Celtic Two-Handers

[lobf]

Let me preface this topic-

It looked like it was the tone of a few of the posts that got the last thread shut down, rather than the idea of examining this question. Assuming that...

The question of whether or not two-handed Celtic swords existed in the EB time frame has been itching me for the last week. I have looked into it a bit, but I'll be the first to admit I don't even know where to start. Many of you take special interest in these sorts of things, so this seems to me like the best place to ask- Is there evidence of two-handed swords from the La Tene period? I would have assumed big swords could have existed at any time, but now that somebody has presented the possibility that there's no evidence for them in this period, my interest is piqued. So is there anyone out there with knowledge of the period that can set the record straight?

[Teleklos Archelaou]

"presented the possibility"? That's a nice sounding way of putting it. I saw zero sources or mentions of texts or anything that had information about it - there was just demands, in a way we think is offensive and is why we are really irritated at dealing with it, calling them fantasy units and saying the unit possibly came from a recent atrocious movie. Seriously - you wonder why we lock threads, get pissed off, and won't reply to your offensive PM's also? I know nothing about those units, but I know disrespect that we are not due when I see it.

As we have said time and time again: "Show us why you did this" is tiring. "This (with "this" being more than half a sentence without sources, etc.) is why I don't think X is the case, so could you respond why you think X is the case?" is more likely to get a response.

Try reading this post, which has been up for well over a year on this same subject, and was posted by someone much more adept at dealing with this mess than I am: https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=79193

[lobf]

"presented the possibility"? That's a nice sounding way of putting it. I saw zero sources or mentions of texts or anything that had information about it - there was just demands, in a way we think is offensive and is why we are really irritated at dealing with it, calling them fantasy units and saying the unit possibly came from a recent atrocious movie. Seriously - you wonder why we lock threads, get pissed off, and won't reply to your offensive PM's also? I know nothing about those units, but I know disrespect that we are not due when I see it.

Did you notice how my only post in that part of the thread was asking Elmetiacos to back up his assertion?

As we have said time and time again: "Show us why you did this" is tiring. "This (with "this" being more than half a sentence without sources, etc.) is why I don't think X is the case, so could you respond why you think X is the case?" is more likely to get a response.

I didn't ask any team members to show me why you did this. It was an open question to people with knowledge of Celtic history to answer if they could.

Try reading this post, which has been up for well over a year on this same subject, and was posted by someone much more adept at dealing with this mess than I am: https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=79193

Thanks, I've read it, but I didn't take issue with anything in the mod. Like I said, I'm wondering if this idea could possibly be true. I always assumed the opposite, and I was hoping someone with a La Tene background could clear things up.

[keravnos]

http://www.myarmoury.com/talk/viewto...er=asc&start=0

[Celtic_Punk]

if it is historically accurate (im all for a huge claymore-weilding drunken scottish and irishmen regiment) i ll be watching for this addition then.

shortswords are fun, but (most of you dont have hte luxury as i do) swinging a 5 foot claymore around, cleaving heads off is pretty friggin fun!

[abou]

lobf, have you really been that ignorant as to your tone of voice in your posts?

[russia almighty]

After you his one friend, I don't think he knows what to do anymore.

[Power2the1]

@lobf:

I have not had a chance to fully read through the link that Keravnos posted (so the picture below might be discussed somewhere in that thread), but I have seen the possibility brought up of two handed swords in this pic.



Which ones might be two handed? Take a look at the bottom row, all the way to the left. Those first three swords (the single blunted/round tipped and the two pointed tipped ones) are candidates. Again, I've only heard that they might be two handed.

In comparison, the blade of the three are definitely much bigger than the others although the handle part (or the tang I think it's called) might disqualify them as they do seem a bit small or 'normal' sized. Ideally, it'd be great to find detailed discussion on each sword in that pic and where it was found, as that might would help narrow things down a bit

[lobf]

http://www.myarmoury.com/talk/viewto...er=asc&start=0

Well I searched that thread for every occurrence of the word "two" hoping to find it followed by "handed" but the search was fruitless. If I'm missing something could you point towards the relevant posts there?

lobf, have you really been that ignorant as to your tone of voice in your posts?

