Introduction
The term martial art is commonly used as though it describes a single category of human activity. Brazilian jiu-jitsu, boxing, military Combatives, civilian self-defense, judo, mixed martial arts, and even competitive shooting are consequently discussed as different expressions of essentially the same endeavor: learning how to fight. They certainly share techniques, training methods, and historical influences, but treating them as equivalent obscures a more important distinction. They do not exist to solve the same problem.
A competitive fighter is preparing to defeat another willing competitor. A civilian studying self-defense is preparing for the possibility of criminal violence. A police officer seeks to control violent individuals while operating within legal and professional constraints. A soldier is preparing to function as a member of an armed organization engaged in combat against another armed organization. A practitioner of a modern martial way may train primarily for competition, physical development, discipline, recreation, or character. These activities share a common ancestry, but they have diverged because they are organized around fundamentally different purposes.
The central argument of this paper is that martial practices can only be understood by first examining the problems they evolved to solve. To investigate those problems, the method employed throughout this paper is one of consilience. Rather than relying upon a single discipline, the argument draws upon evolutionary biology, ethology, anthropology, military history, and practical military experience, asking whether each independently reveals the same underlying patterns in the evolution of violence and the development of the martial arts. Fighting itself did not appear fully formed in human beings, nor did all forms of fighting arise simultaneously. Rather, the history of violence is one of successive evolutionary innovations, each creating new behavioral problems and new forms of adaptation. The oldest was the predator-prey relationship. Later came competition within the social hierarchy among members of the same species. Finally, in a comparatively small number of highly social species, coalitionary competition emerged as groups cooperated in violent conflict against rival groups (Darwin, 1859; Tinbergen, 1963; Wrangham, 2019; Boehm, 1999). From that final development emerged warrior culture, and from warrior culture emerged the warrior arts.
The distinction is more than historical. These ancient behavioral systems remain active in human beings today. Criminal violence still resembles the predator-prey relationship. Bar fights, duels, challenge matches, and combat sports remain expressions of hierarchical competition. Warfare remains fundamentally coalitionary. Modern martial practices, whether consciously or not, continue to organize themselves around one or more of these ancient behavioral problems (Buss, 2016; Sapolsky, 2017; Wrangham, 2019).
Understanding this evolutionary progression provides a framework for understanding why modern martial practices differ so profoundly despite their common ancestry. It also provides a framework for understanding why military Combatives cannot simply adopt the culture of civilian martial arts. The military’s purpose is different. It is not trying to produce better competitors, nor even merely better individual fighters. Its purpose is to contribute to the development of effective members of a fighting coalition.
The questions explored in this paper did not first arise for me in a university. It began as a young Marine Corps 0311 infantryman trying to understand how best to prepare for war. Over the following four decades, as a Ranger, combat veteran, director of the Army Combatives Program, and teacher at West Point, that practical problem gradually became an evolutionary one. Why did these methods work? Why did some programs consistently succeed while others failed? This paper represents my attempt to answer those questions through the combined perspectives of evolutionary biology, anthropology, military history, and four decades of studying, teaching, and applying these ideas in military organizations.
The argument therefore begins, not with martial arts, but with the evolution of violence itself.
The broader argument of this paper extends beyond the martial arts themselves. Biological evolution produced ancient motivational systems that solved recurring adaptive problems throughout the history of life. Human culture did not replace those systems. It repeatedly recruited and organized them to solve increasingly complex social problems. The history of the martial arts is one expression of this larger process. Understanding their evolution therefore requires understanding not only how biology shaped human behavior, but also how culture learned to direct that behavior toward new purposes.
Behavior Comes Before Cognition
Understanding the evolution of fighting requires adopting a particular perspective on the relationship between behavior and cognition. Human beings naturally explain behavior by appealing to conscious thought. We ask why an individual acted, and we expect an answer involving beliefs, intentions, desires, or decisions. While such explanations are often useful, they describe only one level of analysis. Evolutionary explanations ask a different question. Rather than asking what an organism believes, they ask why a particular pattern of behavior exists at all.
The distinction is important because behavior is far older than cognition. Natural selection does not require organisms to understand why a behavior is advantageous. It requires only that organisms possessing heritable behavioral tendencies consistently leave more descendants than organisms possessing alternative tendencies. Over evolutionary time, successful patterns of behavior become increasingly common. The capacity to understand, explain, justify, or consciously reflect upon those behaviors evolves much later (Darwin, 1859/2009; Maynard Smith, 1982; Tinbergen, 1963).
