Warrior Cultures

Location: Southern region of Mexico and northern region of Central America   

Major Battle: Cancuen, circa 800 A.D. Unknown invaders attacked the Maya trade centre Cancuen and massacred the royal family. The bloody battle represented a shift in Maya warfare, which was previously about sacrifice and conquest, to annihilation. Some historians believe the battle contributed to the mysterious downfall and disappearance of this powerful pre-Columbian warrior society.   

Who They Were: During the first millennium, while Europe was deep in the Dark Ages, the Maya civilization flourished, with the construction of vast cities and great achievements in art, architecture, astronomy and written language. The Maya also had a warrior culture, which evolved over time. Initially, the Maya fought in small groups for the purpose of capturing prisoners to be used as human sacrifices to the gods. The Maya's preferred form of sacrifice was to decapitate their victims. Later, the purpose of Maya warfare shifted to conquest, with one city-state fighting another for territory and power.

However, even as Maya wars became broader and more brutal, the capture and sacrifice of prisoners remained a key part of the culture. Some prisoners were forced to help build hieroglyphic staircases on temples, but once the job was done, they would be sacrificed, their bodies tied in bundles and thrown down the steps they had constructed.

When it came to weapons, the Maya were a stone-age culture and had no metal-working technology. Their arsenal included stone axes, wooden clubs, atlatls (dart-throwers), spears and lances with obsidian blades. They also used shields made of wood and hide and, for added protection, wore short vests or jackets made of quilted cotton.   

Between the eighth and nineth centuries, Maya society went into decline and many of the great cities were abandoned, due to reasons that are not entirely clear. Foreign invasion might have played a role, along with long-term drought, depletion of natural resources and other events. However, the Maya continued to thrive for centuries in some regions, particularly the Yucatan, until the Spanish assumed control.   

Did You Know:   
• Maya kings would look to the stars for guidance about when to go to war.   
• Populations of Maya exist today in parts of Mexico, Belize, Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador.   
 

Location: Scandinavia

Main Battle: The Battle of Maldon, England, 991. Off the coast of England, the Vikings, led by Olaf Tryggvasson, were forced to use land tactics and brutal hand-to-hand combat techniques to defeat a determined Saxon army. The king of England then bribed Olaf to keep his forces from attacking London. Olaf used the funds in his quest to become king and unite Norway's fragmented chiefdoms.

Who They Were: Dubbed the "Hell's Angels of the Middle Ages," the Vikings were seafaring warriors who emerged in eighth century Scandinavia and over the next 300 years pillaged and plundered their way through parts of Europe and North America. At the beginning of this era, there was no single Viking kingdom, but instead a collection of small, warring chiefdoms whose male citizens mastered their naval combat skills by fighting each other. Boats were so valuable to the Vikings that they sought to capture, rather than destroy, enemy vessels.

By the 9th century, the Vikings, driven in part by food shortages in Scandinavia, as well as the desire for new trade routes and sources of wealth, began launching raids on foreign shores. Armed with spears, axes, swords and shields, the Vikings became so feared that their victims would frequently give up without a fight and hand over whatever these brutal warriors demanded.

Did You Know?
• Contrary to popular myth, Viking helmets did not have horns. In fact, many Vikings had no helmets at all.
• The fiercest Vikings were known as berserkers. They howled, wore bear or wolf skins, bit their shields and worked themselves into a rage intended to frighten their enemies. During battle, berserkers could allegedly withstand enormous pain.
• When two Vikings had a dispute they could settle it with a duel called a holmgang, in which they stood on a small section of animal hide. If a person stepped off the hide, he lost. If he drew blood from his opponent, he was victorious.
 

Location: Germany

Major Battle: Battle of Teutoburg Forest, 9 A.D. The Romans, who were at the height of their power and had one of the world's best armies, suffered one of their biggest defeats at the hands of the Barbarians, Germanic tribes who specialized in guerilla warfare. The battle stands centuries later as the first, and perhaps most important, event in German unification.

Who They Were: During the first century, present-day Germany was dominated by small, semi-nomadic, warring tribes, who honed their fighting skills by battling each other. The Barbarians favoured hand-to-hand combat and surprise ambushes and fought without any rules. They had almost no armour or helmets and sometimes fought bare-chested or even naked. Because armour was almost non-existent, the Barbarians preferred long thrusting spears, rather than swords, to keep some distance between themselves and their enemies. They also fought with wooden clubs and used slings to propel rocks at their foes. Rocks were plentiful and useful to fighters who lacked a supply line to repair or replenish their weapons during a campaign.