Which posts? Because I'm really making an effort to be non-confrontational here.

@lobf:

I have not had a chance to fully read through the link that Keravnos posted (so the picture below might be discussed somewhere in that thread), but I have seen the possibility brought up of two handed swords in this pic.

{image snip}

Which ones might be two handed? Take a look at the bottom row, all the way to the left. Those first three swords (the single blunted/round tipped and the two pointed tipped ones) are candidates. Again, I've only heard that they might be two handed.

In comparison, the blade of the three are definitely much bigger than the others although the handle part (or the tang I think it's called) might disqualify them as they do seem a bit small or 'normal' sized. Ideally, it'd be great to find detailed discussion on each sword in that pic and where it was found, as that might would help narrow things down a bit

Thanks for taking the time to contribute, Power2the1. Those blades sure are huge, but don't the hilts seem awfully short? That is, of course, my uneducated observation.

Edit- looking back, perhaps they are long enough. Are all those swords in the same scale?

[Ibrahim]

settles it for me. though maybe the swords in q were used not like clymores per-se..thinking a bastard sword (or those 1 1/2 handers). I don't know-I leave this to the EB team, and I think they did a good job-and Lugian swordsmen rock, and that british unit too (forgot the name). just my 2 cents, with respect to the team.

EDIT: they are. the swords too the left are a bit too narow to be normal sized.

[keravnos]

Well I searched that thread for every occurrence of the word "two" hoping to find it followed by "handed" but the search was fruitless. If I'm missing something could you point towards the relevant posts there?



Which posts? Because I'm really making an effort to be non-confrontational here.



Thanks for taking the time to contribute, Power2the1. Those blades sure are huge, but don't the hilts seem awfully short? That is, of course, my uneducated observation.

Edit- looking back, perhaps they are long enough. Are all those swords in the same scale?

Υes, they are in the same scale.
The theory is that (for the longswords) the champion fielding them (and it would take someone very close to the hi-king as those longswords would cost the equivalent of a small car to purchase) would use them single handed. Now I understand that the hilt may be small, but the wooden part of it is missing. As such, I cannot dismiss out of hand the possibility of a double hander champion. If anything, when dueling with longswords (as champions of Celtic Kings used to-hence their title) you would need to hold the sword with both hands. It would be too heavy to continuously use it with one.

I am pretty sure the double handed use of those longswords is discussed, but I cannot take the time to search for it. I can tell you this though. Reading through all that thread, is a journey on its own. A lot of stuff you thought the Celts were incapable of, well, they did it.

[Taliferno]

Off the top of my head, there was no "distinct" 2 handed sword that the Iron Age celts used, the same way that there was a claymore or Zweihander in the Medieval period. I no zip about the eastern Celts so I could be wrong.

BUT, it was entirely possible to use a "typical" Celtic longsword two handed if the user so wished, and they might have been more effective if used as such.

[HFox]

If you look at the top row

from the left sword 8 gives an idea of a single handed sword scale of the hilt to the pommel.

If you look four more along to the right, that handle is twice the size, IF to the same scale.

Now if all of these are to the same scale, then there are a number of '2' handed possibilities....

...or maybe hand and a half possibilities.

Does the blade 'need' to be longer?

[Reverend Joe]

Just to throw a little into the mix... is it possible that the swords in the above pic could have lost part of the metal support in the handle? It's a bit of a stretch, but if you consider that:
1) several of the shorter swords have noticeably longer handle supports,
2) the supports on the long swords are also rather straight and skinny, so it would be harder for someone to notice a piece missing, as opposed to the triangular-shaped supports and
3) again, they are rather long and skinny, so it would be easier for a piece to break off to begin with...
maybe they used to have longer metal supports. And again, we have no idea how long the wooden handles were.

Edit: the more I look at them, the more I am sure those swords used to have longer hilts. I will put up a pic in a moment showing you what I mean.

