Obscure types of BATTLE AXE from around the world

now when it comes to movies or video games swords get all of the glory and all of the glamor but another weapon that's been incredibly important across the world throughout history in fact prehistory is the ax whether it's the Viking type axes or whether it's North American tomahawks or Indian axes or various African axes there are numerous types of actors which have been incredibly important to the history of warfare so in this video we're going to look at some obscure and lesser-known types of battle ax so axes of various sorts have been used around the world since pre-history obviously in the Stone Age there were axes and going all the way through the Bronze Age into the Iron Age and into the modern era and even today even in modern battlefields in Iraq and Afghanistan even um certain types of tomahawks have been used as tools and in some cases As Weapons as well so axes are still being used as Weapons today and as I said swords get all of the glory but axes are an incredibly important type of weapon and even as a weapon sometimes in certain applications for certain purposes can be a better weapon than a sword so here we're going to look at some unusual axes that haven't got much attention and maybe you won't have heard of all of them but before we delve into that we're going to look at the Fantastic sponsors for this video who are skillshare now in the last couple of years so many things have changed in the workplace and also this being the beginning of a new year 2023 a lot of people are thinking about where am I going with my life how am I going to improve my chances of moving my career where I want it to go and that's where skillshare can play a massive part and I've got a fantastic offer for you right here now you've probably already heard about skillshare for things like photography film movie editing and also illustration however there's a bunch of other things you can learn on there as well which might relate to your career the traditional nine to 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year so what's to lose go and check out that um special offer right now and you can go and have a look at the skillshare for yourself and see what is on there that might be useful for you and taking forward your goals for 2020 threat and thanks once again to skillshare for sponsoring this video so thanks a lot for sticking with me now let's get back to the main content of this video let's look at some obscure or lesser known types of Acts how many of them will you know Post in the comments down below and remember to click like And subscribe and let me know whether you knew about this type of ax or indeed if there's a type of act which I've skipped over which you think I should have given some attention to because I might look at it in a future video so first up is the Norwegian peasant Acts or Farmer's ax and these were known I believe in Norwegian as the bond irks please excuse my pronunciation and now this was a type of weapon which seems to have come about in the 1500s but specifically after 1600 these became mass-produced items and were used by the essentially isn't militias that were raised to provide a defensive Force against possible Invaders primarily the swedes in fact it was in 1604 that the combined Danish and Norwegian King King Christian IV brought out an edit stating that people need to arm themselves for defensive militias and they had a choice of either buying a tessac which is the type of Hangar or short saber or a short sword essentially for um for providing military service as a sidearm they could either buy this from the crown or they could in many cases arm themselves with an ax and this was seen as a completely acceptable form of sidearm as well now the characteristic feature of these axes which makes them different to others is the strange curved shaft and angle of the head now there's many many theories of why they're designed like this and I don't think any of them are really conclusive maybe this is something that I'll look more deeply into in a future video some people have suggested this gives a more of a slicing cut why would that be a good thing with an ax I don't know uh perhaps it's to make them slightly better to be used against Cavalry which might be applicable and when fighting the swedes there are many many theories but we basically don't know now the heads of these axes do seem to owe some of their design to earlier should we say Viking era axes found in Norway however they don't seem to have been a direct descendant necessarily and they are something very particular to the 17th century to the 1600s that being said they do seem to have had their roots in the 1500s and were still being used up and develop until about the year 1800 even so these were standard Farmers side arms very iconic weapon used by the farmers of Norway in the 17th century for defensive purposes by the militias and a very iconic and rather overlooked weapon next up is the type of Acts used by the Sotto people most oftenly found in Lesotho and neighboring areas and this type of ax is particular in that it has a Tang so most axes are just grab one here most actors as you'll see have a socket whereby they go around the shark but more rarely throughout history there have been certain types of axes which instead of using this socket Arrangement have had various other ways of attaching the ax head to the socket either a socket a bit like a spearhead that goes on laterally or a tang and this is the case here so with the sotho ax it has a Tang at the back that goes through the shaft and is then bent over at the back to secure it a bit like how a Tang goes through the grip of a sword or a knife this type of blade is made of iron it's usually locally forged and these types of axes were used in conjunction with an alongside types of Club types of wall club and usually used with a large shield in the left hand these are fairly