"From examining ancient artwork, for example, we know that the ancient Greeks and Romans boxed. We also know that it was crude compared to modern styles, employing clubbing and roundhouse blows and giving little thought to footwork and defense."(Paraphrased from Ned Beaumont's "Championship Streetfighting: Boxing As A Martial Art").
The General "theory" at this time goes that it was not until the 18th century that "scientific" principles began to appear in pugilism(Latin "pugil"=fighter, "pugnus"=fist, "pugnare"=to punch).
The main additions to the science currently commonly attributed to this later era include:
*the concept of a vertical fist
*linear punching
*the concept of a foot shift to move bodyweight into a punch
*the concept of a waist twist to add power to a punch
*the concept of slipping/parrying/avoiding blows while positioning oneself to launch one's own counterpunches
*the concept of chaining punches in combinations.
Any student of 18th century pugilism and its modern succesors will no doubt now recognize these concepts as hallmarks of their style.
But are they really such recent developments?
Being curious, I of course set about investigating just casually, any hypotheses I have right now are of course currently in their embryonic stage, that is clear.
But I discovered an extraordinary series of similarities in even just the few pieces of artwork i found online which begin to lead me to believe that most, if not all, of the concepts listed above as "originating" in the 18th century may in fact have been in use millenia before.
Follows are the illustrations/artwork i turned up during a cursory search(Thanks to Shane petersen of Sword Forum International for the pics he posted there):
forums.swordforum.com/att...entid=4744
forums.swordforum.com/att...tid=113188
forums.swordforum.com/att...tid=113190
forums.swordforum.com/att...tid=113193
www.angelfire.com/sports/...Mosaic.GIF
www.tracyskarate.com/FAQ'...ration.gif
www.perseus.tufts.edu/cl1...ration.gif
Have a look at these and think on 'em and as I'm running out of time right now I'll be back tomorrow to pos my initial hypotheses and draw what I percieve as common threads between the style then and now, as well as differences.
Krixus/Andy