This illustrates the principle of consilience. Evolutionary biology, comparative psychology, neuroscience, anthropology, and history all examine human beings from different perspectives, yet each reveals continuity with the rest of the living world. Human beings are not exempt from evolution. We are among its products. The extraordinary sophistication of the human brain rests upon behavioral architectures whose origins extend hundreds of millions, and in some cases more than a billion, years into the past (Darwin, 1859/2009).
The earliest examples predate nervous systems altogether. Single-celled organisms detect chemical gradients, move toward nutrients, avoid harmful environments, pursue other cells, and defend themselves against predation. They solve problems fundamental to survival despite possessing neither brains nor thoughts in any recognizable sense. The evolution of nervous systems did not create these behavioral problems. It provided increasingly sophisticated mechanisms for solving them (Alberts et al., 2022; Maynard Smith, 1982).
As nervous systems became larger and more complex, organisms acquired greater capacities for perception, learning, memory, anticipation, and behavioral flexibility. Yet evolution rarely discarded successful behavioral solutions. Instead, it preserved them while elaborating the biological machinery through which they could be expressed. Ancient behavioral systems remained. The nervous system became progressively more capable of deploying them under increasingly complex conditions (Tinbergen, 1963; Maynard Smith, 1982; Sapolsky, 2017).
Even relatively simple animals illustrate this principle. A cricket possesses a nervous system consisting of a small brain connected to a ventral nerve cord and a series of ganglia. Nevertheless, it courts mates, competes with rivals, avoids predators, communicates through species-specific signals, and modifies its behavior according to experience. These behaviors are not the product of abstract reasoning. A cricket does not understand why it behaves as it does. It simply behaves. Its behaviors are products of evolution.
Human beings represent the most elaborate expression of this same process. Our greatly expanded cerebral cortex allows us to imagine hypothetical futures, construct languages, develop cultures, invent technologies, and consciously examine our own behavior (Deacon, 1997; Sapolsky, 2017). These capacities dramatically increase the sophistication with which we pursue our objectives.
They do not create the objectives themselves.
The motivational systems directing much of human behavior are evolutionarily far older than the cognitive machinery that now serves them. Our larger brains did not replace ancient behavioral systems. They made them vastly more flexible, allowing the same fundamental motivations to be pursued through an extraordinary range of behaviors unimaginable in simpler organisms.
Human beings therefore face a persistent temptation to mistake explanation for origin. Because we can explain our behavior, we often assume our explanations are the source of that behavior. Evolution suggests the opposite. Our explanations are among the newest products of evolution. The behavioral systems they describe are among its oldest.
The argument that follows adopts this perspective throughout. It does not seek to reduce human behavior to biology. Rather, it proceeds from the observation that evolution builds upon successful behavioral systems instead of replacing them. To understand why different forms of fighting exist, and why different martial traditions evolved to solve different problems, we must first understand the evolution of the behavioral systems they were developed to serve.
The First Fighting Problem: Predator and Prey
The oldest behavioral system examined in this paper is also one of the oldest relationships in the history of life itself: predator and prey.
Indeed, its origins almost certainly predate nervous systems altogether. Long before the evolution of brains, muscles, or even multicellular animals, single-celled organisms were already solving the same fundamental problem. Some evolved mechanisms for detecting, pursuing, engulfing, and digesting other cells. Others evolved mechanisms for detecting danger, avoiding contact, escaping, or resisting engulfment. The biological problem is therefore more than a billion years old, making it one of the oldest continuous behavioral patterns in the history of life (Alberts et al., 2022; Maynard Smith, 1982).
The evolution of nervous systems did not create the predator-prey relationship. It simply allowed organisms to solve it with increasing sophistication.
As animals became larger and more complex, predators and prey coevolved through an evolutionary arms race. Predators evolved improved sensory systems, greater speed, stealth, weapons, and increasingly sophisticated methods of detecting and capturing prey. Prey evolved corresponding improvements in vigilance, camouflage, defensive structures, escape behavior, alarm signaling, and, when escape became impossible, defensive aggression. Every improvement in one produced selective pressure for improvement in the other (Darwin, 1859/2009; Maynard Smith, 1982).
The defining characteristic of predator-prey interactions is that the objectives of the participants are fundamentally asymmetric.
