanting and dancing, and their evenings to walking in the woods. Their martial art was probably a root of the subsequent varma ati/kalaripayyatu tradition. Their North Indian counterparts were called chobi. In the 1810s, a British officer named James Tod reported that the sight of hundreds of chanting chobi swinging iron-ringed clubs during their annual festivals was a sight to see. Shaivite warrior-monks, meanwhile, wore saffron robes, braided their hair around their heads, and took vows of celibacy. Their sacred weapon was the sword, and they played kettledrums instead of tambors. Their major festival was the Dussehra festival at the end of the rainy season (late September or early October). Animals were sacrificed daily during the two-week long festival, and it was a good omen if the executioners could behead a buffalo with a single blow. During Duessehra there were also animal fights, cavalry games, and wrestling matches. Some of these matches were political theater or popular entertainment, meaning they had prearranged outcomes, while others were contests waged for prizes and reputation. According to Tod, Shaivite monks were good soldiers and better businessmen, but inclined to eat hashish and drink mead in prodigious quantities.

A Sanskrit epic known as the Agni Purana appears in India. Several chapters described Brahmin fighting arts. (Warfare was a sacred duty for Brahmin soldiers.) The emphasis was not on strategy, team building, scouting, or logistics, but instead on improving individual prowess. Killing the enemy with an arrow brought the Indian warrior the greatest honor; killing him with spears, swords, or with fists were consecutively inferior methods. The warrior went to war in chariots, on elephants, on horses, and on foot. Foot methods were subdivided into armed and unarmed methods, and the chief unarmed combative was wrestling. Instructors included both priests and old soldiers; the former taught rituals and the latter taught fighting methods.

The Kievan annals describe a Slavic boxing game. This involved fistfights between picked champions. Bouts took place during the winter on the frozen rivers that established boundaries between districts. Kicking, tripping, and putting iron into one’s gloves were discouraged. Additionally, the two men had to fight face-to-face and chest-to-chest without recourse to magic or trickery.

The alcoholic beverage known as pulque becomes popular in Yucatan and Mexico. Its creation is attributed to a woman named Xochitl, and the beverage, which was brewed from agave sap and had a 6% alcohol content, was widely used for entertaining men and keeping infants from crying. In other words, inebriation was common among American Indians well before the arrival of the Europeans.

About 700:

The Chinese scholar Hung Pei-sze describes an esoteric Buddhist movement art using the phrase ch’uan fa. This term, which has become a generic term for the Chinese martial arts, is probably best translated as "boxing methods" (ch’uan means "fist" while fa means "method" or "law," usually in a philosophical context).

Buddhist monks living near Kyongju, Korea produce a woodblock print of the Dharani Sutra. This was 150 years before the publication of the Diamond Sutra, "the world’s first book," in northwestern China in 868.

701:

The Yamato government introduces the Taiho law code, which formally established a Chinese-style government in Japan.

706:

Caliph al-Walid I orders Ummayad tax-collectors to write their reports in Arabic instead of Greek. Besides closing opportunities in government to Christians, the decision makes Arabic the language of money throughout the Mediterranean world. Nevertheless, the Ummayad accountants continued to do their calculations using Greek or Roman numerals until the 870s, when they started using Indian numerals instead.

About 710:

Turkish merchants and soldiers spread curved sabers through West Central Asia. Although the weapons were better suited for equestrian combat than straight-bladed swords, the design may have owed something to concurrent developments in quenching techniques, which caused the steel to curl as it cooled.

Christian Serbs are reported using poisoned arrows against Bosnian Muslims. The English word "toxin" comes from the Greek toxikon pharmakon ("bow poison"), which is what the Byzantines called these arrow-borne poisons.

710:

The Yamato imperial city is established at what is now Nara, Japan. To give it legitimacy, a manuscript called Kojiki ("Record of Ancient Matters") is produced in 712. Eight years after that a second chronicle, Nihongi ("Chronicles of Japan") also appears. Both texts were written by government employees, and began by tracing the genealogies of the reigning leadership back to ancient gods. The authors, having no clue what really happened, borrowed liberally from Chinese classics, Japanese folktales, and their own imaginations. Nevertheless, both texts were accepted as Gospel in Japan for the next twelve hundred years.

711-715:

Islamic armies under the command of Muhammad ibn Qasim invade Khurasan, Punjab, and Sind. Fighting the indigenous North Indian cavalry causes the Muslims, many of whom were former Sassanid soldiers, to quit viewing stirrups as signs of weakness, and to begin using them themselves.

713:

Turkic silk and spice traders introduce Islam to the T’ang court at Ch’ang-an.

714:

The Hsüan Tsung emperor establishes an acting school at his royal capital, and the sword dances and gymnastics taught in such schools soon became associated with Chinese martial arts. In their own time, however, these dances and gymnastics had nothing to do with military preparedness. Indeed, the Hsüan Tsung emperor was notorious for his draconian prohibitions against people carrying warlike arms or practicing archery unless living in threatened frontier areas.

About 720:

Chinese monks introduce Buddhism into Yunnan Province and Indochina. Their converts were not yet known as Thais, as the word "Thai" means "free men," and alludes to the Nanchao kingdom’s eleventh century resistance to Sung Chinese aggression.

About 725:

Saint Boniface fells the Oak of Thor at Geismar. As Hessian kings held marriage dances around this tree, Boniface’s action reflected the spread of Roman Catholicism through Germany.

730:

China’s Ming Huang emperor proclaims polo one of the arts of war. If so, it was not very effective training, as the Ming Huang emperor was deposed in 756 for his inability to stop a Turkish warlord named An Lu-shan, who had established himself as the "Heroically Martial Emperor" in Lo-yang. While An was a cruel man murdered by a eunuch in 757, his rebellion effectively ended T’ang Dynasty control over its northern and western frontiers.

732:

South of Tours, Frankish mounted infantry under the command of Charles of Austrasia (the future Martel, or Hammer) stop a Muslim army. According to Christian accounts, the Muslims, under Abd-er-Rahman, reportedly had 60,000 men. However, 6,000 is more likely. Anyway, although Charles’ victory was at the time merely an annoyance to the Muslims, Christian panegyrists subsequently hailed the Battle of Poitiers as a turning point in history.

735-745:

Smallpox epidemics kill half the Japanese population. This causes a temporary end to conscription in Japan, and by 792 encourages the Yamato government to hire small mercenary cavalry forces instead of continuing to conscript large infantry battalions.

About 745:

During the battle for control of Central Asia, the Kirghiz Turks defeat the Uighur Turks. The technologically advanced Kirghiz culture was linked to China, and is believed to have been responsible for the creation of the Turkish runic script.

About 747:

As part of its ongoing process of sinification, Sun Tzu’s Art of War is introduced to the Budokukan, or Academy of Military Sciences, at the Yamato capital of Nara.

Sechie-zumo, or "religious wrestling," is featured alongside poetry competitions during a harvest festival held before the Yamato court during the fifth month of the lunar year (roughly June-July). In time, the wrestling becomes enormously popular and profitable, and to reduce the injuries, the most famous wrestler of the day, a man named Siga-no-Seirin is ordered to devise rules that prohibited striking, punching, or kicking. These rules, which were further codified during the mid-ninth century, are claimed by the Japanese as the foundation of sumo. Nevertheless, as the rules still allowed men to win by pulling, tripping, or battering, sechie-zumo sounds more like freestyle wrestling than modern sumo.

The Yamato kingdom also held a dismounted archery festival during the first month of the lunar year and a mounted archery festival during the fifth. Such festivals appealed mostly to aristocrats, and were never as popular with the peasants as the wrestling.