The Barbarians' reputation for savagery was intensified by their belief that their gods required slow, painful human sacrifices. They reportedly slit the throats of some of their captives and filled bronze cauldrons with the blood. Some victims were skinned and their decapitated heads nailed to trees. Whether or not these stories were entirely true, they made the Barbarians seem more intimidating to their enemies.

Did You Know?
• A barritus was a Germanic war chant performed by warriors to get psyched up for battle. During the chant, warriors raised their shields in front of their faces to make the sound louder and scare their enemies.
 

Location: England

Main Battle: Agincourt, France, 1415. An army of heavily outnumbered English knights and archers, led by King Henry V, defeated the overconfident French. The English lost an estimated 200 men, while some 8,000 to 11,000 French troops perished. King Henry regained territory in France and was later immortalized in William Shakespeare's play Henry V.

Who They Were: English knights were an elite fighting force of the Middle Ages known for their code of chivalry. Preparation for knighthood began at age five or six when boys started training with wooden swords. By age 10, they had graduate to the real thing. Knights-in-training would often serve as pages or squires to other knights. Those selected for knighthood prepared for the elaborate ceremony by fasting for days and cutting their hair, which was seen as a way of humbling oneself before God. During the ceremony, the knight would kneel before the king, who would tap him with a sword - a gesture intended to symbolize the last blow the knight would ever receive without returning it. Knights also took a vow of chivalry centred around the ideals of courage, loyalty to the king, faith and humility.

Knights wore plated armour and fought with such weapons as lances, swords, axes, hammers and maces. The sword was considered the symbol of knighthood and nobility. Contrary to popular myth, the swords used by knights weren't heavy and awkward, but instead, light and agile. Knights held tournaments where they played war games to test their skills and keep themselves battle-ready. Although knights are often portrayed as fighting on horseback, in actual battles they often fought on foot or in the trenches.

Did You Know?
• A knight's armour weighed an average of 45 to 80 pounds and cost about $50,000 in today's dollars.
• Tassels attached to spears and lances were not only ceremonial, but also soaked up blood that would run down the blade to the handle and prevent it from getting sticky.
 

Location: Japan

Main Battle: Ganryu Island in southern Japan, 1612. Legendary swordsmen and archrivals Miyamoto Musashi and Sasaki Kojiro, both of whom were undefeated, faced off in a one-on-one duel. Musashi ultimately triumphed by outsmarting his opponent and later penned The Book of Five Rings, a guide to the art of fighting and winning that remains in print today.

Who They Were: Samurai were elite warriors who fought for Japan's ruling families and dominated Japanese society for some 700 years. The samurai's rise dates back to the period between the ninth and 12th centuries, when powerful land owners hired bands of warriors to protect their property. The significance of the samurai warrior continued to grow in the centuries that followed, a time when Japan consisted of a number of continually clashing independent regions.

Samurai wore armour made of tiny scales, iron or leather and fought with bows and arrows and guns; however, they were most famous for their sword skills. They followed a code of conduct known as Bushido, or "way of the warrior," that stressed bravery, honour, loyalty to one's master and stoicism. Samurai warriors went into battle expecting and accepting death. A samurai fighter who disgraced himself on the battlefield or faced capture by an enemy was expected to perform a suicide ritual called seppuku, in which he killed himself by slicing open his own abdomen.

By the early 1600s, Japan entered an era of relative peace and many samurai became bureaucrats and teachers. The samurai class was abolished by the late 19th century.

Did You Know?
• Samurai means "one who serves."
• New samurai swords were tested on convicted criminals and rated according to how many bodies they could slice through with a single swing. The rating - or body count - was then inscribed on each sword.
 

Location: Greece

Major Battle: Battle of Plataea, 479 B.C. The Spartans, whose entire society revolved around war, used brilliant tactics and battlefield discipline to defeat the Persians and avenge a devastating earlier defeat at Thermopylae. The battle marked the end of the Persian threat to Greece.

Who They Were: Sparta, an ancient Greek city-state, was all about war. Male citizens had one duty and goal in life - to fight and die for Sparta - while the women were born to breed more Spartan men who'd become soldiers. Sparta had no art, literature or architecture and little emphasis on exploration and commerce. Instead, the society was focused on developing its warriors. Sickly babies were abandoned and left to die, while healthy boys began military and athletic training at age 7, becoming wards of the state.