The predator seeks to exploit the prey. The prey seeks only to survive. There is no mutually recognized contest, no competition for social position, and no expectation of fairness. Surprise, deception, ambush, overwhelming force, numerical superiority, and the exploitation of weakness are all advantageous because the objective is not to determine who is the better fighter. It is simply to eat or avoid being eaten.
These ancient behavioral systems remain active in human beings today. Much criminal violence retains the structure of the predator-prey relationship. The armed robber does not ordinarily seek a fair contest with his victim. He prefers surprise, intimidation, superior numbers, or the display of overwhelming force. A rapist seeks an isolated victim rather than the strongest available opponent. A burglar enters an empty house whenever possible. Even organized criminal violence frequently depends upon ambush, deception, or overwhelming advantage rather than open competition (Buss, 2016; Wrangham, 2019).
The victim’s objective is equally ancient. He seeks to detect the danger early, avoid the encounter if possible, escape if he can, and, only when escape is no longer possible, fight in defense of himself or those under his protection.
Viewed through this evolutionary framework, civilian self-defense systems exist to solve the predator-prey problem.
Properly understood, self-defense is not primarily preparation for competition with other members of one’s own social group. It is preparation for predatory violence. Situational awareness, avoidance, de-escalation, escape, intelligent positioning, and the appropriate use of force are therefore often more important than demonstrating superior fighting ability. The objective is not victory in a contest. It is survival.
Predator-prey interactions therefore produced the oldest behavioral systems associated with violence: detection, pursuit, concealment, ambush, escape, defensive aggression, and the intelligent exploitation of advantage. These behavioral systems have remained recognizable for well over a billion years because they continue to solve the same fundamental adaptive problem (Darwin, 1859/2009; Maynard Smith, 1982; Tinbergen, 1963).
They do not, however, produce social hierarchy.
The lion does not become socially superior to the gazelle. The hawk does not establish rank over the mouse. One organism simply attempts to exploit another.
A fundamentally different evolutionary problem emerged when members of the same species began competing with one another for resources. Fighting was no longer merely a means of exploiting another organism. It became a means of determining relative position within the social hierarchy.
It is from that problem that the next great behavioral system, and ultimately the roots of combat sports, honor, and the warrior tradition, would emerge.
The Second Fighting Problem: Social Hierarchy
The emergence of predator-prey interactions did not eliminate conflict. It solved only one biological problem: how one organism exploits another. A second problem emerged when members of the same species began competing with one another for resources.
Unlike predator and prey, members of the same species often require many of the same things. Food, territory, shelter, mates, and access to reproductive opportunities are finite. Individuals therefore compete, not because one intends to consume the other, but because both cannot always possess the same resource simultaneously. Fighting acquired a new function. It became a means of determining relative position within the social hierarchy (Darwin, 1859/2009; Maynard Smith, 1982; Tinbergen, 1963).
This behavioral system is extraordinarily widespread. It appears in animals that do not form enduring fighting coalitions and in many that do. Male crickets compete for territories from which they call to females. Male deer clash during the breeding season for access to mates. Elephant seals battle for breeding beaches. Walruses compete for favorable stretches of shoreline. Hippopotamus bulls defend sections of river occupied by females. Across an enormous diversity of species, the details differ, but the underlying biological problem remains recognizable: individuals compete for position within a social hierarchy because that position influences access to resources and reproductive success (Darwin, 1859/2009; Tinbergen, 1963; Buss, 2016).
One of the clearest examples is provided by the American lobster. This example became widely known through the work of psychologist Jordan B. Peterson, who used it to illustrate the deep evolutionary roots of social hierarchies. The underlying biological observations, however, derive from decades of neuroethological research on crustacean behavior (Doernberg et al., 2001; Huber & Kravitz, 1995; Peterson, 2018).
Imagine two male lobsters that have been raised in complete isolation from other lobsters. Neither has ever observed another lobster. Neither has had an opportunity to learn how lobsters behave. Yet when they are placed together near a desirable shelter, a remarkably organized sequence unfolds (Doernberg et al., 2001; Huber & Kravitz, 1995).
They do not immediately attempt to injure one another.
Each first attempts to intimidate the other. They raise their bodies, spread their claws, and make themselves appear as large and formidable as possible. If one male is obviously larger, the smaller may simply retreat. No fight occurs. The relationship between the two animals has nevertheless been resolved. Their relative positions within the social hierarchy have been established (Huber & Kravitz, 1995; Karavanich & Atema, 1998; Livingstone et al., 1980).
