Almost every human culture and civilization in the world has used knives and daggers. A knife is one of the most basic tools, used for cutting any number of materials, from food to fibers. Knives were also used as weapons to kill humans. A dagger could be considered a long, double-edged knife, ranging from 15 to 50 centimeters and meant specifically as a weapon. Knives and daggers have two basic parts: first, the blade, a flat surface with one sharp edge or two, usually narrowing to a point; second, the hilt, covering the tang, which extends back from the blade, and providing a handhold. The hilt itself has two parts: the grip, perhaps with some sort of guard to protect the hand, and a pommel, which is a piece at the end of the grip to back up the hand and provide balance. For protection from the sharp blade, knives were carried in sheaths or scabbards while not in use.
Some knives were meant to be thrown. Otherwise knives and daggers were usually wielded either overhanded, with the blade extending down from the fist, or underhanded, with the blade sticking up from the fist. These weapons also had the advantage of concealment when worn underneath clothing. In the warfare of all but the most primitive societies, the knife or dagger was usually the weapon of last resort, after other weapons had been lost.
Most cultures have also developed swords, which could be considered extended daggers, with blades longer than 40 centimeters. Swords could, given their weight and length, more effectively hack, slash, puncture, or cut an enemy. Grooves in blades, or fullers, are often believed to have been channels to drain away blood but were usually built into the blade to add flexibility, lightness, and strength. The limited reach of the sword, compared to that of the spear or bow, often meant that it was a secondary weapon. Although rarely decisive in itself during battle, the sword was one of the most widely used weapons for close combat before 1500 c. e.
The history of knives, daggers, and swords has perhaps been more influenced by fashion than by application in warfare. These weapons and their sheaths have often been made with great care and decoration, conveying the status of their owners. The sword, especially, became a work of art, status symbol, magisterial emblem, and cult object. The right of knights or samurai to wear swords indicated their social positions, and men defended that rank in sword duels. In medieval Europe a squire was dubbed to knighthood with a sword blow, known as an accolade. Large ceremonial swords of state were carried in processions or displayed in court to illustrate a ruler’s power over life and death. Swords or daggers also embodied religious significance, such as sacrificial daggers made of chalcedony used by the Aztecs for human sacrifice. The similarity of a sword’s shape to that of a cross also lent it a Christian symbolism. Legends concerning Arthur’s Excalibur and Roland’s Durandal celebrated the sword in Europe, and many Japanese believed that certain old swords embody the spirits of Shinto deities.
Development
The earliest humans made the first knives and daggers from stone, such as flint or obsidian. They shaped blades through “pressure flaking,” banging pieces of stone against one another so that chips of stone broken off would leave a blade form behind. By the time of the agricultural cultures of the New Stone Age (Neolithic times), a grip made of wood or bone was then formed and attached with lime or binding to the tang. The peoples of the Americas and the Pacific rarely progressed beyond stone technology, and so did not develop significant swords. The Aztecs, however, may have been able to dominate their neighbors in the thirteenth century c. e. with the interesting sword-club, the maquahuitl, which set obsidian blades on either side of a wooden shaft. They also used special stone knives to cut out the hearts of human sacrificial victims.
The essential change came with the beginnings of metallurgy. Copper was the first metal to be used for knives, probably beginning around 4000 b. c. e. in the Middle East and East Asia. The invention of bronze, usually copper alloyed with tin, led to a great improvement in the strength and durability of weapons. In “grip-tongue” blades, whether cast in one piece or two, hilts were attached to the blade or reinforced with rivets. By the second millennium b. c. e. hilt and blade were forged from one piece of metal, with flanges between hilt and blade to protect the user’s hand.
As blades began to get longer, the resulting weapons became known as swords. Some were curved, based on the sickle, an agricultural implement used for harvesting. Curved blades were better suited to cutting, whereas straight blades were better at hacking and thrusting. The Minoans and Mycenaeans of the Eastern Mediterranean from about 1400 to 1200 b. c. e. began to develop not only decorative long swords but also highly useful short swords. The curious “halberd” of the Early Bronze Age looked like a dagger set at right angles to a shaft, creating a kind of dagger-ax.
Swords became more lethal after smiths had mastered the use of iron, beginning around 900 b. c. e. Instead of being cast from liquid metal, iron weapons were beaten out of ingots heated in forges. Because the hardness of ancient iron varied considerably, a key development toward improving the swords was pattern welding, which was the combining or plaiting together of different strips of iron into formations or patterns. This technique blended the weaker and stronger parts of the iron into a more uniformly strong and flexible blade. Although ancient smiths might not have understood the scientific basis of making steel, iron hardened with carbon, many swordmakers developed techniques that guaranteed its use in the sword.
With the Iron Age, the sword became a standard, if not always decisive, weapon. In the Greeks’ phalanx method of combat, the opposing formations of spear and shield were most important, but swords were used in close combat, often as a desperate measure. The hoplite sword, intended mainly for slashing, had a wide bulge about one-third of the way down from the point, narrowing to a waist until widening at the hilt again. Some Greeks also used a kopis, a heavy, single-edged, downward- curved sword.