The brutal training programmes were intended to develop physical strength, military prowess, communal bonds, discipline and obedience. The boys wore no clothes and food was deliberately rationed so they were forced to steal more. Those who were discovered stealing were severely punished, not for stealing itself, but for getting caught. Soldiers lived together in barracks until age 30, even if they were married.
Spartans believed power came from the group, not the individual.

Armed with spears, pikes and shields, Spartan warriors fought in a rectangular, mass formation called a phalanx (derived from the Greek phalangos, for finger). Composed of tight lines of soldiers often eight deep, the phalanx was designed to push forward until the enemy line was broken, then maintain a solid front after opposing sides collided.

Did You Know?
• A popular dinner of Spartan warriors was melas zomos, or black soup, made from boiled pigs' blood, pork and vinegar.
• Some Spartans wore helmets with a horsehair crest, which served both a decorative and psychological purpose, making the soldier seem taller to his enemy.
• Spartans were able to focus on being warriors because they had slaves called helots, who farmed and took care of everyday tasks. The Spartans maintained control over the helots through fear tactics, including random executions.
 

Location: Malta

Major Battle: The Great Siege of Malta, 1565. The Knights of St. John, a group of 700 warrior monks, defended the Mediterranean island of Malta against a massive attack by 40,000 Ottoman Turks who intended to establish a strategic base there to attack Europe and wipe out Christianity.

Who They Were: The origins of the Knights of St. John date back to the 11th century, when they provided medical care for Christian travelers in Jerusalem. In addition to running hospitals and assisting the sick, the Knights later became a military organisation and fought during the Crusades. The warrior monks valued duty, piety and self-sacrifice. Starting in the early 1300s, the Knights established themselves on the island of Rhodes and remained there for some 200 years, until it was captured by the Turks. The Knights then relocated to the island of Malta, where they built fortresses for protection.

In 1565, the Ottoman Turks, who had made advances across Asia, Africa and the Middle East, were looking to expand their empire into continental Europe and needed to capture Malta to do so. Some 40,000 troops attacked the island and eventually gained a foothold. However, the Knights continued to fight back, using such incendiary weapons as "garandes," clay jars filled with inflammable liquid that would break and engulf an enemy in a bath of fire. They also used "trumps," hollowed-out tubes of wood or metal filled with inflammable liquid and attached to the ends of long poles. When lit, this device became a crude flamethrower. Another weapon of choice was a burning hoop, a hoop of flexible wood wrapped in cotton or rope and soaked in a mix of such substances as rum, saltpeter and gunpowder, then lit and thrown at enemies attempting to scale the walls of a fort.

Did You Know:
• During the Great Siege, the Turks cut off the heads of the Knights they captured, then nailed their bodies to crosses and floated them across the harbour. Enraged at this insult, the Knights beheaded their Turkish prisoners then stuffed the heads into cannons and fired them back at the Turks.
 

Location: South Africa

Major Battle: The Battle of Isandlwana, 1879. 20,000 Zulu warriors/herdsmen, armed with little more than spears and shields, defeated the army of the British Empire, the world's greatest fighting force at the time.

Background: The Zulus were a small, insignificant African tribe who had to constantly fight to defend their grazing lands. Eventually they were transformed into ruthless, aggressive warriors by the brilliant military leader Shaka Zulu.

Born around 1786, Shaka, the illegitimate son of a Zulu chief, was banished from his home and raised by the larger, warring Mthethwa tribe. As a teenager, he joined the Mthethwa army and soon earned a reputation as a ferocious fighter. After Shaka's Zulu chief father died around 1815, the chief of the Mthethwa sent Shaka home with 400 troops to conquer the Zulus. Shaka succeeded, took control of the Zulu army and went on to build it into a large, fearsome fighting force.

Shaka grouped young warriors from various regions into a single unit, which broke down regional alliances and created a team that would serve him above all else. During training, young men were forced to toughen up by fighting for food, stomping on thorns in bare feet and traveling distances of 50 miles in a single day. Zulu warriors were trained to be confrontational and engage in hand-to-hand combat.

Their weapons included the knobkerrie (a wooden skull crusher) and the stabbing spear and they used a "horns of the beast" strategy developed by Shaka and designed to encircle the enemy. They used cow-hide shields and believed that potions and blessings from shamans could make them invincible - and invisible - on the battlefield. By 1824, Shaka had conquered all of his neighboring tribes and grown his original small army to more than 40,000 skilled warriors.

However, in 1828, he was assassinated in a coup organized by his own half-brothers, who had grown tired of his ruthless regime. Just before dying, Shaka reportedly warned his killers that Zululand would "succumb to the white people that come from the seas." Decades later, the British, who wanted control of Zululand so they could exploit the diamond mines in the region, would face off with the Zulu at the Battle of Isandlwana. Underestimating their opponents, the British were massacred. However, the British recovered from the devastating defeat and later that year captured the Zulu capital and gained control of Zululand.