If neither yields, the contest escalates.
The two lobsters seize one another by the claws and engage in what is essentially a wrestling match. Each attempts to push, twist, and overturn the other. If one succeeds in flipping his opponent onto his back, the defeated lobster ordinarily retreats. Again, the contest ends without serious injury. The hierarchy has been established through a limited physical contest (Huber & Kravitz, 1995).
Only if these earlier forms of conflict fail does the encounter escalate into unrestricted fighting (Huber & Kravitz, 1995).
The progression is revealing because every stage provides an opportunity to avoid the costs of serious combat. A lobster that wins a violent contest but loses a claw may immediately lose both the shelter and his newly acquired position to the next healthy male that arrives. Winning matters, but remaining capable of winning the next contest matters as well. Natural selection therefore favors assessment, intimidation, ritualized escalation, wrestling, opportunities for withdrawal, and only finally unrestricted violence. The objective is not simply to defeat another individual. It is to establish relative position within the social hierarchy while minimizing unnecessary injury (Huber & Kravitz, 1995; Maynard Smith, 1982).
Only after understanding the behavioral sequence do we ask the obvious question.
Why are they competing over the shelter?
The answer is reproduction. The shelter itself has no evolutionary significance. What matters is that controlling it increases reproductive success. Female lobsters seek protected shelters in which to molt, and mating occurs shortly after the female sheds her shell. Males controlling the better shelters therefore enjoy greater reproductive success because females preferentially seek out those protected locations during this vulnerable period. The males do not understand this relationship. They need not. Behavior came before cognition. The behavioral system evolved because individuals possessing these behavioral tendencies left more descendants than those who did not (Atema & Cobb, 1980; Karnofsky et al., 1989).
The continuity with human behavior is difficult to ignore.
Two young men confronting one another in a bar often follow a remarkably similar sequence. They assess one another. They attempt to appear larger and more confident. They posture. They exchange threats. They invade one another’s personal space. They shove. They may wrestle. Only if neither yields does the confrontation commonly escalate into serious violence. The sequence differs in its cultural expression, but not in its underlying logic. The objective is to establish relative position within the social hierarchy while avoiding unnecessary costs whenever possible (Buss, 2016; Daly & Wilson, 1988).
Human beings possess nervous systems incomparably more sophisticated than those of lobsters. Our larger brains have not replaced this ancient behavioral system. They have greatly expanded the ways in which it can be expressed. Human societies contain countless overlapping social hierarchies. Individuals may compete through athletic ability, military achievement, political influence, artistic accomplishment, scientific discovery, wealth, entrepreneurship, or any number of culturally recognized forms of excellence (Buss, 2016; Henrich & Gil-White, 2001).
Not all hierarchies contribute equally to reproductive success. Some translate more readily than others into access to resources, long-term stability, and reproductive success. A young man may devote thousands of hours to becoming the highest-ranked competitor in an online game, driven by the same ancient motivation to improve his position within a social hierarchy, yet that particular hierarchy may confer little advantage in attracting a mate. By contrast, success in business, military leadership, athletic achievement, or other culturally valued pursuits may be more readily converted into resources and family formation. Human cognition has multiplied the number of arenas in which status can be pursued. It has not changed the underlying motivational system (Buss, 2016; von Rueden et al., 2011).
The continuity extends below behavior itself. Comparative neuroscience has shown that ancient neuromodulatory systems involved in regulating aggressive behavior and social status in crustaceans have homologous counterparts that continue to regulate social competition in vertebrates, including humans. Evolution did not discard successful biological machinery as nervous systems became more sophisticated. It preserved it, modified it, and incorporated it into increasingly complex brains (Edwards & Kravitz, 1997; Kravitz, 2000; Sapolsky, 2017).
Competition for position within the social hierarchy therefore represents one of the oldest and most persistent behavioral systems in the animal kingdom. It long predates humanity and has been preserved through hundreds of millions of years of evolution because it continues to solve the same biological problem (Darwin, 1859/2009; Maynard Smith, 1982; Tinbergen, 1963).
For many species, the story ends there.
For a comparatively small number, however, another evolutionary innovation transformed the nature of violence once again. A strong rival ceased to be merely a competitor. Under certain conditions, he became an ally. From that development emerged the coalition, and with it an entirely new set of adaptive problems.