Edit 2:



Observe the swords I have pointed out; in particular, the ones on the right almost certainly have fully intact hilts, as indicated by the knob at the back. Observe that these hilts are longer than those of the three swords on the far left, especially scale-wise; while it is arguable that this is simply a different style, I simply can't see how this could be the case without those swords being totally unwieldy. True, they could have been specially wrought for champions, or possibly ceremonial, but I just think it's more likely that they at least had much longer wooden hilts.

[Redmeth]

lobf, I also posted the pic with the swords a few months back in another thread and it was Elmetiacos who brushed the picture off (like he usually did with everything that was not to his liking) by saying he doesn't see any scale and they're just a collage put together, I'm pretty sure you were around that thread too so stop beating around the bush and stop posting these bait questions, you either are really slow to understand things or just like to play with our nerves...

EDIT: Good points, Rev. Joe.

[lobf]

Υes, they are in the same scale.
The theory is that (for the longswords) the champion fielding them (and it would take someone very close to the hi-king as those longswords would cost the equivalent of a small car to purchase) would use them single handed. Now I understand that the hilt may be small, but the wooden part of it is missing. As such, I cannot dismiss out of hand the possibility of a double hander champion. If anything, when dueling with longswords (as champions of Celtic Kings used to-hence their title) you would need to hold the sword with both hands. It would be too heavy to continuously use it with one.

I am pretty sure the double handed use of those longswords is discussed, but I cannot take the time to search for it. I can tell you this though. Reading through all that thread, is a journey on its own. A lot of stuff you thought the Celts were incapable of, well, they did it.

Very interesting and informative. Can I ask where you pulled this info from?

Observe the swords I have pointed out; in particular, the ones on the right almost certainly have fully intact hilts, as indicated by the knob at the back. Observe that these hilts are longer than those of the three swords on the far left, especially scale-wise; while it is arguable that this is simply a different style, I simply can't see how this could be the case without those swords being totally unwieldy. True, they could have been specially wrought for champions, or possibly ceremonial, but I just think it's more likely that they at least had much longer wooden hilts.

I agree with you, I think. Some of those swords seem impossible to use without two hands.

lobf, I also posted the pic with the swords a few months back in another thread and it was Elmetiacos who brushed the picture off (like he usually did with everything that was not to his liking) by saying he doesn't see any scale and they're just a collage put together, I'm pretty sure you were around that thread too so stop beating around the bush and stop posting these bait questions, you either are really slow to understand things or just like to play with our nerves...

EDIT: Good points, Rev. Joe.

I knew I had seen the picture before somewhere but I wasn't sure where or if they were even La Tene swords. In the topic that got locked, I mentioned that I thought it had been brought up before, but wasn't sure.

And how is this a bait question? I personally think the idea that there were no two-handers is unlikely. I mean, they obviously have huge swords, how much of a step is it to add some extra handle? Anyways, it's just a question. I have no vested interest in one answer or another. I'm not out to get you.

The point of this thread was to put the evidence in one place where we could all look at it and discuss it. I thought that's what scientists and historians did.

Though I notice some of those swords have different backgrounds around them, like they were taken at separate times. Does anyone know where that image came from in the first place?

[mcantu]

Very interesting and informative. Can I ask where you pulled this info from?



I agree with you, I think. Some of those swords seem impossible to use without two hands.



I knew I had seen the picture before somewhere but I wasn't sure where or if they were even La Tene swords. In the topic that got locked, I mentioned that I thought it had been brought up before, but wasn't sure.

And how is this a bait question? I personally think the idea that there were no two-handers is unlikely. I mean, they obviously have huge swords, how much of a step is it to add some extra handle? Anyways, it's just a question. I have no vested interest in one answer or another. I'm not out to get you.

The point of this thread was to put the evidence in one place where we could all look at it and discuss it. I thought that's what scientists and historians did.

Though I notice some of those swords have different backgrounds around them, like they were taken at separate times. Does anyone know where that image came from in the first place?

http://forums.swordforum.com/showthr...hlight=navarro

[cmacq]

This may have been covered...

