Talk:Falcata

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I'm not doing the effort to translate to english what i know? then why do you don't do the effort to understand the foreign languages articles and works as well?? and if this is for you a foreign history article, why do you don't the effort to understand that history first? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.8.116.84 (talk • contribs)

Dear Wikipedia, I understand you deleted my editing, as I made rather a mess of things, but this stub really cannot stay as it is. The writer seems to have done a lot of research, but I wonder what he made of his sources. Did those Spanish sources really make a connection between the falcata and the Romans? Do they really connect it with the Celts? And do they really connect it to a period when iron was only rarely used? This is all a lot of bunk, you must know that.Koechlyruestow (talk) 14:52, 23 November 2012 (UTC)

Name

I have seen a sword nearly, if not, identical to this called a falción. Is this possibly the same sword? 67.142.174.26 (talk) 21:57, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

The main article states: "... It seems that its origin is parallel to the Greek kopis and is not derived from it." Does anyone have any citation to back up this assertion? I am not trying to refute it; I would just like to know where this statement comes from to assist me in my own research on similar weapons (and hopefully I can give back to wikipedia when my work is further along, of course!) -- Mike-c-in-mv (talk) 03:58, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

The oldest of the sickle swords is the ancient Sumerian sickle-sword. It soon spread to South Asia and Egypt (O.Gamber Waffen Eurasiens Abb. 87). In the iron age, such swords became very popular in the Levant. Assyrian wall-paintings from Till-Barsib (A.Parrot Assur (1961) plate 115) show light, forward curving sickle swords, and remnants of such knives have been found in Iberian graves from the 4th century BC (Die Iberer (1998) cat.nr. 26) and are shown on Etruskan temple fronts (O.Gamber Waffen Eurasiens Abb. 331). These swords developed into very heavy slashing swords such as the Anatolian drepanon, the Greek kopis and the Iberian "falcata". Some archaeologists maintain that the "falcata" is a separate weapon from the kopis, others do not.Koechlyruestow (talk) 15:45, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

The falchion, malchus, baudelaire, storta, etc etc is a functionally related sword, as it also serves as a heavy, short, single edged hacking sword, but it is a medieval weapon, while the kopis/machaira/falcata is an ancient weapon (H.Seitz Blankwaffen (1981) 188-197). Like ensis falcatus, the name falchion comes from the Latin falx, sickle.Koechlyruestow (talk) 16:02, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

The Spanish sword that impressed the Romans so much that they adopted it was not the falcata, but the weapon now referred to by archaeologists as gladius type Mainz (M.Junkelmann Die Legionen des Augustus (1986) 180-2). In Seneca's time, machaera simply meant "sword", its sickle sword connotation had disappeared along with the sickle sword itself. Most Spanish falcata sword finds date to the 5-4th century (Die Iberer (1998) cat.nr. 23-5, 195.1). They belong to the Tartessian cultural complex, which is associated with a people called the Iberians, a pre-Indo-European group. Expansion of the Celtic tribes and the Carthaginians were perhaps responsible for the cultural transformation beginning at the end of the 5th and the beginning of the 4th century ((Die Iberer (1998) 238-9) that led to the disappearance of the Tartessian culture and the associated pre-Indo-European language of the Iberians.Koechlyruestow (talk) 16:47, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

I want to thank Koechlyruestow for the above contributions. My readings of texts about the origin of the kopis certainly echo the possibility that the Iberian falcata descended from the Egyptian khopesh, and they also echo the point that "Some archaeologists maintain that the 'falcata' is a separate weapon from the kopis/machaira, others do not.". E.g., asserts that the falcata and kopis developed separately. But I am somewhat confused by the statement "The Spanish sword that impressed the Romans so much that they adopted it was not the falcata, but the weapon now referred to by archaeologists as gladius type Mainz". I'm confused because all of the Gladius weapons that I am aware of, including the Mainz variant, were double-edged symmetrical weapons; whereas, the single-edged forward curve is one of the most distinctive features of the kopis & makhaira & kukri.

Personally, I feel that the kopis may have been adopted by the Romans after contact with single-edged, forward curved descendants of the Egyptian khopesh on the Romans' Eastern front with Persia, but I have not been able to find any completely conclusive evidence of this in the texts I have access to. Mike-c-in-mv (talk) 06:07, 22 January 2013 (UTC)

In the 3rd century BCE, the Spanish sickle sword had long since disappeared, the characteristic sword of the Peninsula being a straight, double-edged stabbing sword. It was this gladius hispaniensis that the Romans adopted. Not only did I never find any evidence that the Republican and Principate Romans ever adopted a forward curving sword, be it Iberian or Levantine, but it seems any Middle Eastern descendants of the Levantine sickle swords as the Anatolian drepanon and the Assyrian sappara had also died out by the Roman / Parthian period. If you can prove otherwise, or even have only indications for a continued existence of the sickle sword in the Middle East during late antiquity, that would be fascinating information, but as far as I know, sickle swords only survived in India, from where they would later, from the 10th century CE onwards, return to the Middle East as the kattara (M.M. Khorasani Arms and Armour from Iran 2006, 212-3, not to be confused with the later, straight dagger with H shaped handle with the same name, originating in the south of the Indian subcontinent. In Sanskrit kattara simply means "sword").87.212.52.128 87.212.52.128 (talk) 20:25, 28 January 2013 (UTC) 17:00, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

Considering the fact that the only European weapon even remotely resembling a sickle sword, the saex, had disappeared after the Viking period (H. Seitz Blankwaffen 84), the appearance of the medieval European sickle sword, the falchion, in the 12th century CE can in my view only be attributed to the influence of the Middle Eastern kattara (through returning crusaders, H. Seitz Blankwaffen 191) and therefore ultimately to India.87.212.52.128 (talk) 20:25, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

Got it. Thank you! I found a paper at the UCLA Reference Library in Turkish (I think) that provides some images of a variety of curved swords from various archaeological digs in Israel, Turkey, and Iran. I used that paper and several other books and papers as references for an informal paper I wrote about the evolution of the kukri sword. My paper mentions the kopis, khopesh, falcata, makhaira, and others. The information I gleaned from that particular paper was necessarily at a fairly high surface level, since I can't read Turkish. Fortunately, it had numerous figures, and most of the images had dates attributed to the objects. I'll try to dig it up and correlate it (as best I can) against the analysis here. Maybe it will help to clarify some of these questions sufficiently that I'll feel brave enough to promote some of the material in my paper to the main page for this article and hopefully also into the article on the kukri. (Thanks again. I'm still relatively new to editing in wikipedia - still getting used to the fairly clipped language.) Mike-c-in-mv (talk) 06:58, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

The Dacians still used their version of the drepanon, the sica (Dacian for sickle), in the 2nd century CE, but much more interesting is the development of a large, two-handed variety, similar to the romphaia of the Thracians. Somewhat between a bill and a two-handed sword, they are similar to a two-edged weapon found in Iran and dated to the Sasanian period. So it seems the ancient sickle sword is also the predecessor of the polearm.87.212.52.128 (talk) 22:41, 29 January 2013 (UTC)