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Originally Posted by Conogre
although the sharp angles aren't a feature commonly seen on older swords with knuckleguards from India that I know of.
Unless I'm mistaken, the tatoo itself is an idea that originated in the S. Pacific or Indonesia as far as Europeans are concerned.
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Modernly, yes, but it was a lost art that used to be there, at least in the chalcolithic (spelling? copper/stone age; "ice man" times) age. "Oetzi"s tatoos are thought to be medicinal, BTW. There's at least one book on him that's really cool and in depth, though I got it from a library, a couple-few years ago and don't know its name. I think some of the N/W European bog corpses are tatooed, as well. Tatooing or body mutilation seemed to have been very common if not nearly universal in the distant past, and to have gone away some places, only to come back. It's often a tribal ID/rank marker/etc, and no doubt really helped old time people to look real alien and goblinny to each other, from different tribes. Some of the ancient Celts and Germans used to wear some pretty wild hair; similar to Eastern N American Indians, and some painted themselves, which seems related to tatoo, though requiring a less serious comittment, of course
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Think of a knucklebowed European sword. The knuckleguard starts as a quillon, and curves up (please disregard Mameluke sabre as a blatant copy; the "beaknose" hilt though; there's an objection to my idea....); now think of a knucklebowed tulwar. It has two straight quillons, and the knucklebow comes off of the tip of the forward one at an approximately square angle, then proceeding to curve. This is also similar to the way knuckleguards on copis/falcattas start out, when they have them (but AFAIK the more Western ones; hmmmm......), and (super-cool!) one I saw on a salwar yatagan.