About 750:

A peripatetic Indian monk called Amoghavajra introduces the esoteric finger movements, or mudra, of Yogacara Buddhism into China. Memorizing these finger movements was supposed to cause subtle changes to the practitioner’s internal energy. (This is possible, since the hands provide more sensory input to the brain than all other parts of the body except the eyes, tongue, and nose.) Accordingly, mudra were subsequently incorporated into some East Asian martial arts. Some historians think that these finger movements originated in North Indian classical dance (nata). On the other hand, the Chinese martial arts use just a few finger signs. Therefore, who knows? It is clear, however, that Chinese finger signs have numerological significance, and as a result the Chinese patterns may owe something to the arithmetic pidgin known as "finger counting." Also known as mudra, finger counting was much more than simply adding one plus one using fingers and toes. Instead, it was an international mercantile language having both esoteric and martial implications. For instance, the Arabs observed that one drew a bow in the same way that one made the number thirty. This in turn referred to the Mongol draw, which locks the thumb into place using the index finger, rather than the Mediterranean draw, in which the string is pulled using the index, ring, and middle fingers.

Probably in hopes of obtaining divine intervention, the Koreans erect Buddhist temples all around Kwangju. By the gates of these temples were statues of bare-chested temple guardians standing in what the Koreans now call kwon bop, or pugilistic, stances. The guardian on the west (the excited fellow with wild hair and open mouth) represents yang energy. His name is Mi-chi. The guardian on the east (the fellow who stands with his mouth closed and his emotions under control) represents yin energy. His name is Chin-kang. Similar temple guardians are also found in Japan. The Japanese statues are made of lacquered hemp cloth spread over a wooden frame, and are called rikishi, or strong men. (Japanese professional wrestlers also use the latter name.) The rikishi at the Todai-ji Monastery in Nara are unique, partly because they stand by the altar instead of the front gate, and mostly because their torsos are armored rather than nude. Note, however, that these latter statues are not sixth century, but instead seventeenth.

Flemish and German monks start adding hops to their brewed malt beverages. In other words, they started making beer. Their standards were hardly as strict as modern advertisers would have you believe, as in those days, the standard involved an inspector pouring some beer on a bench, and then sitting on it until it dried. If the inspector’s leather breeches stuck to the bench, then the beer met standards and the brewmaster or brewmistress got a laurel wreath. On the other hand, if the breeches didn't stick to the bench, then the product was deemed small beer and sold at a lower price until the next official testing.

751:

Islamic armies defeat a Korean-led Chinese army near Talas, in modern Kirghizstan, perhaps through treachery rather than force of arms. No matter how it was achieved, the Muslim victory is important for introducing the Muslims to T’ang Dynasty alchemical, mathematical, and paper manufacturing technologies.

755:

The Chinese government authorizes Buddhist monasteries to charge money for ordination certificates.

About 760:

Maghrebi merchants spread Islam among the Sanhaja of the Atlas Mountains. However, the religion does not gain much credence in black Africa until camel caravans begin regularly crossing the Sahara during the late tenth century.

The ‘Abbasid Caliphate orders important Greek, Latin, and Vedic astrological and alchemical texts translated into Arabic. The knowledge transmitted by these translations helped create the open-minded, syncretic nature of classical Islamic astronomy, mathematics, and literature.

774-806:

A Yamato army under the command of Tamuramaro Sakanoue conquers the aboriginal Ainu of Honshu. The military reforms required for the Japanese victory included replacing conscript levies with full-time armies maintained by regional lords. The process contributed to the rise of classic feudalism in Japan.

778:

According to the twelfth century Chanson de Roland, Moors destroy a Frankish army led by Roland, prefect of the marches of Brittany. Since eighth century Frankish military columns rarely posted guards or reconnoitered, and as their leaders were frequently intoxicated, the defeat is hardly surprising. Furthermore, inasmuch as Roland was only a minor functionary in charge of a Carolingian supply train, his defeat was hardly important. Finally, as his attackers were Basques rather than Muslims, the defeat had nothing to do with the holy wars. On the other hand, as the tale details how truncheon blows caused their victims’ eyes to fly from their heads, it does suggest that twelfth century audiences were no more squeamish than twentieth century moviegoers.

779:

The Chinese poet Wu Lu writes the Cha-Sing, or "Classic Art of Tea." Wu used Taoist symbolism to describe the proper way of drinking tea, which had become famous for its ability to help monks stay awake during prolonged meditation.

780:

The Frankish king Charlemagne demands that his vassals give him oaths of fidelity. Modern historians often use this event as the birth of classic French feudalism. In my opinion, though, classic French feudalism is better dated to the 840s, which was a time when every rural baron sought to make himself king.

About 781:

Arab and Turkic silk and spice merchants spread Nestorian (Syrian) Christianity into north China.

785:

Ya’qub ibn akhi Hizam writes a text on horsemanship that includes a chapter on veterinary science. Islamic knowledge of animal husbandry was hardly cursory or arbitrary, and by 1286, was sophisticated enough to include descriptions of artificial insemination. Thus, the Islamic contribution to Western chivalry was not stirrups (those were introduced by Avars), but good horses.

787:

Because Byzantine generals found religious icons useful for inspiring the troops, Byzantine churchmen agree to quit destroying them, and soon they are everywhere. The government support for such icons subsequently fuels complaints about the Orthodox Church being a bunch of idolatrous pagans.

788:

The Kerala philosopher known as Shankara achieves enlightenment. While little known in the West, Shankara was arguably the most influential philosopher of his day. For example, his theory that one could escape fate by achieving a mind empty of illusions (sunya) subsequently contributed to the development the Zen Buddhist concept of the Void and the Indo-Arabic numeral zero.

789:

The Japanese aristocracy starts patronizing kumitachi, or sword dances. Their models were similar Chinese and Korean entertainments, and their methods reportedly set the precedent for the choreographed fencing depicted in the seventeenth century Noh and Kabuki theaters.

About 790:

Rhinelanders develop bellows-driven forges. This significantly improves German metallurgy, and becomes a factor behind the subsequent successes of the Danish Vikings, who bought their swords from the Rhenish Germans.

About 792:

Tantric Buddhism becomes the official moral code of the Tibetan aristocracy. Although court intrigues and an Indian philosopher named Santiraksita appear to have been responsible for this change, a demon-slaying North Indian monk called Padma Sambhava ("the Lotus Born") was given credit for it. Nevertheless, belief in the native Bon animism, which appealed to the spirits of the earthquake, blizzard, thunderstorm, and glacier, remained strong in Tibet throughout the twentieth century. Tantrism, by the way, is an offshoot of Mahayana Buddhism. Its proper name is vajrayana, or "The Thunderbolt Path." The thunderbolt of the name refers equally to sudden enlightenment, five-polar symbols of self-unification, iron war hammers, and penises.

793:

Given a choice between seeing his mother torn to pieces before his eyes or losing his horse, an Aquitanian aristocrat named Datus does the only sensible thing: he keeps his horse.

About 795:

As the Muslims spread Chinese papermaking technology throughout southwest Asia, northern Africa, and Iberia, Islamic law begins to be promulgated using paper instead of memory. The four orthodox schools of Islamic jurisprudence, all created during the eighth and ninth centuries of the Common Era, helped discourage sectarianism by encouraging legal rather than military solutions to problems. Therefore, they are among the more important creations of early Islam. The promulgation of paper also led to Muslims growing large quantities of hemp, for in those days hemp was used for making paper, rope, and fabric.

Ninth century:

The Franks start using the Latin word schola, or "school," to describe places where monks studied philosophy rather than places where soldiers wrestled and fenced.