The Third Fighting Problem: Coalitionary Competition
Competition for position within the social hierarchy solved an important evolutionary problem. It allowed members of the same species to compete over resources, mates, and social position while minimizing the costs of repeated conflict. For many species, that was sufficient. A comparatively small number of highly social species, however, confronted an entirely new problem. How can individuals cooperate in violent competition against other groups? This question represents one of the great behavioral innovations in evolutionary history because it fundamentally changed the nature of violence (Darwin, 1859/2009; Boehm, 1999; Wrangham, 2019).
For species whose interactions consist primarily of individual competition, another capable male is principally a rival. His success comes at the expense of your own position within the social hierarchy. Coalition-forming species confront a more complicated reality. The individual capable of defeating you in a contest within your own group may also be indispensable when confronting another group. His strength no longer represents only a threat to your own position; it also increases the probability that your coalition will survive and prevail. Evolution therefore faced a new challenge. It had to preserve the ancient behavioral systems governing competition within the social hierarchy while simultaneously producing new behavioral systems that made cooperation among competitors possible (Tooby & Cosmides, 1988; Boehm, 1999).
The distinction can be observed in a variety of highly social species. Wolves illustrate one form of coalitionary life. Living in family groups, they cooperate in hunting, territorial defense, and the care of offspring. Although social hierarchies exist within packs, the success of individual wolves depends not merely upon their own abilities but upon the effectiveness of the pack as a whole (Mech, 1999). Chimpanzees provide perhaps the clearest illustration because their social lives reveal both behavioral systems operating simultaneously. Within their own communities, males compete continuously for social position, forming alliances, competing for mating opportunities, and engaging in political maneuvering. Yet these same males also cooperate in territorial patrols. When they encounter isolated members of neighboring communities under favorable circumstances, they launch coordinated attacks that cannot be understood solely in terms of competition within the social hierarchy (Goodall, 1986; Wrangham & Peterson, 1996; Wrangham, 2019).
Coalitionary competition therefore does not replace competition within the social hierarchy. It builds upon it. Within the coalition, individuals continue to compete for position, influence, and reproductive opportunities. Between coalitions, however, violence serves an entirely different purpose. The objective is no longer to determine who occupies the higher position within a shared social hierarchy, but to defeat another coalition. The same individual may therefore be both rival and indispensable ally depending entirely upon the context. Evolution therefore did not eliminate hierarchical competition. It subordinated it to the larger problem of coalition survival whenever conflict between groups became the greater selective pressure.
Many of the behavioral solutions that evolved during the ancient predator-prey relationship reappear at this higher level of biological organization. Coalitions benefit from surprise, deception, reconnaissance, concealment, ambush, and the concentration of overwhelming force against isolated opponents. These are not new behavioral inventions. They are ancient predator-prey solutions employed by a new kind of organism: the coalition itself. Evolution did not discard successful behavioral systems as new adaptive problems emerged. It preserved them, modified them, and employed them in increasingly complex forms of organization.
The emergence of coalitionary competition therefore transformed the adaptive landscape. A successful coalition required more than physically capable individuals. It required individuals who could cooperate despite competing with one another, coordinate their actions under conditions of danger, trust one another with their lives, and reliably place the immediate demands of the coalition above momentary individual advantage when circumstances required it. Biology could produce the capacity for these behaviors, but it could not specify the particular forms they would take in different societies.
The solution to that problem was cultural rather than biological. Every successful warrior society developed mechanisms for directing ancient competition for social position toward behaviors that increased the effectiveness of the coalition. The emergence of warrior culture therefore represents not another form of fighting, but an evolutionary solution to the problem created by coalitionary competition (Boehm, 1999; Boyd & Richerson, 1985; Henrich, 2016).
The Emergence of Warrior Culture
Coalitionary competition created a problem that biology alone could not solve. Evolution could produce behavioral tendencies favoring cooperation among members of the same group, just as it had produced behavioral systems governing competition within the social hierarchy. It could not, however, determine the particular behaviors that would make one human coalition more successful than another. Those solutions depended upon geography, technology, political organization, and the character of the enemy. The result was a new evolutionary partnership between biology and culture. Warrior culture did not eliminate biological competition within the social hierarchy. It redirected that competition toward behaviors that increased the effectiveness of the coalition (Boyd & Richerson, 1985; Boehm, 1999; Henrich, 2016).
