# Korean Martial Arts Family Tree



## Instructor (Jan 30, 2013)

Korean Martial Arts Family Tree:

http://www.allmartialarts.com/KIXCO/History/history/map.htm

I stumbled on this today.  I can't speak towards it's veracity but it's interesting.

What do you all think?


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## Tony Dismukes (Jan 30, 2013)

So they're dealing with the fact that current Korean martial arts are derived from Japanese arts by claiming that the Japanese arts all originally came from Korea centuries ago?  I'm not sure that gives me a lot of confidence in the rest of the chart.


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## IcemanSK (Apr 10, 2013)

Many of the dates for the TKD Kwan are wrong. Chung Do Kwan, for example, began in 1944. I'm mildly interested in where the person came up with the dates used.


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## arnisador (Apr 10, 2013)

Tony Dismukes said:


> So they're dealing with the fact that current Korean martial arts are derived from Japanese arts by claiming that the Japanese arts all originally came from Korea centuries ago?



Yeah, I'm calling nonsense on that.


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## DennisBreene (Apr 10, 2013)

arnisador said:


> Yeah, I'm calling nonsense on that.



Historically, I suspect there was a lot of "cross pollination" as modern martial artists travelled to train in various styles. I mean 20th century martial artists when I refer to "modern".  Hwang Ki is credited with origination of Tang Soo Do, but he studied Japanese and Chinese styles before discovering the writings of Hwarang Do. These writings were several hundred years old but I would like to see more source crediting for a chart like that.  I suspect that the nature of transmission of the arts tends to muddy the picture significantly. On the other hand the book Guns, Germs and Steel by Jarod Diamond, has some pretty interesting evidence that Japan was settled by populations from Korea so long ago that virtually all traces of linguistic connections have been lost.  With these migrations, ancient arts may be more mixed than we suspect.


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## arnisador (Apr 10, 2013)

As with the languages (if that hypothesis is correct), I'd have to wonder if any influence would still be noticeable. I don't believe there was significant Korean-->Japanese transmission (for lack of evidence).


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## DennisBreene (Apr 10, 2013)

arnisador said:


> As with the languages (if that hypothesis is correct), I'd have to wonder if any influence would still be noticeable. I don't believe there was significant Korean-->Japanese transmission (for lack of evidence).



You are probably right. The hypothesis is that some Korean populations migrated to Japan and then died out on the Korean peninsula.  In the process the linguistic tie to the Korean language was severed.  Linguistically Japanese is almost totally isolated from other asian languages.  This must have happened quite long ago. It seems likely that most other cultural identifiers diverged as well.


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## zack (Apr 11, 2013)

Wow, this is new.

Appart from the intonnations, the only thing that connect Japan and Korea is the Chinese.


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## Instructor (Apr 11, 2013)

Actually the thread is pretty old.  I believe the entire thing is pretty much fiction at this point.  It's a shame, it would be nice to have something like this we could rely upon as fact.


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## DennisBreene (Apr 11, 2013)

Instructor said:


> Actually the thread is pretty old.  I believe the entire thing is pretty much fiction at this point.  It's a shame, it would be nice to have something like this we could rely upon as fact.



I doubt fact and oral tradition will ever completely coincide. As an aside, I highly recommend Diamond's book to those who are interested in the evolution of human societies. It is rich with information and well presented.


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## oftheherd1 (Apr 11, 2013)

Tony Dismukes said:


> So they're dealing with the fact that current Korean martial arts are derived from Japanese arts by claiming that the Japanese arts all originally came from Korea centuries ago? I'm not sure that gives me a lot of confidence in the rest of the chart.



I like what was written at the bottom of the chart and explanation:

_If you are a member of the martial art community, and have participated in the degradation of the quality of your own martial art identity or the quality of the martial art community through the use of multiple martial art names and the mixing of techniques, or through actions such as the creation of false titles, ranks, and certifications, or *through the use of fabricated historical accounts and claims,* it is deeply and sincerely hoped that you come to understand the emptiness of these actions, and the pride that can be felt by following the traditional way of the martial arts, and maintianing and working for the benifit of your honorable martial art identity and the integrity of the future generations of practitioners of choice your one true art spirit. 

_I would guess the writer of that would know.





DennisBreene said:


> Historically, I suspect there was a lot of "cross pollination" as modern martial artists travelled to train in various styles. I mean 20th century martial artists when I refer to "modern". Hwang Ki is credited with origination of Tang Soo Do, but he studied Japanese and Chinese styles before discovering the writings of Hwarang Do. These writings were several hundred years old but I would like to see more source crediting for a chart like that. I suspect that the nature of transmission of the arts tends to muddy the picture significantly. On the other hand the book Guns, Germs and Steel by Jarod Diamond, has some pretty interesting evidence that Japan was settled by populations from Korea so long ago that virtually all traces of linguistic connections have been lost. With these migrations, ancient arts may be more mixed than we suspect.



I haven't read that book, but my reading has indicated that Mongolian, Japanese, Korean, Turkish, and Finnish are all Alto-Uraic languages. I have also read that during the Three Kingdoms period, when the Silla defeated the PekChe, many Pek Che fled to Japan, to Kyushu IIRC. Since Korea and Japan are linked linguistically, and Korea is a peninsula pointed at Japan, it is easy to believe Japan, except for the Ainu, was populated by immigration from Korea.



arnisador said:


> As with the languages (if that hypothesis is correct), I'd have to wonder if any influence would still be noticeable. I don't believe there was significant Korean-->Japanese transmission (for lack of evidence).