light not particularly big weapons they're fairly thin blades so quite quick and Nimble and they're particularly characteristic of South Africa and this particular type very commonly found in Lesotho they were often also seen as a sign of status and so we see photographs from the 19th century of chiefs often holding types of Acts including in South Africa in you know Zulu and matibili communities as well the Act was seen as high status it had a large amount of iron in it and very often the shaft would be decorated with wire which very often was traded with Europeans and was brass wire and was braided into elaborate patterns and wrapped around the shaft so for the next ax we're going to go to India the Chota nagpur region to be precise this type of action which actually goes by a number of different names um but I've most encountered these in the Antiques trade being referred to as bullover axes and you'll see that they're actually relatively long for an ax so if I just grab a tomahawk as a comparison here tomahawks are pretty much at the smallest end of the ax spectrum and obviously big axes can go up to the size of two-handed Dane axes for a two-handed ax this would be short for a wonder-handed ax this would be very long so these were predominantly used two-handed but could also be used one-handed with a shield so in that sense they're a sort of hand and a half ax so fairly long for a one-hand one and you'll see that the blade is very very long on it and you have this sort of mustache comedy mustache shape which is designed to stretch out the amount of available steel or iron in the blade to the maximum length of Cutting Edge and some of these are extremely long they come in various different shapes they don't always have this exact same massage shape there's sometimes differences to the shape of the Cutting Edge sometimes it's more pointed outwards at the middle sometimes we have differently shaped points at either end and you'll notice that the shaft is relatively thin actually for a for an ax and this of course differentiates this from a wood chopping ax this wouldn't last very long at all if you tried to chop a tree down with it but for a fighting ax it's relatively light a Nimble although I have to say it's very top heavy as most axes are it balances in fact within the blade length there many of them also have this additional element of a thrusting Spike at the top here which is a nice adaptation not all of them but many of them do and this one is actually decorated brass you can see there it's got some very attractive decoration all around it and then with an iron Spike at the top and many of them also have this decorative element at the bottom which I think it would be tempting to say that's a counterbalance but I don't really think it is I think it's primarily there just for your hand to feel where you get to the end of the shaft so your hand doesn't slide off it's not really providing any notable weight or balance the shaft is usually made of a form of hard wood very occasionally they're made of bamboo I do actually have a bamboo example as well but this is a form of solid hardwood and they are cylindrical as mentioned and fairly thin and also because you've got a fairly thin socket here so the socket doesn't have a loss of vertical height we actually have a reinforcing strip of iron underneath and that means that when you get lateral forces here it's not going to snap Through the Wood of the top of the shaft or at least it's going to help prevent that from happening this is a feature we see exactly on Viking axes on Dane axes as found in the museum of London dredged up from the River Thames from the 10th and 11th centuries so this was a dish this was a feature that was found on a number of axes throughout history because that is a weak point of an ax the point where the socket joins onto the shaft because it can snap the shaft off there so reinforcing very interesting so the chochi nagpur region in India is famous for these axes and they come in variety of shapes and sizes usually used with shields but also used sometimes two-handed by themselves as well as an alternative to the sword and more affordable cheaper to produce than the sword but still have a lot of effect on the target of course so staying in India for the next type of ax this is from an area of Northeast India called nagaland where the Naga people use this particular type in fact they have a wide variety of specific weapons for them including certain types of sword and this type is known as the Dow now Dao is an interesting word because it means sword or single-edged knife in various different languages whether you're in China or whether you're in Burma which the word Da comes from Dao there's lots of related words which refer to an edged Implement and this type of ax has to be said is almost like a cross between a sword and an ax because of the way it's constructed and because of its look instead of having the blade on the side of the shaft the blade projects from the top of the shaft so in this sense we could see it almost as a form of short bladed long-handled sword rather than an ax but it is generally regarded as an ax so I've included it here the Naga people engaged in what was known as headhunting at the time they were quite militaristic and they had a wide variety of weapons as mentioned but this particular type of ax they're quite famous for It's relatively cheap to produce but also gives a good reach and is relatively Nimble depending on how heavy you make the head the heads can be of various sizes and shapes but they generally have this rectangular form projecting above a relatively Straight Shaft sometimes with a turned out bottom at the end to stop your hands sliding off and very often the shaft is enhanced in decorative effect with hair the blade is connected to the shaft via a Tang which goes into the shaft rather than a socket and therefore the shot off would be prone to splitting but