The Roman legions made their short “Spanish” sword, the gladius hispaniensis, a more essential part of their fighting system. After weakening the enemy with thrown spears, they closed and smashed their large shields against their opponents. Then, while the enemy usually used an overhand sword blow, caught by the Roman shield, the Roman legionary would thrust his short, stabbing sword underneath into the stomach, where its long point could penetrate most linked armor. The Romans also carried fine daggers, but they seem not to have been used in battle. By the time of the early empire, the in fantry preferred the short, hacking, “Pompeian” sword. Beginning in the second century c. e., with the rise of cavalry, a more suitable, longer (80-centimeter), slashing sword, the spatha, began to dominate in the Roman armies. This sword was the ancestor of medieval European swords.
The Roman Empire was brought down by Germanic peoples using long swords. Through the early Middle Ages, the sword became the basic weapon of a warrior. Battle would often begin with a charge, on foot or on horseback, using spears or lances. Once those weapons were spent, however, the warriors would hack at their armored foes with swords. Axes and maces were also popular, as well as the seax, a heavy, single-edged, broad-bladed chopping sword which had evolved by 900 into the scramasax, a short chopping blade. With the rise of knighthood by the eleventh century, warfare with lances and swords allowed Europeans to push back their opponents in the Crusades. After armorers developed better armor to help knights survive in battle, swordsmiths devised blades that would break through metal. The falchion, a broad-bladed, cleaverlike sword addressed that need. Thirteenth century knights also began to use heavier and longer one-and-one-half-handed (“bastard”) or two-handed swords. By 1500 infantry, especially the Swiss and German Landsknechte, had developed huge swords, up to 175 centimeters long.
Another solution to European plate armor was to emphasize the swords’ thrusting ability. The blade became thicker and more rigid, so the user could pierce weaker joints in the armor. In order to improve grips on such swords, protective rings began to be added to the cross-guard. Guards became more elaborate, including a curved bar stretching from cross-guard back to pommel, while the blade became narrower and sharper at the point. Thus the modern rapier appeared, which began to dominate after 1500.
Daggers were worn by European warriors throughout the Middle Ages. Daggers played only a minor role in combat, with one exception: Should a knight through exhaustion or wound be found on the ground, his enemy might dispatch him with a “misericord” dagger thrust through a chink in the armor. The popular late-medieval baselard and rondel daggers with their long, narrow blades were used for this purpose. The former had a curved cross-guard and pommel, whereas the latter had a disk-shaped guard and pommel. The rondel dagger also evolved into the Scottish dirk.
Sub-Saharan Africa was not using bronze weapons by the Bronze Age and began to use iron by the third century b. c. e. By the fourth century c. e., the use of iron tools and weapons had spread throughout the continent. A shortage of iron, however, meant that sub-Saharan peoples had to import many weapons from European and Islamic civilizations. In some cultures, the Kuba kingdom of the Congo, for instance, daggers and swords with unusual blade shapes acquired great cultural importance. Africans also developed a unique throwing knife, the hunga-munga, with several blades branching out at angles from a main shaft.
Islamic swords, whether Arab, Turk, Persian, or Indian, were often typified by the scimitar, a curved, single-edged blade meant for slashing, which developed in the eighth or ninth century c. e. Scimitars predominated by 1400 c. e. but never entirely replaced straight blades. Until the fifteenth century the city of Damascus not only made famous swords but also served as a trading center for weapons made elsewhere. Persian weapons were famous for “watered” steel, in which the combination of higher and lower carbon content created a wavy pattern in the blade visible after an acid wash. Islamic dagger shapes varied widely according to region, although the jambiya, or curved ceremonial dagger, is most famous. Persian and Indian versions have a double curve. Interesting daggers from India included the Gurkha’s kukri, with a downward-curved, single-edged, leaf-shaped blade, and the katar, or punch dagger. The unusual Malayan kris had a blade that could be wavy and widened from the point to a thick wedge at the hilt, which itself was set at an angle down from the blade. Throughout Southeast Asia, machetes, or parangs, were used as jungle knives for both clearing vegetation and fighting.
In China, straight bronze swords of various lengths dominated until the establishment of the Chinese Empire in the third century b. c. e. Iron weapons were then introduced, which led to long (90-centimeter) straight swords. Cavalry, charioteers, and infantry all used swords, although an important side weapon was also the dagger-ax. The scimitar-like cavalry sword, probably introduced by Turkish peoples of Central Asia, became more popular after the eighth century c. e.
The high point of sword-making skill lay in Japan. Japanese swords were made with a highly sophisticated folding of metals: millions of times for the cutting edge, mere thousands for the spine. With polished blades and decorative hilt fittings, Japanese blades were unsurpassed in both beauty and lethality. The earliest swords in Japan, around 700 c. e., were based on straight Chinese blades. During the Heian period (794-1185 c. e.) the blades of the long tachi used by samurai horse warriors began to be curved. These types of swords were perfected in Japan during the late eighth and early ninth centuries. Although the primary weapon of the samurai was originally the bow, failed attempts by the Mongols to invade Japan in 1274 and 1283 c. e. led to a new emphasis on the sword in combat. In the fourteenth century the Soshu tradition of sword making was founded, creating the curved sword that became the katana. By the fifteenth century, the samurai warrior class had the sole right to carry swords, normally both the long sword, the katana, and the short sword, the wakizashi. The Japanese also had equally fine knives, ranging from the dagger, or tanto, carried with the swords, to smaller blades that fit into the scabbards of other weapons. Knives had various uses: as a replacement for chopsticks, for throwing at an enemy, for committing ritual suicide, or for giving the coup de grace to an opponent.