Every human society inherited the same ancient motivational systems. Individuals continued to seek position within the social hierarchy because social position remained associated with resources, influence, and reproductive opportunity. Warrior societies did not eliminate these motivations. Instead, they redirected them. Rather than rewarding individuals simply for defeating one another, successful warrior cultures increasingly rewarded behaviors that made the coalition itself more effective in conflict with rival coalitions (Boehm, 1999; Henrich, 2016).
This transformation is visible throughout history. Although separated by geography, language, religion, and political institutions, successful warrior societies repeatedly converged upon remarkably similar ideals. Courage was admired because coalitions require individuals willing to face danger. Loyalty was honored because coordinated action depends upon mutual trust. Discipline allowed large groups to act as a single organism rather than a collection of competing individuals. Reliability ensured that every member of the group could predict the behavior of the others under conditions of uncertainty. Self-control, endurance, honesty, and the willingness to place the welfare of the group above immediate personal advantage likewise increased the effectiveness of the coalition. These qualities persisted because societies that successfully rewarded them generally outperformed societies that did not (du Picq, 1880/1947; Keegan, 1976; Boehm, 1999).
Honor emerges naturally from this process. It is often discussed as an abstract moral concept, but from an evolutionary perspective it serves a practical social function. Every society possesses mechanisms by which status is earned, distributed, and recognized. In warrior cultures, honor became one of those mechanisms. It identified the behaviors the coalition wished to encourage and attached social status to their demonstration. A courageous warrior earned admiration. A reliable warrior earned trust. A coward, a liar, or one who abandoned his companions lost status because those behaviors weakened the coalition upon which everyone’s survival depended (Boehm, 1999).
This perspective also explains why warrior cultures devote such attention to rituals, traditions, songs, stories, decorations, public ceremonies, and the remembrance of heroic deeds. These practices are not merely symbolic. They are methods by which a society teaches each generation which behaviors earn respect and which invite shame. They transform ancient competition for social position into a force that strengthens rather than weakens the coalition (Boyd & Richerson, 1985; Henrich, 2016).
Friendship takes on a deeper meaning within this framework. Among members of a warrior culture, friendship is more than affection or shared interests. It is a relationship built upon mutual confidence that another individual will fulfill his obligations when danger appears. Friends compete with one another, but they also trust one another. The coalition depends upon both. In this sense, friendship becomes one of the principal mechanisms through which cooperation is stabilized among individuals who remain, in other contexts, competitors for position within the social hierarchy.
The emergence of warrior culture therefore represents one of humanity’s most significant cultural achievements. It did not replace the ancient behavioral systems inherited through evolution. It organized them. Competition for social position remained as powerful as ever, but the criteria by which status was earned increasingly reflected the needs of the coalition. Individuals sought prestige not merely by demonstrating their superiority over one another, but by becoming the kind of companions every warrior wished to have standing beside him in battle.
Only after this cultural transformation do organized systems of martial training become fully understandable. The warrior arts did not arise simply to teach individuals how to fight. They arose to prepare individuals to become effective members of a fighting coalition. To understand their subsequent evolution, we must first examine the relationship between the warrior and the art by which he was trained.
The Emergence of the Warrior Arts
The emergence of warrior culture created a new requirement. If societies wished to reward courage, discipline, loyalty, and competence, they also required systematic methods for developing those qualities. Fighting ability could no longer depend solely upon individual experience or natural talent. It had to be cultivated deliberately, transmitted from one generation to the next, and adapted as the methods of warfare changed. From this requirement emerged the warrior arts (Boehm, 1999; Henrich, 2016).
A warrior art is more than a collection of fighting techniques. Its purpose is not merely to teach an individual how to win a fight. It exists to prepare individuals to fight effectively as members of a coalition. Technical proficiency is only one component of that preparation. The warrior must also learn to function within a larger organization, to coordinate his actions with others, to operate under discipline, to master the weapons and equipment of his society, and to continue performing under conditions of danger, fatigue, uncertainty, and fear. The warrior art therefore develops both the technical skills of combat and the behavioral characteristics required by the coalition.
