It’s hard to root Martial Arts origin since their most correct form was truly originated from the art of war conducted by many ancient warriors, but long before that other forms of “fight” had to appear from somewhere.

That’s when the animal comes to the scene.

A lot of other animals, especially mammals were heavier, stronger and naturally able to hunt, which meant that they were also gifted with an ability to fight, or better call it an instinct.

These animals were innately strong and fighting capable, while we, humans, had nothing. We were weaker and hadn’t developed a fighting ability yet so we had to start imitating to develop smarter ways of defense, and not only against these wild beasts but also other human beings.

At first, we start to craft weapons to protect ourselves. We also start to use our wit to create strategies that grew smarter overtime. But that was not enough forever.

We start using the body too, maybe copying some movements from the animals and finding others on our deepest primal instinct, and we start incorporating them as forms of defense or even attack.

Precisely what? and when? is hard to answer. Ancient civilizations left us some clues of fighting forms on literature and art, but still far from being organized, and even farther from a martial art.

As time passes these forms start to develop and more organized ones can be identified.

During this time forms of martial arts develop all over the world.

But despite all this development, the most similar form of something that today we call of Original Martial Arts, also known as Oriental Martial Arts starts to appear more clearly on ancient North India, or some China and Tibet areas.

That’s when spirituality jumps into the fray.

India has Yoga, and some principles of meditation are adopted by “martial arts”, as well as some movements from dance.

This had a strong influence on a broad region of Asia, and led to the appearance of other important developments, especially in China. Chinese society evolves and philosophy starts to develop in strength, especially with Taoism and Confucianism influences.

Philosophy becomes a new base for Martial Arts.

But only later the true and most important point in the history of Martial Arts comes.

It’s in Japan that the true meaning for Martial Art appears.

Japan

The store of Tatami — Photo by Shoichiro Kono on Unsplash

Look at many Japanese original Martial Arts: Judo, Kendo, Aikido, Karate, Jujitsu (Japanese), etc. They were created in accordance with some way.

The term “martial” originally comes from the disposition to make war. But this meaning starts to change and later appeared the term budō meaning martial way and defining a way of life that incorporates a series of moral principles, besides all the physical and spiritual aspects of the Martial Art.

This means that Martial Arts would go beyond the simple training on the tatami and take it’s principles to the personal growth of the practitioners, marking up the values of a character that would be built on everyday life.

But all this became possible after Bushido, way of the warrior, give a true sense to the Martial Art meaning.

The social class of Samurai appeared on war periods with warriors as highly trained mercenaries ready to serve any lord in exchange for monetary compensation. They had a notorious martial ability, were ready to use violence, and soon developed a unique culture only based on a ferocious appetite for fame, glory, and honor.

This class grew for some time but then the war was over, which meant that they had no task to fulfill the purpose they were originally abided by. For this motive, Samurai started looking for reaffirmation.

They found on the loyal servitude a new goal and found a reason to start acting as moral examples of devotion to duty. Living in strict observation of etiquette protocols, maintaining their military readiness through Martial Arts training, and also developing cultural and aesthetic abilities.

Their perspective of dying in battle would also have to change since they were not dying in battle, so it idealized and manifested through an attitude of auto-sacrifice and servitude.

All this constituted Bushido, identified by a 7 virtue code of honor that Samurai followed strictly. If you want to read more about it you can read this other story.

So Bushido brought this notion of devotion to a rigorous lifestyle, and this same notion later constituted the true Martial Art definition.