Korea’s hwarang system breaks down. The reason was that most aristocrats preferred staying at home with their wives, building expensive Buddhist temples, or attempting coups to wandering about the country correcting wrongs. The result was a century of disorder and strife.

In south-central Africa, Shona and Kalanga chieftains build stonewalled buildings. These were not King Solomon’s Mines, despite what novelist H. Rider Haggard wrote. Instead, the zimbabwe, or "great stone houses," symbolized the might of the Rozwi kingdom, and were funded by the Swahili (east African Arab) gold and ivory trade.

A Nahuatl people known as the Toltecs establish a militarily powerful empire in Central Mexico. Toltec raids into Yucatan and Guatemala during the ninth and tenth centuries are traditionally blamed for causing the Mayans to start living in small fortified villages instead of large open cities. Various ecological disasters stemming from the destruction of the Central American rain forests have been suggested as more likely causes.

About 800:

Buddhist monks develop the idea of centering the mind and the breathing at a spot about three fingers’ width below and a couple inches behind the navel. While the practice soon became popular among sitting Zennists, it did not become popular outside among Japanese swordsmen for another thousand years. Pioneers of the idea that training in proper breathing and energy projection were important to swordsmanship included Shirai Toru Yoshinori (1781-1843); his book, Heiho michi shirube ("Guide to the Way of Swordsmanship") was widely circulated during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Buddhism spreads into Cambodia.

804:

Frankish laws require men who own more than 300 acres of land to purchase and maintain a mail hauberk plus a shield, lance, sword, knife, and bow with two strings and twelve arrows. This marks another important step toward feudalism, for it quickly separated the very rich from the merely wealthy. What did the landowners receive in return? An equitable share of the loot if they won, and whatever they could get away with if they lost. (One important purpose for the war-horse has always been to provide a quick getaway.)

805:

According to tradition, Buddhist monks introduce tea into Japan. Archaeological evidence suggests, however, that Japanese had been growing and using the plants for several decades before.

813:

The Frankish Emperor Louis the Pious imposes special taxes on Jews. By the fourteenth century, these had become so heavy that many Jews had begun preferring education to wealth, and easily buried assets such as gold or jewels to easily stolen assets such as land and industrial workshops.

819:

Confucian officials report Buddhist monks burning dots on their heads or arms to show their religious affiliations. A few monks even sliced their fingers or tongues to get the blood they used to write copies of the Diamond Sutra. The practice is a likely source for Christian stories about people signing blood pacts with the Devil. Procedures and patterns were not as fancy as depicted in kung fu movies. To ensure an appropriate pattern, 3 to 24 spots were marked with ink. Candles were placed over these spots, and then, once everything was perfect, one person would hold the initiate’s head so that it didn’t move, while another lit the candles. The candles burned for about one minute, and the Danish architect J. Prip-Møller noted in the 1930s that as the flames got closer to the skin, the initiates’ voices got higher and higher, and their chants got faster and faster. Once the burning reached the skin, only a few young men could take the pain without flinching; everyone else jerked violently, and shrieked and sobbed.

About 820:

Frankish and Lombardic aristocrats adopt the wood-and-iron stirrups, framed saddles, cross-tipped lances, and padded horse armor of their Avar enemies. (They had previously ridden using severe bits and quilted leather-and-wood saddles that provided firm seats even without stirrups.) The Franks’ adherence to force-on-force confrontations fought to the death were a holdover from their Teutonic and Roman influences, and their method of meeting problems head-on rather than sidestepping was glorified in contemporary Germanic literature. In the ninth century Hildebrandlied (Hildebrand’s Saga), the hero Hildebrand challenges an opposing army to send out its best man. The other side’s hero, Hadubrand, steps forward. The two men list their kin and lines of descent, causing Hildebrand to realize that the man opposite him is his son. Hildebrand offers his son money if he will leave rather than fight. A man of honor, Hadubrand rejects the offer. So instead of embracing, "They walked together, splitting shields, dodging blows with the light area of their shields until the shields were jagged, ruined by the weapons." A mighty warrior, Hildebrand slays his son, then sings: "I loved him with all my heart. Against my will, I became his murderer."

Members of an Indian monastic order called the Dasnami Naga are reported practicing archery and other combative sports. After reading surviving stories, the modern Indian historian Aparna Chattopadhyay writes that the overall picture is of "a society which attached much greater importance and value to the martial training of a Brâmana than excellence in spiritual or priestly life." The monastic martial art academies were called akhara. The word was associated with Rajput dueling societies, and literally meant "age-group" or "regiment." The weapons that individuals fought with indicated their social status. Brahmans, for instance, held archery competitions, while warriors fenced, merchants fought with sticks, and peasants wrestled. There was religious symbolism behind these weapons, too. For example, the Brahmans associated wooden clubs with the god Shiva, while the Buddhists associated them with Guhyakta Vajra, "the hero who holds in his hand a thunderbolt." Likewise, the Brahmans associated iron hooks with the god Ganapati, disks (cakra) with Lord Vishnu, and tridents with the god Rudra.

About 825:

The T’ang Dynasty Ching Tsung emperor is described as an avid patron of wrestling.

834:

The Utrecht Psalter shows Christians sharpening their swords using rotary grindstones while sinners sharpen theirs using files and stones. This is important to the history of technology, as it represents one of the first known uses of the rotary crank.

About 835:

After finding their desert brethren politically unreliable, urban Arabs begin acquiring foreign slave soldiers. The word mamluk ("owned") refers to these Arabs’ Slavic and Turkic slave soldiers, while the word ‘abd ("black") refers to their Nubian and Ethiopian harem guards.

About 840:

Sumai ("struggle") wrestling, an ancestor of modern sumo, develops in Japan. Associated with harvest festivals, the wrestlers were part of a giant potlatch relationship designed to show their patrons’ ability to squander such mighty energies. The roots of the sport may lie in Korea.

Ch’an (Zen) Buddhist monks establish tea plantations in Korea. The plantations were designed to support their Taoist-inspired tea drinking rituals, which included gathering before an image of Bodhidharma and drinking tea from a communal bowl.

Bon animists attack Buddhist temples throughout Tibet. Three years later, a Buddhist monk named Palgyi Dorje assassinates the Tibetan king who ordered the desecration. According to Buddhist tradition, the king’s last words were: "Oh why was I not killed three years ago to save me from committing so much sin?" It is probably no coincidence that these famous last words are part of an established stage tradition.

841-845

The Chinese government orders the persecution of all Buddhist sects that taught that all men were equal in the eyes of Heaven. In the process, its soldiers burned thousands of shrines and temples, and confiscated millions of acres of land. This destruction was politically rather than religiously motivated, and subsequent Buddhist propaganda notwithstanding, the victors were Confucianists rather than Taoists.

842:

Charlemagne’s grandsons Charles the Bald and Louis the German have their minions swear their fealty using proto-French and proto-German instead of Old Latin. Such linguistic divisions help split Charlemagne’s empire into France and Germany.

843:

Islam begins supplementing Buddhism throughout north China.

849:

Mon merchants establish the Kingdom of Pagan around the middle valley of the Irrawaddy River in central Burma. Although the Pagan economy was originally built on trade, during the eleventh century it became a military power under the leadership of King Anorahta. This eleventh century expansion was itself inspired by Anorahta’s desire to control the maritime trade with Kerala and Sri Lanka.

About 850:

A Chinese text called Classified Essentials of the Mysterious Tao describes how to mix sulfur, saltpeter, and charcoal for the purpose of scaring away evil spirits, and opening a path for contentment and peace. This is ironic, for the mixture is that of gunpowder.