This distinction is important because fighting ability and warrior ability are not synonymous. An exceptional duelist is not necessarily an effective soldier, just as an accomplished marksman is not necessarily an effective infantryman. Individual excellence remains valuable, but it is always subordinate to the effectiveness of the coalition. The warrior art therefore judges techniques according to a different standard than individual fighting systems. The central question is not simply, “Does this help me defeat another individual?” but rather, “Does this make the coalition more effective in accomplishing its mission?”
Throughout history, every warrior society developed systems of training that reflected this purpose. Although the techniques differed enormously according to available technology and the character of war, the underlying problem remained remarkably consistent. Greek hoplites trained to fight within the phalanx. Roman legionaries mastered weapons, formations, engineering, and discipline. Medieval knights learned horsemanship, weapons, and the obligations of their social class. Steppe horsemen developed extraordinary riding and archery skills. Each system reflected the military requirements of its own society, yet all shared a common purpose: preparing individuals to function as effective members of a fighting coalition (du Picq, 1880/1947; Keegan, 1976).
Because the purpose of these systems was coalitionary success, they necessarily included far more than methods of individual combat. Physical conditioning, weapons proficiency, tactical movement, discipline, leadership, communication, logistics, fieldcraft, and the cultivation of courage all belonged to the warrior art because each contributed directly to battlefield effectiveness. Hand-to-hand combat occupied an important place, but it remained one component within a much larger system whose purpose was victory in war rather than victory in individual contests (du Picq, 1880/1947; Keegan, 1976).
The increasing complexity of civilization gradually altered the environment in which these warrior arts existed. As societies grew larger and more specialized, opportunities for attaining position within the social hierarchy multiplied. In simpler societies, martial ability was often among the principal determinants of a man’s social standing because warfare remained central to the survival of the community. Civilization created an ever-expanding number of alternative hierarchies. Men could now compete through commerce, politics, craftsmanship, scholarship, religion, administration, science, engineering, athletics, and countless other specialized pursuits. Military excellence remained one path to status, but it was no longer the only one, nor in many societies even the most important (Henrich, 2016).
This diversification inevitably influenced martial training. As fewer practitioners expected to fight as members of military formations, the reasons for studying the martial arts became increasingly varied. Some sought individual fighting ability for duels or personal protection. Others pursued physical conditioning, competition, recreation, social identity, or personal development. The techniques often remained recognizable, but the problems they were intended to solve gradually changed. A system originally developed to prepare warriors for coalitionary warfare could, over time, become a system for producing successful competitors, capable individual fighters, or disciplined citizens (Henrich, 2016).
This distinction is central to the argument of this paper. The history of the martial arts is not simply the history of techniques. It is the history of changing adaptive problems. As societies became more complex and the conditions of warfare changed, the martial arts adapted to those changes, preserving many of their older methods while serving increasingly different purposes.
Among the many societies in which this process occurred, Japan preserves perhaps the clearest historical record. The continuity of the Japanese warrior class through periods of warfare, political consolidation, and the prolonged peace of the Tokugawa period allows us to observe how a warrior art gradually evolved as the battlefield conditions that had originally produced it became increasingly distant. No modern scholar examined this transformation more systematically than Donn F. Draeger, whose work sought to explain how the Japanese martial traditions changed as the adaptive problems they addressed changed (Draeger, 1973–1975; Friday, 1997).
The Japanese experience is important not because it is unique, but because it makes visible a process that has occurred repeatedly throughout history. Warrior arts emerge to solve the problem of coalitionary warfare. As societies change and military service becomes less central to attaining position within the social hierarchy, the arts themselves naturally diversify, specializing in individual fighting, competition, physical development, recreation, or character while retaining elements of their common ancestry. Japan therefore provides an ideal case study through which to examine both Donn Draeger’s influential classification and the broader evolutionary process it illustrates (Draeger, 1973–1975; Bennett, 2015; Friday, 1997).
Japan as a Case Study: Donn F. Draeger and the Evolution of the Warrior Arts
Having developed an evolutionary framework for understanding fighting, we may now ask whether history provides an example in which these processes can be observed over time. Few civilizations offer a clearer case than Japan. The Japanese warrior class persisted for centuries through periods of active warfare, political consolidation, and prolonged peace, allowing the purposes of martial training to evolve while many of the outward forms remained recognizable. As a result, Japan preserved an unusually detailed record of the transformation of the warrior arts (Friday, 1997; Bennett, 2015).