I remember reading a paper several years back, about Latene blade length being related to an increase in the use of larger horse breeds. As these weapons were used by the horse and not the foot, for greater reach. I believe that much later, the development of swords that could be effectively used with two hands have tangs, not so much the hilt, disproportionate to the length of the blade when compared to the single hand grip. This is for leverage, with a space between the hands, which is translated into the speed of the blade's end, the great advantage the clay mor has over other swords. There was also an issue of the type of metal used to prevent breakage. Again the two handed grip has a very long tang. Without the support of the tang, a longer hilt would simply soon break or shatter upon repeated impact.

[keravnos]

The longest sword is third from the bottom. If the scale isn't changed, this sword is about 130 cm - 51.2 inches long, of which about 115 cm - 45.3 inches is blade. Also, "narrow" is a relative term for blade width - third from the bottom has a blade width of about 4.5 cm - 1.75 inches. The greatest blade width in this series belongs to ninth from the top. It appears to be about 6 cm - 2.4 inches wide.
These measurements if accurate are comparable to the Longswords of the Medieval and Renaissance much later. As these are rather large i wonder what the cross section was like on these and if the distal taper became *very* thin - 2 mm out toward the last third of the blade. This also is typical of the much later Longswords.

http://forums.swordforum.com/showpos...8&postcount=17

@Lobf, I read that someplace, but for the life of me, I cannot remember where.
Note, that I am not saying that there were actual zweihanders in the Late Latenne era, but every evidence that we have suggests that there might have been. (look at the above)

What I know for a fact is that for many things that are considered of medieval and other origin, were actual discoveries of the Celts, (take soap for example-a Celtic invention). I think that the Celtic contribution to world history is saddly misrepresented and that must change.

[Reverend Joe]

Over the last two years or so I have been collection any image I could find of LaTene blades. I compiled a folder of xerox copies. I remember that page after page had come from Navarro. It is quite possible that all of the Late LaTene came from another source. Yet, I seem to remember that there was some Late LaTene in Navarro. (If Nate B. is listening he could answer this... he has a copy I believe).

I scanned each of these pages into photoshop, cropped each image and adjusted it to as clear an image as possible. I compiled all of these images onto a very large canvas and then began arranging them based on the general blade profiles given in Navarro and Pleiner for Early Middle and Late LaTene. In dealing with the Late LaTene there was so such variation that I came up with the arbitrary distinction of wide and narrow. (You are right in that it is not the best distinction.)

As I segregated these images, in most cases, the Early and Middle LaTene swords were proportional and I could just move them into position on the canvas. However with the late LaTene it was different. Because of the longer lengths, the plates were of different scales and also the fact that they were taken from several sources (you can see the different tonal differences in the cropping)... because of these factors, they had to be adjusted. All of the adjustments were proportional, so the relative dimensions are good. However the proportion between each blade is, as you have demonstrated, only ball park at best. I took two markers to try and shrink the swords to relative size: the length of the tang and the blade width... I tried to balance these two out as best as I could. (For instance, It might be that if I made the tang the same length the blade was obviously too wide compared to the other swords. So I made the sword smaller to match the width with other swords.)

So the picture cannot be used as a fully accurate reference.

[blitzkrieg80]

Again the two handed grip has a very long tang. Without the support of the tang, a longer hilt would simply soon break or shatter upon repeated impact.

While this may be true, plenty of swords were made well before the Naue sword and similar innovation. Weak parts certainly didn't keep them from being built.

On the subject of long blades and cavarly- this certainly makes sense, esp. with a short hilt... Spatha anyone

So the picture cannot be used as a fully accurate reference.

So? citings on the internet or scanned images without publication will never be 'accurate' in authority anyways. it really doesn't matter how much the layman likes wikipedia or how suprisingly accurate some of the info is, academia exists for a reason, and even then, there is no 'truth' and humans are prone to error

[The Persian Cataphract]

To those who are interested in absolutely gigantic "Zweihänder"-style swords of Antiquity... Look no further than the late Sassanids. The findings in Aphrodisias in today's Turkey unveiled one of the most tremendous discoveries in historical military technology of all time: A gigantic, single-edged sword measuring over 1.8 metres in length, with an integrated hilt. They precisely confirmed attestations of Sassanian cavalry wielding swords as "large as a man", and depictions of "Kushano-Hephtalite" cavalry in cave paintings and bowls found in Afghanistan. I am not making this up. You read it correctly, a sword measuring six feet in length.