Hincmar, the Archbishop of Rheims, complains about the way unscrupulous Frankish lords had taken to divorcing their wives: first they sent the women to inspect their kitchens, then they had their butchers slit the women’s throats. (As rich men, the husbands could afford to pay the monetary compensations levied for homicide, while as widowers, they were free to remarry.) This is mentioned as a reminder that the Hispano-Arabic idea of chaste conjugal love, a key element of late medieval chivalry, was not introduced to southern France until the eleventh century.

851:

An Iranian merchant named Soleiman mentions the headhunters of Nias, an island west of Sumatra. These headhunters were somewhat unusual for the region, as they did not eat their victims before decapitating them. Otherwise, they were typical in that they engaged in ritual murders in order to settle feuds and satisfy the bloodlust of various hard-hearted deities. The Indonesians’ weapons included wooden spears and hand-held stones. Favorite methods of killing included the casting of evil spells and impaling enemies in their beds. Projectile weapons were sometimes used. (While the Western Indonesians disdained military archery, while the Eastern Indonesians relied on it almost exclusively. Both groups hunted game using blowpipes, and often poisoned their arrows and darts using vegetable toxins.) Women accompanied these headhunters during their campaigns, usually as bearers and cooks, but sometimes as warriors. The training for Indonesian warfare included participating in daylong dances conducted in full battle armor and even longer religious rituals.

858:

According to an unreliable tradition the Japanese Emperor Buntoku determines succession between his sons by ordering them to fight one another barehanded. The winner became the new Emperor Seiwa. The losers died.

859:

An Islamic widow named Fatima bint Muhammad establishes the Great Mosque at Fez, in Morocco’s Middle Atlas region. This becomes a major source of Islamic learning during the twelfth century, and is the site of the University of Karueein, the oldest continuously operating educational institution in the Western world.

About 860:

The Iraqi mathematician Abu Yusuf Ya’qub ibn-Ishaq as-Sabbah al-Kindi ("Alkindus") writes that the finest swords in the Islamic world came from Yemen and India. To al-Kindi, the steel used in the manufacture of these weapons was known as wootz, after the Indian and Iranian steel used to make them. The intricate patterns that characterize wootz weapons came from FE3C striations that appeared during the quenching process, so when European Christians started buying the weapons, too, they called the metal Damascus, after the damask cloth that wootz steel resembled. The Crusaders in particular set smiths to duplicating the wootz weapons, which in turn led to developments in pattern-welding blends of soft and hard steels. It wasn’t the same technology at all, but the result was similar, both in appearance and in strength.

862:

According to the Primary Chronicle, the burghers of the Slavic town of Novgorod hire some Swedish Vikings under the command of a man named Rurik to protect their town from foreign attacks. Around 880, Rurik’s son Oleg conquers Smolensk, Lyubech, and Kiev, thereby establishing the kingdom subsequently known as Russia, after the Slavic word meaning "Rowers."

Turkic pressure forces a steppe people known as the Magyars to move from the Urals to the Danubian plains. The Magyars successfully raided throughout central Europe until 955, at which time they were defeated south of Augsburg by a German army commanded by Otto I. The Magyars then retreated into Hungary, where theirs became the dominant culture.

863:

The Chinese storyteller Tuan Ch’eng-shih dies. His works included a text called Yu-yang Tsa-tsu ("Miscellaneous Fare from Yu-yang," the latter being a mountain in Hunan where great masters hid books containing great knowledge). One story described a young man who learned that a prospective knight-errant needed to master swordsmanship as well as archery. Another described a sword-dancer who whirled two swords as if pulling silk, then planted them in the ground in the manner of the seven stars of the Big Dipper.

About 864:

According to the Primary Chronicle, the Greek Orthodox patriarchs Cyril and Methodius create the Slavonic alphabet. (The dating is imprecise because the Primary Chronicle had multiple authors, and was not written before the 1110s.) While Cyril’s was the first successful Slavic alphabet, the modified Cyrillic alphabet created by Kliment of Ohrid, who spread Christianity during the 890s, was ultimately more popular with secular readers.

865:

Frankish landowners are ordered to train their sons to ride horses and fight with swords, lances, and javelins. French historians have seen this as an important step toward classic French feudalism, but it is more probably an outgrowth of older Germanic customs requiring the association of younger warriors with older ones.

About 870:

The Norwegians settle Iceland, Europe’s first large overseas colony. Irish monks were already there when the Norse arrived, but as the Irish had no women, they cannot be considered permanent settlers.

877:

Charles the Bald, King of the West Franks, issues a decree stating that every man entitled to bear arms must have a patron or lord. This starts the process of codifying French feudalism.

879:

Due to secular political squabbling, the Roman Pope and the Byzantine Patriarch excommunicate one another.

Islamic travelers report that Canton’s major sources of revenue included tariffs on tea.

882:

The Russian Prince Oleg orders his capital moved from Novgorod to Kiev. This institutes Kievan hegemony over the Ukraine, or Little Russia.

887:

France and Germany split into two separate kingdoms.

About 890:

According to Professor David Howlitt of Oxford University, King Alfred the Great of England has a cleric named Aethelstan write a vernacular description of proper chivalric behavior that even Alfred’s grandson could understand. The result was an untitled poem that eighteenth century scholars called Beowulf. The story is set in the sixth century. It starts with Beowulf, a Swedish prince, sailing to England to grapple with a human monster named Grendel, who invaded Anglo-Scandinavian mead-halls at night and ate their inhabitants. In the dim light of Hrothgar’s mead-hall, Grendel comes to eat Beowulf and his men. Beowulf, the strongest of men, resists by seizing Grendel’s arm. (Since Grendel killed using just teeth and hands, Beowulf believed it would be dishonorable to use swords or shields against him. This was just as well for Beowulf, as Grendel had magic charms that protected him from steel.) Grendel quickly realizes that he has met his match and turns to flee. Beowulf keeps his grip and rips Grendel’s arm from the socket. Grendel runs screaming into the night and dies soon after. Several days later Grendel’s vengeful mother attacks Beowulf. Beowulf swings his sword at the woman, but the steel would not bite. Whenever swords failed, said Beowulf’s scribe, a man had to trust his wrestling. Knowing this, Beowulf drops the useless sword and throws the woman to the floor. Grendel’s mother trips Beowulf and then thrusts her knife into the fallen hero’s shoulder. Beowulf’s ring-mail turns the knife, and he rolls away, jumps to his feet, and grabs another sword. This sword bites, and the woman’s head flies from its neck-rings. Such sanguinary females were evidently common in Anglo-Scandinavian England. For instance, the author of Beowulf describes a queen named Modthryth who knifed lustful courtiers. Meanwhile, in "Judith," a much shorter poem written about the same time as Beowulf, the poet praises a God-fearing woman who gets a lustful feudal lord drunk then beheads him with his own sword. While unusual (medieval heroines were usually martyrs rather than killers), "Judith’s" author obviously knew something about beheadings, as Judith, a handsome Hebrew woman, required two mighty blows to sever the demonic lecher’s head from its neck-rings.

895:

As Arab money and Islamic learning spreads through the Mediterranean world, Jews start writing their commentaries using Hebrew-scripted Arabic instead of Greek or Aramaic. The Torah, on the other hand, was still written in Hebrew. The reason was that vernacular translations rendered the scrolls unfit for ritual use.

897:

Katana, or relatively short two-handed swords with curved blades, become popular in Japan. When making these weapons, the Japanese smiths followed the Chinese practice of applying clay to the steel during the quenching process. This caused the metal to cool at different rates, and caused the swords to end up with harder (i.e., sharper) edges and softer (i.e., stronger) spines than other swords of the day. Good smiths also pattern-welded their blades, meaning that they folded the metal over itself between eight to fifteen times, thus creating much stronger metal than was normally available. The Japanese pattern-welding differed from European pattern-welding because the Japanese did more hammering of the steel and used only one grade of iron rather than consciously mixing soft and hard steels.

