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Old 29th July 2005, 04:46 PM   #9
Rivkin
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Join Date: Dec 2004
Posts: 655
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Dear All,

My opinion, as much as it ignorant, will probably be insulting to most of the members, for that I'm sorry.

It's one thing to scream on top of your lungs, madly shaking your hands, while hanging by nearly invisible threads on a movie set. It's a different thing to have a duel - a ritualized fight in between of two individuals. It's a completely different thing to have an effective army.

Nowadays it's believed that those cultures that are famous for martial arts had good soldiers. It's incomprehensible for many how precursors of shao-lin monks with their secret knowledge of chi used nomad mercenaries for their best units. How the all feared samurai had tremendous problems with their empire building in Korea (not to mention same old bad nomads).

On the other hand mongols were what is considered by modern standards complete loosers. They did not know how to kill people with their own hair (they preferred to use bows), they did not know about deep spirituality of the pose of five winds in the style of three monkies, they did not have elaborate weapons, all of the warriors carrying the same simple set of very basic weapons - bow, lance, mace and sword - when you know which weapons work, and which don't you tend to stick with the ones that do, rather than with the ones that don't but definitely 'cool'.
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