Did You Know:
• Before leaving the battlefield, Zulu warriors would strip their dead enemies' bodies, then slice open their abdomens because they believed this would free the spirits of the dead and prevent the Zulu from being haunted by their enemies.
• Zulu war regalia was designed to show courage and intimidate the enemy, but did little to protect the warrior. Each regiment wore similar types of feathers and furs, with junior groups opting for leopard skin and more senior groups favouring otter. Warriors who showed bravery in battle were awarded with beaded necklaces and brass armbands.
 

Location: Oahu

Major Battle: Battle of Nu'uanu, 1795. King Kamehameha assembled a massive army in order to unite the Hawaiian Islands under one rule after over a decade of brutal inter-tribal battles for domination.

Who They Were: Two centuries before the Aloha State joined the Union in 1959, the Hawaiian Islands were ruled by frequently warring tribal chieftains, or ali'i. Their warriors trained for battle and tested their courage and strength through activities such as spear catching, surfing and the dangerous sport of holua, which involved sledding/surfing down steep (and snow-less) mountains at average speeds of between 50 to 70 miles per hour. The chiefs and warriors practiced a combat system known as lua, a physical and spiritual discipline that incorporated punching, kicking, bone-breaking, wrestling and pressure-point attacks. In order to keep lua shrouded in secrecy, warriors trained at night and were forbidden from teaching it to people outside of a sanctioned group.

Hawaiian warriors used spears, daggers and shark-tooth weapons that were especially effective for cutting throats, poking out eyes, lacerating arteries or disemboweling a fallen enemy. War canoes, which could carry anywhere from 50 to 100 men, also played a key role in the battles across the islands. These vessels were often equipped with a stone tied to a rope that could be swung around and thrown at the hull of an enemy canoe in order to break it or entangle opponents.

In 1795, King Kamehameha, who had been battling other chiefs for control of the Hawaiian Islands for more than a decade, set sail from the Big Island of Hawaii with thousands of warriors, hundreds of war canoes and a supply of Europeans weapons, including cannons and muskets obtained through trade and attacks on foreign ships. The king's forces were victorious at Oahu, where they drove enemy troops over a massive cliff in the Nu'uanu Valley. The victory gave Kamehameha control of all the Hawaiian Islands except for Kauai and Niihau. By 1810, he secured these remaining two islands through diplomatic actions and Hawaii was considered a unified kingdom.

Did You Know:
• Defeated warriors were sometimes tattooed on the inner part of the eyelid so they would always be reminded of their defeat.
 

Location: Pacific theater of operations, World War II

Major Battle: Japanese prisoner-of-war camp, near Cabanatuan, Philippines, January 1945. The Alamo Scouts, an elite reconnaissance unit of the U.S. Sixth Army, infiltrated behind Japanese lines and provided critical intelligence to the U.S. Army Rangers, who later raided the camp. More than 500 Allied prisoners, some of whom had survived the infamous Bataan Death March of April 1942, were freed during the raid.

Who They Were: The Alamo Scouts were formed during World War II by General Walter Krueger of the U.S. Sixth Army in order to gather intelligence about enemy operations in the Pacific theater and develop new techniques to do battle against an extremely aggressive, unpredictable opponent in a hostile island jungle environment. The Scouts worked in small teams averaging six men. They integrated themselves into communities behind enemy lines for the purpose of obtaining information and local support that could be useful to future missions. They also rescued Allied soldiers from various prison camps.

Prior to the raid of the Cabanatuan camp in January 1945, the Scouts learned that the Japanese were murdering POWs at other camps in the region and had plans to do the same at Cabanatuan. Several scouts disguised themselves as local farmers and located an abandoned hut in the fields above the camp. From this vantage point, they were able to scope out the camp's layout and provide vital information for the upcoming raid.

Some 120 Rangers and Scouts, aided by Filipino guerrillas, successfully liberated the camp and freed more than 500 prisoners who had been living there in harsh conditions, some for several years. The Scouts were disbanded by the end of 1945.

During the war, the Scouts performed 106 known missions behind enemy lines without losing a single man. The raid at the Cabanatuan camp is still considered one of the greatest rescues in American military history and it remains a model operation for all U.S. special forces.

Did You Know:
• The Alamo Scouts were the predecessors to today's US Army Special Forces, or Green Berets.