Tenth century:

A Punjabi weaver called Goraksha (a title of initiation; the man’s actual name is unknown) renounces the world to become a Tantric mystic of the Natha sect. Goraksha is remembered as the creator of hatha-yoga, which means the "yoking (of the spirit) to the sun and the moon." Yoga describes a system of breathing techniques and calisthenics designed to teach practitioners how to control their personal and psychic energies. Indian wrestlers subsequently borrowed some of Goraksha’s conditioning drills. During the 1930s, yogic calisthenics and breathing methods were also introduced into the Japanese martial arts. Finally, in 1941, heavyweight boxer Lou Nova claimed that breathing techniques borrowed from yoga were going to help him beat Joe Louis. They didn’t, and Nova went down in six.

Chinese-style geomancy (feng shui) is introduced into Korea. This taught that the lie of the land affected one’s life, and, like Social Darwinism a thousand years later, was used by the mercantile and aristocratic classes to justify their economic exploitation of the peasants. Its researches are mentioned partly because Koryo dynasty geomancers were linked to the development of the Buddhist martial arts in twelfth-century Korea, and mainly because geomantic researches resulted in the development of navigational compasses.

Islamic merchants introduce rice into Madagascar.

About 900:

Slavic farmers introduce iron horseshoes into Germany. These protected their animals’ hooves from the boggy Central European soils, and made the animals as well suited for agricultural as military purposes. The original invention was probably Central Asian or Chinese.

The Byzantine Caesar Leo VI writes Tactica, an essay on military matters that teaches that war is a normal human activity and therefore beyond the province of morality. The date is tentative, as it is not entirely certain whether Leo wrote the text, or whether he based it on the writings of an iconoclastic eighth century predecessor, Leo the Issurian.

Islamic writers denounce "Indian hemp," or hashish, as a vile toxin. This hashish would have been eaten or drunk in teas, as it was not smoked until after the introduction of tobacco during the sixteenth century.

The people that Hopi call hisatsinom ("ancestors") and anthropologists call Anasazi (a Navajo word meaning "ancestors of the enemy") begin work on Pueblo Bonito in the Four Corners region of northwestern New Mexico. Gradually enlarged until it had over 650 rooms, Pueblo Bonito was the largest apartment complex in the world until the completion of New York City’s Spanish Flats in 1882. Traditionally, anthropologists have believed that the gradual abandonment of this structure circa 1150 was due to a combination of drought and attacks by Athabascan-speaking hunters that the pueblo-dwellers called apachu, or "enemies." Recently, however, to the disgust of most American Indians, physical anthropologist Christy Turner has claimed that the real reason was the mass terror resulting from the cannibalistic practices of the Mesoamerican nabahu, or "enemies of the cultivated fields." Recent computer models suggest that the truth may involve some combination of all these factors.

About 904:

A Chinese encyclopedist called Tung Siui describes feikho, firecrackers made from powder-filled paper bags, and khopao, or bamboo pipe-bombs. Tung’s noisemakers were used mainly to scare ghosts.

About 907:

Following the collapse of the once-mighty T’ang Dynasty, many Chinese refugees settle in Japan. The Togakure Ryu ninjutsu system claims these Chinese refugees as its founders.

About 910:

Monastic reforms begin in Western Europe, the goal of which was to make the Catholic Church subject to Roman popes instead of French and German princes.

911:

During negotiations meant to keep the Vikings from conquering all of France, King Charles the Simple of France orders a Norwegian chieftain named Hrolf the Walker to kiss his foot. According to one version of the story, Hrolf responds by having one of his men throw Charles on his back and then kiss his foot while standing up, while according to another, Hrolf tells Charles to kiss another part of Hrolf's anatomy. Either way, this disrespect resulted in Charles appointing Hrolf the Duke of Normandy and ordering his daughter to marry the man. This in turn suggests that honor and reputation were not as important to tenth century men-at-arms as twelfth century poets would have you believe.

About 916:

After losing a ball game to an older boy, a six-year old Icelander named Egil drives a heavy ax into the older boy’s brain. This killing was not adjudged homicide because it was done in broad daylight before witnesses, and was deemed justifiable because the older boy had gloated over his victory in front of Egil. Egil’s mother expressed pride in her son for his actions, for she believed that it showed that he had the makings of a good Viking. Matronly delight in raising homicidal children recurred a thousand years later among New Guinea headhunters and the feather-awarding women of Edwardian Britain, and suggests that mothers play vital parts in creating and sustaining cultures in which men revere violence.

924:

The Chinese start buying their war horses from the Jurchen, a Tungu-speaking tribe living in Manchuria. This trade is so profitable to the Jurchen that within 200 years it has converted them from a minor agricultural tribe into a militarily important nation.

About 925:

Polynesian fishermen appear in New Zealand. With lots of room and no enemies, they gradually spread throughout the islands. They were not yet Maori, however, as that culture does not appear on North Island for another 400 years or on South Island for 600. The Maori culture appears to have developed only after the New Zealanders’ economy shifted from bird hunting to farming. This suggests that the traditional view of hunters as homicidal savages and farmers as passive victims may require some adjustment.

929:

The Andalucian emir ‘Abd ar-Rahman III establishes Córdoba, Spain, as the seat of the Umayyad Caliphate. The move reduces Baghdad to a secondary place in the Islamic world and brings Islamic paper-manufacturing and hemp production technologies into Western Europe. ‘Abd ar-Rahman was a bibliophile, and his library was said to include over 400,000 manuscripts. As tenth century Muslims saw no reason to keep women from reading or writing, most of the copyists were women.

935:

The Islamic theologian al-Ash’ari dies. The Ash’arite school taught that God was eternal and formless, that the Qur’an was God’s word revealed to Muhammad in the Arabic language, and that men were free to choose their own religious beliefs. While the Ash’arite standards diverged from the doctrines espoused by the Abbasid caliphate, they ultimately became the Sunni standard.

938:

The Khitans, who were originally from Siberia, become the first Chinese government to establish a political capital at Peking.

939:

After freeing themselves from the Chinese, the northern Vietnamese state of Dai-Viet begins fighting the southern Vietnamese kingdom of Champa, the Cambodian Khmer Empire, and the Shan mountaineers of the Vietnamese highlands.

Abu’l Kasim Muhammad ibn al-Hasan, the Islamic saint known as the Twelfth Imam, goes into occultation (or is called to Allah, depending on your interpretation). At the end of the world, Shi’ite Muslims believe that the Imam will reappear and lead the Faithful to victory.

About 940:

Japanese war armor begins to feature lamellar metal cuirasses above skirts of connected iron strips. Fancy helmet crests also date to this period.

About 947:

Norman aristocrats, the most famous being Fulk Nerra, count of Anjou, start converting their earth-and-log houses into fortified stone castles. The reason was probably to make the houses (and their occupants) more resistant to nocturnal arson.

947:

The Normans of Senlis, France use hunting crossbows to repel an attack by King Louis of Belgium. This represents the first known Western European use of crossbows for military purposes.

About 950:

Japanese martial philosophers describe kyuba no michi, the "Way of Bow and Horse." This discussed the Japanese warrior’s overriding concern for personal honor, and was the conceptual grandparent of the Tokugawa-era code known as bushido. (The contemporary pronunciation of the two Chinese characters meaning "warrior," though, was "mononofu," not "bushi.")