That, is crazy. No stirrups, yet some cavalry used ridiculously gigantic blades. Ever since the discoveries were found to correlate with each other, the image of late Sassanian chivalry and its armaments have undergone a serious change. It's a serious punch in the face of classicists who have for far too long suppressed the importance of Iranian chivalry in the western tradition. Slowly but safely, the image of "hordes of barbarian rabble" is being phased out in favour of "spear-head of equestrian warfare". And I am so liking it.

[Ibrahim]

if only the Savaran in ibfd had those...*fantasizes*

[keravnos]

Slowly but safely, the image of "hordes of barbarian rabble" is being phased out in favour of "spear-head of equestrian warfare". And I am so liking it.

Absolutely so.

Now, on the subject of long/very long swords, I don't think there has ever been a doubt that the swords were really that long.

Mauryans used long swords both for fighting, but also ceremonially, so as to denote authority. If an official would come along carrying a big-huge sword, you would know he was someone important. As Persian Cataphract noted, they would be used from the saddle, as a longer sword means longer reach.

Mauryans faded but the longsword tradition didn't fade with them. Sungas, the followup dynasty used them, and so did the Indogreeks who conquered their western holdings.

Case in point,
From western India, Saanchi stupah approx. about 150 BCE comes this frieze, said to depict an IndoGreek King, possibly Menandros,

and


The statue isn't lifesize, but the proportion of the sword to the King is, according to archaeological finds. That being the case, we are talking about a pretty long sword.

[russia almighty]

Kern, haven't they found iron swords in India from like 1000 B.C at lengths wouldn't be reached in the west till the La Tene period?


Though, I've seen some crazy weaponry from India, so advance metallurgy would have to be required.

[Ibrahim]

I've gathered (yet to be confirmed), that them Indian swords were extra wide-then again, the person was no expert.

[keravnos]

Kern, haven't they found iron swords in India from like 1000 B.C at lengths wouldn't be reached in the west till the La Tene period?


Though, I've seen some crazy weaponry from India, so advance metallurgy would have to be required.

Indeed, Metallurgy in India at that time was the most advanced in the world, especially where Iron was concerned.

[blitzkrieg80]

considering the Hittites around a somewhat similar timeline and their special place in the early age of iron usage, could we then assume that India was directly influenced by Indo-European culture in concern to iron-working? Or possibly the Scythic Era/Eurasian steppe in general? Or were the native peoples of the Indus valley that developed completely separate from any Aryan invaders or practicers of steppe lifeways?

[keravnos]

One of the reasons why the Aryan invaders of India conquered the Indus and Ganges plains was their use of Iron. Haomavarga Saka ancestors' and their own ancestors must have been one and the same, as they themselves drunk Haoma/Ephedra and glorify that in their Vedas.

[Elmetiacos]

At last the question gets answered! The longest blades are from Port Nidau in Switzerland. Reading the rest of the Swordforum thread, though, two-handed use is only one possibility; others posters suggest their use in executions, from horseback (hmm... too early for Celtic cavalry?) from chariots (hmm once again) or simply as great big swords to be used as ornaments or thrown into lakes as offerings. Perhaps most importantly, the possible two-handers all come from before the EB timeframe. That, incidentally would be before the Celts invented mail which makes two-hander use on the battlefield even less likely: unless you need to cut through heavy armour, discarding your shield is not going to be worth it.

To set the record straight, I never said that all Celtic swords were short and blunt, what I said was that during the La Tene period, there was a tendency for swords to get shorter and for more to be made with blunt ends. You start off, c.700BC with the classic Celtic Longsword, leaf shaped and long and you end up with little machete-like weapons. Doesn't that make you wonder how Celtic warfare was developing...?

Calling the British "sword masters" a fantasy unit is still valid, since no swords anything like the Port Nidau models have turned up in Britain or Ireland. The continental equivalent, if not fantasy, is still both conjecture and anachronistic even if real (much more so than the lorica segmentata everyone gets so annoyed about)

Thank you and goodnight.