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Egyptian Hieroglyphics The first record of a formal martial art was found in the hieroglyphics of ancient Egypt, and is reckoned to date around 3,500BC. What is interesting is that these pictures depict techniques which are still used today, and are very similar to those seen in Jiu Jitsu and Karate. The martial arts spread slowly out of Africa and flourished in ancient Greece. Here the scientific culture of the Greeks meant that the arts went through some revolutionary changes. The Pakuran Fighters Towards the end of this era a group of very elite fighters called Pakurans, considered to be the pinnacle of fighting ability, fought in gladiatorial contests. Although there is little documentation of the development of their art in writing , there are a large number of paintings of the packurans engaging in combat. They pictures show hand and foot positions of great similarity to WT, though it is impossible to tell whether the dynamic control was in any way similar. India From Greece the fighting arts spread into India, where their must have been much influence from the yoga styles providing protagonists with a new level of control of their bodies and minds. Little again is known about this period and no documentation of these arts is known about. Many wrestling and boxing arts survive today, but it is not known how similar they are to the arts of 2000 years before. What is known is that from India the arts spread to china where they were developed by the warrior castes extensively. From Combat to Philosophy During this time they were also adopted by the monks in many Taoist temples as a form of physical meditation to contrast their extreme programmes of sitting meditation. As in Europe, monasteries were great centres of learning so for the first time the arts were being developed not by fighters, but by the great thinkers, which were masters of medicine, science and meditation. Although the concept of truth, represented by keeping their fighting systems realistic, was important, the motivation for these monks was discovering the true nature of their limits. 1500 Years of Intellectual Development The intellectual elite developed these arts for the next 1,500 years. The most prestigious and longest lasting centre of martial arts was the Shaolin temple, which is still famous today. What is known to a lesser degree is that the temple was burned down in the seventeenth century by the Qing dynasty. There were only five survivors who were the temples elders. Two of these disappeared into obscurity, one went back eventually to the Shaolin temple, and two formed different styles. The first style was an unarmed form of combat developed by the nun Ng Mui, which was named after her first student, a young girl by the name of Wing Tsun. The other survivor focused more on weapons combat. A few generations later these styles merged to form the ancestor of the Wing Tsun (WT) system today. Yip Man The last 150 years of Wing Tsun development is well documented, with each generation producing one exceptional martial artist. The first public teaching of Wing Tsun was by Grandmaster Yip Man in the 1930's. Like the generations before, he was the one exceptional practitioner in his generation. Yip Man is the father of almost all Wing Tsun in the world today. Leung Ting His greatest student, Grandmaster Leung Ting, is head of the Wing Tsun system today. His organisation, with the help of Grandmaster Kernspect, has become the largest professional martial art organisation in the world. The WT system has now incorporated the massive scientific knowledge of the modern world without losing its deep traditional base, evolving into the most effective art for the modern situation.
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