The Saga of Gisli provides a detailed description of Norse dueling rules. First, everyone involved would drink heavily. Then their seconds would mark the borders of the dueling ground with stones or strips of hide. The duelists would then square off and try to scare one another using curses, scurrilous verse, and shield-biting tricks. After that, if no one quit, the two men would run toward one another, throwing their spears as they went. As the spears generally missed their marks, the duelists would then take turns bashing away at the other’s shield until one or the other fled outside the stone-marked boundaries or agreed to pay everything at stake. While honorable men were not supposed to ignore the shield during their strikes, the Icelander Egil Skallagrimson ignored such niceties. Thus, his opponents were likely to lose their limbs to the sword Dragvendil ("Leg-Biter"), or be thrown to the ground, where they would be choked or bitten to death.

About 954:

The Syrian scholar Abul Hassan al-Uqlidisi ("Son of Euclid") introduces the practice of writing out mathematical calculations using pen-and-paper instead of finger-and-sand table. The reason was his desire to disassociate his elegant mathematical proofs from the Arab street astrology known in the West as geomancy, or divination by means of sand. Nevertheless, geomancy remained popular throughout the Arab world into the early twentieth century, and remains popular in sub-Saharan Africa into the present.

958:

King Kwangjong of Koryo starts selecting his officials based on their ability to pass tests on Chinese literature and composition. Kwangjong’s goal was to replace his politically unreliable Korean barons with foreign mercenaries. His barons knew this, too, and the practice was immediately suspended following the reforming king’s death in 975.

About 960:

Indo-Iranian merchants settle along China’s southeast coast. This leads to the creation of an ethnic Chinese Muslim population known as the Hui. Chinese persecution occasionally led to Hui insurrections, and several modern wu shu spear forms are attributed to the fighting arts of nineteenth century Hui rebels.

960:

The Seljuk Turks convert to Sunni Islam. The Seljuks’ fundamentalism inspired their capture of Baghdad in 1055 and their destruction of the Byzantine army at Manzikert in 1071. So the conversion is an important root of the Christian Crusades.

The Sung Dynasty is established in southern China. This dynasty is remembered for its many technological innovations, probably because it used scholars rather than warlords as its governors and generals. The transition was accomplished by the T’ai Tsu emperor inviting his senior military commanders to a banquet, then offering them the choice of paid retirements or immediate execution. While the T’ai Tsu emperor is also attributed with sponsoring a style of boxing known as "long boxing," the details of that style are unknown. Which is not too surprising, as most probably it was a name invented by Sung Dynasty storytellers. Sung storytelling was divided into eight categories. Topics included magical tales (yao-shu), sword stories (p’u-tao, or military tales) and cudgel stories (kan-pang; these are essentially detective stories and the allusion is to police using clubs rather than swords to apprehend and interrogate suspects). These categories were not too distinct, and were freely mixed in later works such as The Water Margin.

966:

The pagan Prince Mieszko I of Poland is baptized a Roman Catholic, apparently as part of a marriage deal. (His bride was the daughter of the Bohemian Boleslav I.) Nevertheless, Thor and the Goddess continued to be popular in Prussia and Poland into the sixteenth century.

About 967:

Japanese officials begin describing their peers’ bodyguards as samurai, or "ones who serve," instead of "henchmen" or "minions." The change was due to outlaw bands having been legitimized through alliances with the provincial elite; contemporary evidence shows that Heian-era soldiers were not opposed to changing sides whenever it suited their purposes.

968:

The Turkic transhumants known as the Pechenegs attack the Kievan state of Russia. This encourages closer alliances between the Kievan queens and the Byzantine patriarchs, and facilitates the spread of Orthodox Christianity through Russia.

About 970:

The creation of high-backed saddles fitted with iron stirrups allows Byzantine heavy cavalrymen (klibanophori, or "oven-suits") to carry their lances couched (that is, under their arms). The Normans of Sicily carried the innovation to France, and it became common across Western Europe by the end of the eleventh century. In 1962, the American scholar Lynn White claimed that the development was the most important military innovation of all time, but most subsequent historians have disputed that claim.

According to a twelfth century writer named Chang Pang-chi, Chinese palace dancers began binding their feet to make themselves more sexually attractive to men. The crippling practice was widespread in southern China by the fourteenth century, and throughout all of China by the seventeenth. Footbinding prevented well-bred Han females from effectively practicing boxing or swordsmanship until the twentieth century. (Some were noted archers, though, generally with crossbows.) Still, into the 1360s, Hung-fu, Hung-hsien, Thirteenth Sister, and other Chinese martial heroines (hsia) were sometimes portrayed by women on Chinese stages. There was also seventeenth-century reference to a fourteenth-century woman named Yang who was said to be peerless in the fighting art of "pear-blossom spear." Nonetheless, from the fourteenth to twentieth centuries specially trained men played female roles in the Chinese theater.

The English Bishop Ethelwold writes that his church has decided to follow French practice, and use stage plays to teach Bible stories to its illiterate parishioners. On Good Friday, for instance, a crucifix would be wrapped in cloths and placed into a special recess in the high altar, while on Easter, monks would draw it out with great passion. Within 200 years, these dramas become full-fledged stage productions known as mystery plays. Rape and torture scenes, including ones where women’s cardboard breasts were slowly sliced away, or male saints were skinned alive, were always popular. Special effects included gunpowder-smoking hells and souls being wrenched from bladders filled with animal blood. These dramatics were carefully rehearsed and choreographed, and people took great pride in performing the same roles year after year. The tailors of Dublin, for instance, always played the part of Adam and Eve, while the vintners played Bacchus and the smiths played Vulcan.

978:

French clerics call for the exemption of the Roman Catholic clergy from military attack, and by 989, this has become a well-defined movement known as the Peace of God. The Peace of God originally threatened men who plundered churches or robbed clergymen with excommunication, and its protection was later extended to merchants, peasants, women, and people on their way to and from church, mills, orchards, and vineyards.

About 980:

The Sung Dynasty T’ai Tsung Emperor orders his army’s wooden shields replaced with lacquered cowhide shields. This change was based on experience gained fighting the Man hill people of southern China. The same emperor also ordered the establishment of national polo tournaments, partly because of experience gained fighting the Turks, and mainly because he enjoyed playing the game.

Pusa, the compassionate Bodhisattva, and Yan Luo, the king of hell, reveal the secrets of the afterlife to a Maitreya Buddhist monk, who in turn shares them with a wandering Taoist. These revelations were described in the Jade Record, and said that the souls of good people were allowed to return to life as male humans, while the souls of bad people were put into horses, dogs, fish, and creeping things. Bad things also happened to priests who took money for their services or used magic arts, businessmen who broke their word or cheated their customers, politicians who spread discord, and anyone who seduced the innocent or wished death to others.

980:

The burghers of Verdun repel a German attack using crossbows. Early European crossbows consisted of a wooden bar fitted to a 3-foot wooden stock by a sinew bridle. A notch ran down the center of the stock; this was used to seat a thick, heavy arrow called a bolt or quarrel. Archers spanned the weapons by putting one or both feet on the bow, and then pulling up with both hands. Later crossbows were made from laminated baleen. As this whale product had tensile strength similar to spring steel, archers needed foot-stirrups and levers to span them. Fourteenth century siege crossbows weighed about 18 pounds, and shot their bolts about 450 yards. Field crossbows weighed about 16 pounds, and shot bolts about 380 yards. Lighter sporting models were popular with ladies and older men until well into the seventeenth century. Regardless of size, normal drop at 50 yards was the distance from forehead to chin.

