The Spear - King of Weapons? Or Just a Pointy Stick?

all right so last week i talked about axes link below if you haven't seen it yet spears also deserves some love now at first i wanted to do along the same lines are they underrated how underrated are they but spears aren't really necessarily all that underrated sure they also typically get less attention than swords but they're not quite as chronically overlooked as axes i would say if you look at history this is the weapon weapon number one especially on the battlefield and especially over large periods of time the spear is always there it doesn't matter where you look it doesn't matter how far back in time you go in fact the oldest wooden spears known were found in germany and they are between 380 000 and 400 000 years old so that was the time of homo heidelbergensis not homo sapiens yet by the way imagine them being straighter originally of course they've been warped after all that time in the ground and of course it's highly likely that simple wooden spears have been around for way longer the oldest known stone spear points that have been found are from south africa 500 000 years old at that time they already had stone tipped spears so wooden spears aka sharpened sticks would predate that by quite a bit obviously by the way i'll be excluding pikes because they're way longer and heavier than spears generally and also pole arms there are certain pole arms that are pretty close to spears in fact there's a certain gray area when does a spear become a pole arm but let's ignore that for now because there are enough classification challenges as is for one is it a hunting spear or a fighting spear that can be pretty difficult to determine many boar spears have wings or lugs or some other sort of guard that prevents the animal from simply running up your spear as he has impaled and still charge you but they're also quite useful on the battlefield and in duels sometimes you have hints that there were hunting spears maybe they have a particular inscription or some other features but if you just look at a spear design it's not immediately obvious necessarily whether it's a hunting spear or a fighting spirit then there is the spear versus javelin conundrum a javelin is a light spear designed for throwing and as usual on the extreme ends of the spectrum it's obvious enough two-handed spear javelin you can see that quite clearly sometimes museums label something as javelin or spear because it's just not that obvious for example if you look at this japanese hand spear or javelin could be either and it could very well be intended for both depending on the situation just like you could fight with a javelin this particular case not fantastic because it's very thin so it would break much more easily if used as a melee weapon but if that's all you have and you have a shield as well of course you can use it in melee as well and of course you have specialized throwing designs like the roman pelum or the germanic angon but it can be difficult to distinguish a heavy javelin from a light single-handed spear here's a strange throwing spear from a manuscript that looks almost like an oversized plumbata it has a weight and fletchings apparently and some historical manuscripts on judicial dueling show it all with the same spear it can either be used with one hand along with a buckler or another weapon it can be used with two hands it can be thrown so in short every javelin is a spear but not every spear is a javelin and just like with other weapons you have an extremely large variety of spears from different time periods and different places around the world you have obviously stone tip ones it could be flint or shirt or obsidian you have bronze even some copper spears you have obviously iron steel etc and you have different sizes different lengths and shapes even some really interesting unusual kind of fantasy looking ones that have a wavy blade or some other unusual features there are even dedicated pairing spears this one's from india made of steel with a hand guard here's an african take on basically the same idea and it's a turtle shell strapped to the spear to act as a shield even though the sword is generally considered the more heroic weapon and even though some people still underestimate the spear in a dual leg situation we'll get back to that later it's not really underrated as such for battlefield use i mean everybody is aware of the greek phallics for example and of course when it comes to heroic weapons the spear in the hands of a spartan of course is considered very heroic and it's generally understood how ubiquitous the spear was in history not only is it one of the earliest weapons possibly even the earliest but you find it everywhere there are cultures that didn't have swords but you would be really hard pressed to find one that didn't have spears at all even bows as essential as they are not everybody had them everywhere in some regions people use atlatls spear throwers so you have some form of pointy stick really everywhere the spear is of course considered primarily a thrusting weapon but you could find some remarkably large spearheads for example many celtic germanic and norse spears could have rather long blades that would definitely lend themselves to the cut by the way as a little bonus i'll talk about the norse gear at the end of the video even if you have a relatively short spearhead like this if you deliver a cut with this with good structure and enough power this will still be effective it still has edges and even though it wouldn't cut quite as deeply as a large spearhead you wouldn't want to be hit by this it's not to be underestimated so let's talk about advantages and disadvantages the most obvious advantage is reach it's a long stick i can be all the way over here and i reach that far so that makes it very dangerous to face with a shorter weapon because you have to enter an area where you're endangered but there's no way you can threaten the opponent yet that makes it also simpler to deal with multiple opponents i haven't received anywhere near as much formal training with a spear as with a certain fact none with a spear specifically some classes with the staff so with a spear or staff compared to a sword i'm a beginner even so on an open field i can take on two competent sword fighters and have a good chance of winning even if one tries to keep me busy while the other rusher is in it really doesn't take me much time to rotate and strike the other person or switch hands and thrust toward the other side the other thing that makes it very difficult to defend against is the speed now in a rehearsed demonstration or in technique drills you can come up with plenty of ways to defeat it in fact technically all you need to do is push the spear to the side rush in grab it and then close in and finish off the spear wielder however in practical terms against an opponent who doesn't play nice with your shenanigans all it takes is disengage and come back to thrust plus if they keep harassing you all the time and change direction and angle high low etc this is very difficult to deal with and i can i can very easily keep doing this you know faint high thrust low faint low thrust high etc next up is armor penetration it's not going to puncture a steel breastplate obviously this is not some fantasy world where all the armor is made of cardboard but you can pierce mail pretty effectively with this we've done some tests you can also thrust into the gaps of plate armor or the open face or an opening in the visor etc next up you can grapple with the spear you can use the butt end of it and if you have lugs or wings you can also hook with that which by the way is something that i forgot to mention in the previous video about axes that's something that axes are great at pulling hooking and pulling a shield down for example with a spear you can use that to an extent at least if you