Among modern scholars, few contributed more to the study of this transformation than Donn F. Draeger. A United States Marine, accomplished martial artist, and one of the founders of the modern academic study of martial traditions, what he termed hoplology, Draeger devoted much of his life to documenting the classical fighting systems of Japan and other cultures. Unlike many popular writers of his era, he approached martial traditions historically rather than romantically, emphasizing their development within the societies that produced them (Draeger, 1973–1975; Bennett, 2015).
Draeger presented his most influential interpretation in his three-volume series Martial Arts and Ways of Japan. There he proposed a classification that distinguished between classical bujutsu, classical budō, and their modern descendants. Although subsequent scholarship has questioned the rigidity of some of these categories and shown that the historical development of Japanese martial traditions was more complex than any simple taxonomy can capture, Draeger’s central insight remains remarkably valuable. Martial systems retain the imprint of the problems they were originally created to solve, even after those problems have changed (Draeger, 1973–1975; Friday, 1997; Bennett, 2015).
To understand Draeger's classification, it is helpful to begin with the language itself. The Japanese word jutsu (術) is commonly translated as "art," "method," or "technique." It denotes practical skill directed toward accomplishing a specific task. Dō (道), by contrast, literally means "the way" or "the path." It is the Japanese reading of the same Chinese character pronounced dao (or tao in older transliterations), a concept long associated with a way of life or disciplined path of cultivation. Rather than emphasizing technical proficiency alone, dō refers to a lifelong discipline through which technical practice becomes a vehicle for personal development. The distinction should not be exaggerated, classical schools often pursued both practical skill and character, while modern schools frequently retain highly practical methods, but the terms describe different centers of gravity (Draeger, 1973–1975; Friday, 1997; Bennett, 2015).
For Draeger, classical bujutsu referred to the practical fighting systems developed by the warrior class for use under the conditions of warfare. Their purpose was straightforward: to prepare warriors to survive and prevail in armed conflict. Technique was judged by its contribution to success on the battlefield, and instruction encompassed far more than individual combat. Weapons, tactics, discipline, and the practical demands of military service formed an integrated whole because they all served the same coalitionary purpose (Draeger, 1973–1975).
As Japan entered the long peace of the Tokugawa period, however, the relationship between the warrior and the battlefield gradually changed. The samurai class remained, but opportunities to employ battlefield skills largely disappeared. Martial traditions continued to be practiced, preserved, and refined, yet the practical conditions that had originally shaped them became increasingly distant. It was under these circumstances that Draeger identified the emergence of classical budō, systems in which martial training increasingly served ethical, educational, and cultural purposes in addition to military ones (Draeger, 1973–1975; Bennett, 2015).
The process continued into the modern era. New disciplines such as judo, kendo, kyudo, and eventually many twentieth-century martial arts developed in societies where warfare was no longer the primary context of practice. Competition, physical education, character development, recreation, and sport assumed increasingly prominent roles. The arts survived, but many now existed to solve different problems than those faced by the warriors from whom they descended (Bennett, 2015; Friday, 1997).
Viewed through the evolutionary framework developed in this paper, Draeger’s historical observations become especially illuminating. The transition he described was not simply a change in techniques or teaching methods. It reflected a gradual change in the adaptive problem that martial training was expected to solve. Warrior arts developed to prepare individuals for coalitionary warfare. As warfare became less central to daily life, elements of those systems naturally specialized. Some emphasized individual fighting ability. Others emphasized physical education, moral development, or competitive sport. The common ancestry remained, but the purposes diverged.
This distinction is not unique to Japan. Similar processes can be observed whenever prolonged peace, technological change, or social transformation separates martial traditions from the battlefield environment that originally produced them. Japan is significant because its historical continuity allows that transformation to be seen with exceptional clarity. Draeger’s work therefore serves not as the foundation of the argument presented here, but as an independent historical case study that strongly corroborates it.
The remaining task is to examine how this same process has continued in the modern world. Contemporary combat sports, civilian self-defense systems, military combatives, and developmental martial arts all descend, directly or indirectly, from the warrior arts. They preserve many of the same techniques, yet they increasingly solve different problems. Understanding those differences requires a new classification based not upon historical lineage, but upon function.
In Part II, I develop a functional classification of the martial arts, explaining why warrior arts, combat sports, civilian self-defense systems, developmental martial arts, and modern military combatives evolved to solve different adaptive problems, and why understanding those differences is essential to building an effective military combatives program.
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You had me at "Japan as a Case Study..."
Outstanding Matt!