Again, from my past readings, the evidence is in the parental lineage of the languages. Both certainly are inflected.  I would agree it must have been quite some time back in history for the two languages to have separated as much as they have.  But that is subject to question as well, considering how much English has changed from its roots.



DennisBreene said:


> You are probably right. The hypothesis is that some Korean populations migrated to Japan and then died out on the Korean peninsula. In the process the linguistic tie to the Korean language was severed. Linguistically Japanese is almost totally isolated from other asian languages. This must have happened quite long ago. It seems likely that most other cultural identifiers diverged as well.



I think that has long since been proven wrong. Japanese is a Mongolian/Alto-Uraic language.



zack said:


> Wow, this is new.
> 
> Appart from the intonnations, the only thing that connect Japan and Korea is the Chinese.



They are not connected to Chinese other than by borrow-words and adoption of the chinese writing system. Chinese is a distributive language, Korean and Japanese are inflected. Chinese has tone as an integral part of the word, each of which is one syllable long (they may combine words for what would be one word to us). Korean and Japanese do not have word tone, although I remember hearing one Korean word, a borrow-word, that seemed to have carried over the tone. Unfortunately, I don't recall what word that was.

FWIW, Korean has more borrow-words that Japanese. Not surprising; Korea is attached to China by common borders, and was a vassel state under China for much of Korea's recorded history.


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## DennisBreene (Apr 11, 2013)

oftheherd1 said:


> I like what was written at the bottom of the chart and explanation:
> 
> _If you are a member of the martial art community, and have participated in the degradation of the quality of your own martial art identity or the quality of the martial art community through the use of multiple martial art names and the mixing of techniques, or through actions such as the creation of false titles, ranks, and certifications, or *through the use of fabricated historical accounts and claims,* it is deeply and sincerely hoped that you come to understand the emptiness of these actions, and the pride that can be felt by following the traditional way of the martial arts, and maintianing and working for the benifit of your honorable martial art identity and the integrity of the future generations of practitioners of choice your one true art spirit.
> 
> ...



I'll admit that I am linguitically impaired. According to my source (Diamond), what is remarkable about Japanese is the lack of common words with any asian language. I would have to reread the text to bone up on the details. As this book explores the ancient migrations through a variety of techniques, including crop migration and linguistic analysis. The chapter on Japan is in his latest edition and is new.  I gather that Japan's uniqueness made it more challenging to determine the probable origins of the population.


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## oftheherd1 (Apr 11, 2013)

DennisBreene said:


> I'll admit that I am linguitically impaired. According to my source (Diamond), what is remarkable about Japanese is the lack of common words with any asian language. I would have to reread the text to bone up on the details. As this book explores the ancient migrations through a variety of techniques, including crop migration and linguistic analysis. The chapter on Japan is in his latest edition and is new. I gather that Japan's uniqueness made it more challenging to determine the probable origins of the population.



I am certainly not a linguistics expert either.  But it has long been an area of interest to me.  I started reading on it back in the early 60ks.  IIRC Mario Pei was the first I read to say some were beginning to consider the possibility that Japanese and Finnish just might have some connection.  It was that vague.  Since I have read different places that the link is extablished.  Turkey is probably no less surprising as an alto-uraic language.

I haven't read Diamond, and my only knowledge of him is a only from checking a wiki article since you mentioned him.  It might be an interesting read.  I can't really criticise him without reading his whole book, but a couple of things in the wiki article seem like he is not taking some things into consideration that would be important.  He also doesn't seem too up on how the Spaniards defeated the Inca.  But there is really nothing in the wiki article about linguistics, so he could be correct in much of what he states about that in his book.

There are obviously differences between Japanese and Korean; big ones in many respects.  I don't know enough about alto-uraic and mongolian, or Korean and Japanese, to comment on that.  But most people would never see a relationship between the indian (the country) languages and european languages.  But they do share a common ancestor; indo-european.  So it isn't that much of a stretch to say Japanese and Korean have a common ancestor, however tenuous their relationship might be.


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## DennisBreene (Apr 11, 2013)

I think you would find Diamond an interesting read. Probably not the definitive source on the migration of human populations but his multidisciplinary approach seems pretty comprehensive and his conclusions are reasonable and conservative.  It essentially marks the trail of mankind out of Africa, into the Middle East then Europe and Asia and the Americas.  The population of Japan is just a small part of a much larger journey. I highly recommend it to those who are interested in mankinds origins and the vast differances in societies across the globe.


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## arnisador (Apr 11, 2013)

oftheherd1 said:


> I haven't read that book, but my reading has indicated that Mongolian, Japanese, Korean, Turkish, and Finnish are all Alto-Uraic languages.
> [...]
> I think that has long since been proven wrong. Japanese is a Mongolian/Alto-Uraic language.



My understanding is that Japanese is still not classified in a widely accepted way, though the Turkic connection is a common theory.


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## oftheherd1 (Apr 12, 2013)

arnisador said:


> My understanding is that Japanese is still not classified in a widely accepted way, though the Turkic connection is a common theory.



Perhaps we have been reading different sourced.  However it does seem there is much disagreement between scholars on the ancestry of some languages.  I am not sufficiently knowlegeable of ancient or proposed ancient languates, to make any worthwhile comparisons on my own.  But I do find reading on that interesting.


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