Question about ancient swords

[Watchman]

I've read the machaira family evolved from the khopesh-style "sickle swords" (or rather "sword-axes") of the Late Bronze Age and was pretty popular around the Middle East as well. If that theory is correct then it most likely arrived in Iberia through the Greek trading colonies, although imports through Phoenician merchants are another possibility (weren't quite a few of the Greek colonies around the western Med originally Phoenician ones anyway...?).

That aside, I've read the Iberian version usually called falcata differed from the East-Med original design mainly in having more in the way of serviceable thrusting tip, whereas the machaira/kopis type as well as their distant descendant the kukri are nigh exclusively "choppers".

The kukri most likely ended up in Nepal through Hellenic influences (ie. Bactria and its Indo-Hellenic successors) - recall that for example Hellenic influences on Buddhist religious art were considerable, and startlingly "Greek"-looking details survive on the older Buddhist buildings in Japan. Although as the machaira-type "chopper" was AFAIK also quite popular in Persia it may have travelled there equally well later or earlier too.

[MeinPanzer]

I've read the machaira family evolved from the khopesh-style "sickle swords" (or rather "sword-axes") of the Late Bronze Age and was pretty popular around the Middle East as well. If that theory is correct then it most likely arrived in Iberia through the Greek trading colonies, although imports through Phoenician merchants are another possibility (weren't quite a few of the Greek colonies around the western Med originally Phoenician ones anyway...?).

That aside, I've read the Iberian version usually called falcata differed from the East-Med original design mainly in having more in the way of serviceable thrusting tip, whereas the machaira/kopis type as well as their distant descendant the kukri are nigh exclusively "choppers".

What source did you find this in? I've never heard anything about falcatae being more serviceable for thrusting than machairai/kopeis.

The Hispanic Army Osprey, for what it's worth (very little), says that the two schools of thought on the origin of the falcata exist: that it developed from a type of late-Halstatt knife from Central Europe or that it was copied directly from the Greeks in the 6th C. BC. The latter seems kind of lazy, because it still does not explain the original source of the kopis.

The kukri most likely ended up in Nepal through Hellenic influences (ie. Bactria and its Indo-Hellenic successors) - recall that for example Hellenic influences on Buddhist religious art were considerable, and startlingly "Greek"-looking details survive on the older Buddhist buildings in Japan. Although as the machaira-type "chopper" was AFAIK also quite popular in Persia it may have travelled there equally well later or earlier too.

Yeah, there are a number of aspects of modern Central Asian culture which are thought to have been heavily influenced by the Greeks. The Greeks were the first to influence artists to depict Buddha in human form, and the first statues to show Buddha in the form we are now so familiar with, dating to the Hellenistic period, are strikingly Hellenic. The chitrali, the felt cap worn by many in Afghanistan, is also thought to have been derived from the kausia of the Macedonians. It would not surprise me at all if such a weapon was derived from the influence of the kopis (whether through Persians or Macedonians).