the top of the shaft is often enhanced with decorative braid work around the top which serves the Dual Purpose firstly of decoration and status but secondly of reinforcing and Binding Together the top of that shaft to prevent the Tang from splitting it open so this type of ax is peculiar and particular to the naga people of Assam and can be found from Burma all the way across to Nepal next up is the absolutely formidable and scary looking igorot people's acts from Luzon in the Philippines so this is a Filipino type of ax sort of ax it has some elements almost of a bill hook of it so you'll notice that the front Cutting Edge there is concave now there is some debate about whether this weapon was primarily at all it can be used as a tool and a weapon however it's famously used as a weapon and it's used by head hunting groups as well back in the day and now this obviously combines elements of various types of weapons in some senses it's a bit like a pick like a war Pig almost like the spike on a Warhammer because it's got a penetrative point there in fact two it's also got this concave Cutting Edge so it's a bit like a bill hook or a sickle and of course it also has a chopping element which projects in front of the main shaft so it's therefore like an ax but in overall silhouette it is basically like an ax so I've categorized it here as an ax now the construction of this is also very interesting it's got certain elements about the design apart from the head which I've just spoken about which in itself is quite unique in fact I would say it is a unique utterly unique the construction is uh pretty much um not if not unique very special specialized as well in that it has a Tang going down into the shaft it's quite a thin shaft now if you didn't have some form of reinforcement that shaft would split under lateral stresses so the Tang goes down inside the shaft and then there is a sleeve or tube usually of arm sometimes of other materials you could you could make braiding and I'm sure earlier versions probably were things like braided Rattan but later versions certainly and most of the versions you see in museums today are an iron tube encasing the area in which the Tang goes inside and therefore making for a very solid construction because that Tang through lateral stress can't break out of the iron tube and that keeps the shaft held together and in a sense that also means when you're fighting against other people with edged weapons something very common in the Philippines as many of you will know that means that the top of your act shaft is now reinforced against the cuts of their weapons as well also the final thing to mention about the particular design of this very unusual weapon is the little projecting lug that's usually not always but usually just in front of the hand this could be seen as a hand stop or to a certain extent to hand guard but I'll leave that for people more knowledgeable on these axes to to debate over so the igorock people's acts from the Philippines a as far as I'm aware are completely unique type of design and quite scary looking looking almost like it's come straight out of the pages of sci-fi or fantasy and the final ax I'm going to feature here is not particularly unusual in design but I think it's very important because it harks back to pre-history and that's the billion ax which is found in what's now Malaysia back in the day it would have been primarily Sarawak it was used as a weapon possibly used as a tool as well and I think almost certainly owes its design to tools that went before it and the reason I've put it last hit and the reason I've included it is because the blade much like certain types of African acts has a Tang which passes into the shaft but if we look at the particular shape of the shaft and the way that it's attached we actually know of Bronze Age axes from Europe that were made in almost exactly the same way so I think it's a fantastic example of using modern or relatively modern ethnographic weapons to sometimes look at prehistoric weapons from other areas because Technologies technology and people given certain materials certain conditions certain contexts and needs often come to similar conclusions and that is the case with the billion acts it's a very very simple thing but if you look at the angulation of the ax head to the shaft the way that the shaft Tang is fitted into the shaft and the shaft is reinforced with braiding this is a very similar solution to how Europeans sometimes fitted bronze blades to wooden shafts so the billion Ax from Sarawak which I suspect that quite a few people watching this video won't have heard about before thanks a lot for watching in the future I will look at some of these access perhaps in some more depth I'll try and get some original examples to show in front of you like I have done with a couple of the things here um also I will be looking at other weapons from specific areas so I might be looking at weapons of the Philippines weapons of Sarawak because Sarah has some very interesting weapons as it happens um you know particular areas of the Middle East let's say Syria or whatever if there are particular things you'd like me to look at in future videos a particular area a particular type of weapon then you're always very very welcome to post below with your suggestions and requests and hopefully I'll see those and it will result in a future video thanks a lot for watching check out all the links below and um I hope I'll see you back on the channel really soon cheers folks thanks for watching we've got extra videos on patreon please give our Facebook a like And subscribe if you haven't already cheers folks

Channel: scholagladiatoria

Views: 48,425

Keywords: battle axe, types of axe, stone axe, african axe, medieval axe, types of battle axe, fighting axe, tomahawk, indian axe, warrior with axe

Id: Bnu9ppQY39A

Length: 18min 39sec (1119 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 04 2023