what about these Japanese guys:
What a bunch of posers, lol. I guess I'll have to explain myself a little.
Japs only used bog iron in the production of their weapons. Bog iron is impure iron deposits found in swamps. They didn't have any other iron on their islands, so their weapons (despite what urban legends say) were pure shit. As a result, the samurai codex even allowed 5 minute pauses in samurai fights, because their katanas got bent so much after hitting something, that they had to manually unbend them in order to go on and not look like total douches.
This is also the reason for the super complex Japanese sword forging technology. In order to get a good sword from shit metal, one had to work for years on a single blade. Such swords were all unique and couldn't be afforded by just anyone. Because only aristocrats could afford them, those swords were almost never used in actual fights.
So what do we have?
- Can't make really protective armor, cause almost no iron, and existing iron is shit.
- Can't make decent weapons, cause existing iron is shit.
So I don't even want to discuss those guys, they're not an example of anything other than being geographically unlucky.
(Of course when they started smuggling European iron in, they started making marvels with their exceptional forging technology.)
Yet somehow it's was almost the sole method of dueling for many centuries of at least European history. Swords are not knives, while double hits can happen they were not that common.And unarmored sword fight makes no sense.
Whoever said stupid rapier duels made any sense? One guy said something and then the other one got so butthurt over it, that they'd have to go outside and try to kill each other. Does that sound like something reasonable to you?
Efficiency-wise, it was stupid, cause it was fifty-fifty, basically. Those duels lasted for 5 seconds. They weren't exactly a shining example of weapons/armor technology or fighting techniques.
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