have something here but you can definitely use the spear shaft to lever and trip somebody up and drag them down etc another obvious advantage they're cheap and easy to make compared to other weapons it's less material than you need for most other metal weapons and the socket is the most complicated thing to make and again compared to a pole arm or sword definitely easier plus you can make them even simpler you can easily half the spear point with a tang by just cutting a slot into the shaft inserting it and drilling holes through pins go in that's it that's one of the main reasons why the spear dominated the battlefield the way it did if you have to equip a large number of people in an army it doesn't get much cheaper than this plus another advantage it's easy to use you can give anyone a pointed stick and tell them stick them with it even though there are some complex techniques with spears and staves in the historical manuals the simplest way needs no explanation hold it step forward and stab with it so what about disadvantages for one same as with the axe durability is an issue in fact here even more so because it has a longer half than axis generally and may also be thinner so there's just more leverage acting on this if if this end gets trapped and you keep pushing on it there's much more force on this it flexes the spear shaft and here's an example of what that can look like and of course they can be damaged by other weapons they can be cut into they did some tests in another video which i'm also going to link down below and as opposed to some axes which have language and other reinforcements that's not really common for spears it would somewhat defeat the purpose of having such a cheap readily available weapon there may have been some reinforced spear shafts here and there metal ones too but the the norm was definitely a simple wooden shaft like this another issue is the leverage can also be used against you that applies especially when using a spear with one hand with two you can hold against it pretty well but even then since the point is so far away from you that's a very long lever so if somebody pushes on it tries to control it with their weapon then it can be difficult to like basically you can't hold against it so at that point you have to free it and uh bring it in or move away with one hand that can be quite a problem if you grab it in the center of the shaft of course you lose quite a bit of reach but you basically have to because the longer this is you know if i hold it here even though this is this thing is not heavy if i hold it this far out this is starting to strain the hand because now that weight is applied at the end of a long lever and so if you thrust and you miss or the opponent parries then this will want to just drop down and you're going to have a hard time bringing it back up if you grab it further toward the middle or even further forward now the shaft acts as a bit of a counterweight here and the lever is not as long so this is much less of a problem but it can still work against you unless you couch it and that is a way to deal with that if somebody tries to manipulate it push it if you couch it under your arm and maybe even more so if you support it with a shield as well now it's extremely solid and it comes very difficult for the opponent to move also obvious most spears require a lot of space like this one right here if i had to fight at very close quarters you can do it to an extent if you have enough space behind you you can kind of pull it in and you can fight like this like a more cumbersome dagger almost but of course it's a bit cumbersome if you have a shorter single-handed spear not much of a problem you can definitely use that quite well in confined spaces however the closer the opponent is the easier it is for them to grab it which again is a problem basically the best way of defeating a spear is to parry it push it to the side and then rush in to grab it like i mentioned earlier because as soon as as the opponent has one hand on the spear it becomes difficult like you can still do something about you can still try to you know sidestep wrench it out grapple take them down to the ground etc but at that point you're struggling and finally they're inconvenient to carry now this is not a civilian self-defense weapon by any means a sword you can have on your side especially something like a broadsword or a side sword etc you can carry that around for everyday tasks a staff you can too because a staff can also be a tool you know a walking stick or to reach for things up in trees et cetera and it would be inconspicuous people wouldn't generally necessarily regard that as a weapon this is a different story so how are you gonna you could walk around with it like a walking stick but that's a little more awkward and otherwise if you're gonna carry it you need a certain amount of space so the spear is more of a battlefield weapon or for judicial duels because then you have everything regimented you just need to bring the weapons to the field where you're gonna duel you don't have to carry it around everyday life all right of course there's always more to say about an entire category of weapons especially one so prominent but i think that'll suffice for now with the exception of some words about the ad gear so this is a type of weapon that's mentioned in the icelandic sagas mainly in the 13th century and later i found an article in the acta periodica duolotorum volume seven issue one which is exactly about this topic so apparently the word atger when you pick it apart has no direct meaning in old icelandic it seems to have germanic root the icelandic word for spear spiot is noticeably different and uh when you look at the way the atker is described it's not actually described in terms of looks presumably because people knew what it looked like so it didn't need any explanation even though it was apparently a rare weapon overall the way it's generally described it sounds like a long relatively heavy weapon used mainly for thrusting but also for cutting occasionally personally i assumed that the word was referring to a hewing spear so a spear with a longer wider blade that's also useful for cutting but at the same time there is a word for that hug spielt literally means hearing spear so what the author decides on as the most likely candidate for an ad gear after the analysis is the pedersen type g spear and the difference here is the socket so compared to other spear heads the socket is much more solid others taper that's apparently according to the the sources where they typically failed because that's where the force is concentrated that's where it's narrower whereas the other type is overall more massive so that would mean most likely a heavier spear and one that you can more easily strike with without risking to damage it so i guess in a way it's a bit disappointing to go through the article only to realize that oh so it was just a spear after all just a different type or different construction basically but yeah that seems most likely to me as well because sometimes it's translated as halberd but that just doesn't make any sense because actual halberds appeared much later in history something similar to a glaive perhaps would make sense and has been interpreted as such but nothing has been found from the time that looks really anything like like a glaive let alone a halberd we do however have long queuing spears so it just makes the most sense that it would be that it's hard to know for sure anyway so i hope you enjoyed this found it interesting thanks for watching and have a good one folks [Music] you

Channel: Skallagrim

Views: 603,199

Keywords: Skall, Skallagrim, historical weapon, pros and cons, spear in history, spear fighting, spear types, throwing spear, historical battle

Id: aVQbSl9vXwA

Length: 18min 30sec (1110 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 21 2020