About 984:

Norway’s Eirik the Red establishes two small settlements in southwest Greenland. (A typical real-estate promoter, Eirik named the ice-covered island "Greenland" in order to attract settlers.) Although temperatures were warmer during Eirik’s day than they were during the unusually cold fourteenth century, at which time both Greenland settlements failed, the Norse failure was due in part to the Scandinavians refusing to adopt Inuit seal hunting methods. In any event, the Greenland settlement represents Europe’s first colony west of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge.

987:

To reduce the danger of peasant uprisings, Korea’s Koryo government prohibits peasants from owing iron tools. Resistance to this edict is commemorated in a modern Korean grappling art called sado mu soo, or "tribal martial arts."

About 988:

According to the Primary Chronicle, the Kievan Prince Vladimir converts to Greek Orthodox Christianity. The chroniclers said the conversion came because Vladimir wanted a more powerful god, but did not want to give up pork and wine, or become circumcised, while modern historians speculate that he wanted to add a Byzantine princess to his list of sexual conquests. Either way, the Orthodox Church subsequently claims 988 as the date of conversion for all Russia. That was, of course, a dream rather than historical fact. First, the Primary Chronicle, which provides the date and reasons for Vladimir’s conversion, was not written until the twelfth century. Therefore, it may not accurately describe the tenth century. Second, Slavic peasants worshipped the thunder-god Pyerun into the eighteenth century, and swore oaths on Moist Mother Earth into the twentieth.

992:

According to the Primary Chronicle, a Kievan wrestler named Pereyaslavl defeats a Pecheneg champion in a wrestling match along the banks of the Trubezh River. Socially, it is probably worth noting that Pereyaslavl was a tanner rather than an aristocrat. (According to the testament of an eleventh century prince named Vladimir Monomakh, gentlemen amused themselves with wars and hunts rather than wrestling matches.) As a Slav, he was also likely to have been physically much larger than the Turk. The battle, if it occurred, was unusual, as the Turks normally did not send champions to decide their battles for them.

994:

Toward securing better relations with the Anglo-Scandinavian King Æthelred II Unraed, the Norwegian King Olaf Tryggvason converts to Christianity, then uses his military muscle to enforce the conversion throughout his realm. Other Scandinavian Christians were equally redoubtable warriors, the Icelander Thangbrand, for instance, being remembered for wielding a steel crucifix instead of a shield during his duels with pagans. This tradition of violent Christianity raged through Europe until after the Thirty Years War. It returned with a vengeance during the twentieth century, a time when evangelists such as Sinclair Lewis’ Elmer Gantry described Jesus as having love in both fists and Salvation Army officers proclaimed themselves Christian soldiers, marching as to war.

999:

A French astrologer, philosopher, and mathematician named Gerbert de Aurillac becomes Pope Sylvester II. While Gerbert’s cosmopolitan erudition did not bother most turn-of-the-millennium Roman Catholics, it outraged sixteenth century religious reformers who chose to believe that secular learning was superfluous in a world where the Gospels of Jesus Christ had already been revealed.

About 1000:

The first London Bridge is built on the Thames. The construction was intended mostly as a barrier to shipping, and its purpose was to force merchants to transship goods in the City.

Norman mercenaries introduce Byzantine kite-shaped shields, couched lances, and Greco-Roman military textbooks into France.

Troubadours introduce the Hispano-Arabic idea of romantic love into the court of Guilhem, count of Poitiers and duke of Aquitaine. During the late twelfth century, troubadours and minstrels paid by Guilhem’s granddaughter Eleanor spread these romances through England, Normandy, France, and Flanders. Theirs was hardly the pious, chaste love of Sir Walter Scott or Alfred, Lord Tennyson. Instead, it was pornographic and adulterous. According to a twelfth century romance called Aucassin et Nicolette, a hero threatened with the torments of Hell if he has sex with his sweetheart replies: "In Paradise are only people like this: old priests, old cripples, old maimed… They go to Paradise, and I want nothing to do with them. I want to go to Hell, for to Hell go the handsome clerks and knights who die in jousts and fine wars, and the good officers and noblemen: I want to go with them. And there go the beautiful and gracious ladies who have two or three friends besides their husbands, and there go the gold and silver and furs, and there go the harpers and tumblers and kings. With them I will go, so long as I have Nicolette, my so sweet friend, with me."

The Inupiat Eskimos of Alaska’s Thule Culture invent dog sleds, then, within a single generation, spread them from Siberia to Greenland. The speed of the transmission is not surprising. Given a flat surface with good traction, a team of 5-8 huskies could pull a hunter and his weapons for fifty miles a day, or haul a family and all its possessions for twenty. In open, treeless terrain, the rig was fan-rigged rather than line-rigged, as one sees today in Alaska. Additionally, the driver did not stand at the back cracking his whip; instead, he jogged ahead of the team, breaking trail and acting as lead dog. Dog sled technology did not noticeably change even after the development of snowmobiles and airplanes in the twentieth century.

Corn becomes a staple food in North America. Because women were responsible for growing the grain, while men were only responsible for defending it, the native societies often became strongly matristic.

The Muslim physician Abu Ali al-Hussein ibn Abdallah ibn Sina (Avicenna) describes bunc, or Ethiopian coffee. Coffeehouses start appearing in the Ottoman Empire during the early fifteenth century, in Europe during the mid-seventeenth century, and in Seattle in the late twentieth.

1000:

Fire arrows tipped with black-powder combustibles appear in Sung Dynasty China.

1001:

An Iranized Turk named Mahmud of Ghazna sends his cavalrymen rampaging south of the Ganges River. This causes great destruction to the Tantric temple art of North and Central India, and sends the Goddess-worshipping Gypsies of the Punjab packing northwest into Christian Europe. Mahmud is subsequently made an Afghan national hero, despite his contempt for native Afghans.

1002:

A Norwegian named Leif Eiriksson establishes the first European settlement in North America. Basque whalers followed in his wake, and soon established secret fisheries off the Saint Lawrence estuary.

About 1003:

An Icelandic Viking named Kjarten Olafson is killed because his sword keeps bending instead of cutting. Kjarten’s weapon was probably made in Germany using bellows-powered forges that gave its steel too high a carbon content for military purposes.

About 1005:

A Toltec king called Quetzalcóatl ("Plumed Serpent") establishes the Cocom Dynasty in Yucatan. Quetzalcóatl’s followers associated their king with the planet Venus, and legends concerning the fair-haired, bearded king’s return were one reason behind the indecisive Tenochitlan response to the Spanish invasion of the Mexican highlands in 1519. (The Spanish called the Tenochitlans "Aztecs," or "people from the fabled lands," but there is no evidence for this name being used before the Spanish Conquest.)

1011:

After devising a legal framework for peaceably settling feuds, the Icelandic Althing bans dueling. Icelandic court battles, though, remained confrontational. Therefore, they are perhaps best described as non-violent word duels. The parties drew up on two sides, hired reliable men of honor to state their cases, and tried to convince a neutral party (the judge) that the other side had no case. Recourse to extralegal violence and intimidation remained possible, but being caught could result in banishment from Iceland.

1016:

The Anglo-Scandinavian King Knut -- the one who reportedly got wet proving to sycophantic followers that even a king could not control the sea -- imposes game laws on East Anglia. Two years later, Knut also imposed England’s first land tax. The game laws were not rigidly enforced until the demand for firewood and farmland started denuding the royal forests during the fourteenth century. The tax laws, on the other hand, were always strictly enforced.

About 1020:

The Iranian poet Firdawsi describes polo as a favorite sport of Turkish aristocrats. According to the thirteenth century poet Nizami, aristocratic Turkish women also played polo, which was the Central Asian equivalent of jousting.

1022:

A Kievan prince named Mstislav leads a raid into the Caucasus. A Caucasian army under the command of a man named Rededya draws up to fight the Kievans. According to the Primary Chronicle, Rededya then goes to Mstislav and says, "Why should we destroy our forces by mutual warfare? Let us fight in single combat instead." "All right," replies Mstislav. Then Rededya, who was the bigger and stronger of the two, lets the other shoe fall: "But let’s not fight with weapons -- let’s wrestle!" After agreeing to these terms, Mstislav prays to the Virgin Mary for help, then throws Rededya to the ground and stabs him to death. For this, the Virgin Mary got a new church at Tmutorakan’, while Mstislav got the Caucasian’s wife, children, and property.

1027:

The Bishop of Vichy proposes a Truce of God, the goal of which was to stop fighting between Christians on Sundays. The peasants and townsmen liked the idea, and shouted "Peace, Peace, Peace!" The French kings weren’t opposed, either, and by 1069, the Church banned Christians from partaking in the pleasures of war and duels from sunset on Wednesday until sunrise on Monday, on saints’ days, and during Advent and Lent. Nevertheless, mimic battles and stick fights remained popular at fairs everywhere, so the threats of excommunication and eternal damnation must have been more theoretical than real.

About 1035:

Norman men-at-arms begin identifying themselves using the estate names of their employers. Originally, these surnames changed whenever they changed employers. Later, during the twelfth century, surnames become hereditary, probably as a way of excluding rich peasants and merchants from the aristocratic and military classes.

1037:

The Seljuk Turks invade Anatolia. By the 1080s, the Seljuks controlled most of Asia Minor. This in turn caused the Byzantines to ask the French and Italians for military assistance. In 1095, Pope Urban II responded with the First Crusade. Men-at-arms supported the First Crusade because primogeniture had condemned many of them, and their sons, to poverty. In addition, while Roman Catholic clerics opposed the armed robbery of Christians, they viewed the armed robbery of Muslims as an honorable, even blessed, calling.

1038:

The appointment of the Norman adventurer Rainulf as the Count of Aversa introduces French feudalism into southern Italy. The exchange was hardly one-sided, for the Muslim military technologies and tax-collecting bureaucracies found in southern Italy were subsequently introduced into France and Normandy. The reason the Normans trusted Muslims to be their tax collectors, engineers, and mercenaries more than Christians was because they were less susceptible to Papal manipulation. This is also why coins minted for the Sicilian King Roger II in 1138 have their dates stamped as AH (anno Hegira) 533. This is significant for two reasons. First, it meant that the urbane Roger measured time using a Muslim instead of a Christian calendar. (And well he should have, for the Islamic calendar was more accurate.) Second, it represents the first known use of Indo-Arabic numerals in Christian Europe.

About 1040:

Indian Buddhists fleeing the raids of the Muslim Mahmud of Ghazna reestablish Tantric Buddhism in Tibet. One of their earliest monasteries was the Shalu monastery at Shigatse. Its claim to fame was that it trained its monks to run for many days and nights without stopping. The basis for such tales is the khora, or pedestrian mandalas, run by Tibetan monks around sacred mountains. Buddhist monks ran clockwise, while Bon monks traveled counterclockwise. (This difference had to do with which direction the practitioner held to be the most important, the female-left or the male-right. The land-owning classes, which included priests and soldiers, generally preferred the right-hand path, while the mercantile classes, which included artisans, merchants, potters, burglars, hunters, and prostitutes, generally preferred the left-hand path.) Analogous dances appeared in Islam and Christianity about the same time. The Islamic and Christian dances represented the angels in heaven and the progression of the planets. Only men did such dancing, as women’s dances were considered lewd. Such dances also reinforced Hellenistic medical theories. That is, standing strengthened the spine, walking removed afflictions of the head and chest, and well-regulated breathing tempered the heat of the heart.

1042:

Warrior-monks establish a Western Saharan Islamic nomocracy known as the Almoravides (al-murabbitun -- "those who gather in the fortress to wage the holy war.") By the 1080s, these fundamentalists had conquered Morocco and invaded Iberia and Ghana. During their invasion of Iberia in 1082, the black African soldiers serving the Almoravides reportedly introduced African war drumming into Western Europe. In contrast to the Turks, who used drumming to control battlefield maneuver, the Almoravides used drumming mainly to inspire friends and demoralize enemies. This use was probably borrowed from West African military practice, where dancing, drumming, and occult magic invoked the assistance of the thunder god. Obviously, the Almoravide generals would not have approved of their men appealing to pagan thunder gods, but would not have minded if they were told that the appeals were Sufistic appeals to Allah or some saint.

About 1044:

A Chinese encyclopedia called the Wu Ching Tsung Yao, or "Essentials of the Military Classics," describes chemically powered war rockets. The maximum range of these weapons was about 1,500 yards, and their effect on men and horses was apparently terrific.

1047:

Duke William the Bastard agrees to apply the Truce of God throughout the Duchy of Normandy. The reason was to secure Papal support for the future Conqueror’s claim to the throne of England.

1049-1052:

A female general named Akkadevi becomes a heroine of west-central Indian resistance to southern Indian aggression.

1054-1076:

The Almoravides of Morocco attack the black African kingdoms of the southwestern Sahara. The reason was partly to spread fundamentalist Islam, and mainly to seize control of the southern end of the caravan routes that linked West Africa with the Mediterranean. In 1086, the Almoravides invaded Iberia at the request of the Emir of Seville, and by 1091, they had overrun the entire country. Rodrigo Díaz, El Cid, was the Christian hero of the Iberian defense. The fortified monasteries, cattle raids, and acts of sectarian violence were great on both sides. Islamic cattle thieves were known as ribato, while their Iberian equivalents were known as hermangildas. To gain divine assistance, both Roman Catholic and Muslim rustlers often took temporary vows of chastity and promised their elders that they would only rob and kill people following the other religion.

1057:

King Macbeth of Scotland dies in battle at Lumphanon, three years after the battle at Dunsinane depicted in Shakespeare’s famous play. (Shakespeare was writing a play, after all, and in a play, nothing so mundane as facts must ever stand in the way of a good story.)

The Tibeto-Mongol kingdom of Pagan conquers the Khmer-Mon kingdom of Thaton. This marks the establishment of modern Burmese culture.

About 1063:

Following his reported intervention during a battle in Sicily, Saint George becomes the patron saint of Norman warriors. Pious English soldiers continued seeking Saint George’s assistance well into the modern era, and he was reported to be personally supporting British forces as late as 1914. This semi-divine assistance is an example of the power of myth. The real Saint George was a fourth century Arian bishop (e.g., a heretic), while the story about the Angel of Mons was the creation of a British newspaperman. Newspaper readers enjoy such pious tales, and a similar appearance by a semi-legendary Serbian hero named Prince Marko was reported during a battle at Prilep, Macedonia, in 1912.

About 1065:

The Sung Dynasty Tsung Shen emperor starts requiring his generals to memorize Sun Tzu’s The Art of War. As a reward for their efforts, he also began giving them high-quality Japanese swords. This Chinese demand for museum quality swords helps explain why so many magnificent Japanese blades were made during the eleventh and twelfth centuries.

1066:

According to the Chronicle of Saint Martin of Tours, Geoffroi de Preuilli, the man "who invented tournaments," is killed during a tournament at Angers. The Germans reject this French primacy, citing as evidence similar equestrian games played by the retainers of Louis the German in 842 and King Henry the Fowler circa 930. So perhaps it is safer to say simply that equestrian games between teams of glory-hunting knights became popular in France and the Low Countries during the third quarter of the eleventh century.

The Saxon King Harold Godwinson takes an arrow through the eye at Hastings. About 1072, William of Poitiers said tha