The Sword that DISAPPEARED from History!

Greetings, I'm Shad and I love leaf blade swords. It's a bit unfortunate then that they kind of went out of fashion. I have not seen really any medieval period leaf shaped or bladed swords. In actual fact, they're more commonly found in pre-medieval times like the classic period and you see it on the Xiphos sword. So bronze age and period swords made out of bronze. That's where we see a lot of them. And the question is, why did they go out of favor or fashion? Because again, we don't see them really in the medieval period. And the reason why I find that odd is because they're actually really cool. There's some unique benefits that you get out of a leaf shaped blade that you don't get out of a sword that has straight edges. Now, the thing I'm holding here is like a zombie sword type thing. And I have complicated feelings about this specific one because there's things I love and things I hate about it. So it's too heavy yet it has a beautiful leaf blade shape. I've got a review on this one. You can check it out where I share my detailed thoughts on this strange thing. But now I want to talk about the specific, unique, awesome things about the leaf blade. You see, what you can already figure out is that the weight distribution is going to be a little different. That suddenly there's more weight up here, but not as much as you might assume. People can make the same mistake when they look at a Cognizant or Clooney style falchion where there is kind of a widening at the tip. They then think it must be really top heavy when actually, for these types of falchions specifically, they're around one to one point mil thick at the tip, the historical ones. They're a bit wider down at the base, but they have an aggressive distal taper. And so the fact that it gets wider on the flat is balanced out by how thin it is on its, you know, distal profile like this to make a very functional and nimble sword still. And this is the way that a leaf blade shape should be made. It's not to say there's ones that were not more top heavy, but you want them to be thinner at the tip with a proper distal taper to kind of balance out the fact that it gets wider here. Still, that means that it can get the same type of benefits that a falchion does by having more focused kind of weight at the tip. But there are other benefits that a leaf blade would get, kind of similar to what a falchion gets, and that is the surface area or contact on the edge when you strike any given target. The fact that a falchion usually has a pretty aggressive kind of curve right at the tip means that when you strike a target, less flat of the blade is actually having contact with the target, which means more of the force gets focused in on a smaller part or section of the blade, which focuses the power more, adding more kind of driving force and cutting ability. Well, leaf blades do that exact same thing. Because they're a more aggressive curve right here at the cutting end, again, less surface area of the blade is going to have contact with the target versus a blade that will stay completely straight and It can give similar cutting performance to a sword that has a really thick kind of tip, but it reduces weight in the middle, and so it's not necessarily a heavier sword as a result. It can be a lighter sword, and depending on the design, it can still have a very acute thrusting tip. Also, having a wider blade can give more structural integrity to reinforce the tip to avoid it rolling or getting damaged. So then, the question is this, if there are some really interesting unique benefits of a leaf blade, why do they stop using them? Why do they go out of fashion? There's a number of reasons, and they're all really speculation. One that I think has more validity than others, and I want to go through them with you, and also give credit to when we see awesome leaf blades, you know, appear on medieval style swords, and I guess it's quite appropriate that they do appear in fantasy. One of the most famous ones is actually Gandalf's sword, Glamdring in Lord of the Rings. Now, I don't think it's described as having a leaf blade in the books, but the movies show leaf blade. Same with sting, leaf blade as well. Why did leaf blades go out of fashion? It could have been fashion. Now, I'm not as convinced about this, because I think they look great, but people have their preferences, of course, and maybe they just started liking straight blades, because they have this feel of strength, and structure, and things, and there are some xiphos leaf blades that do look a little bit on the flimsy side. So, look, yes, it could have been fashion. In the medieval period, they did sometimes emulate Greek styles, and fashions, and architecture, and things as well, depending on So, that one's a maybe. It could have been the length of blades. So, leaf blades appear far more on small swords. By smaller swords, I mean, because a small sword is more of a specific type of sword. We see leaf blades on short swords, okay? Much smaller swords, and it could be that when swords started to get longer or bigger, right, this structure design wasn't as sound or strong on longer swords that were made out of both bronze and iron. Now, remember, when swords were being transitioned from bronze to iron, iron isn't super strong. It's complicated, that's what it is. Iron versus a really well-made bronze sword, actually, there's comparable strengths, because if you work hard on the edge on a bronze sword, it can actually be quite impressive. The reason why swords transitioned from bronze to iron wasn't necessarily because of material advantage, even though there are advantages, it wasn't necessarily. The biggest reason is that iron is so much more plentiful than copper and zinc. That's what bronze is made out of, by the way, copper and zinc alloy. So, iron being far more plentiful, you can make a lot of tools out of them that were just as strong as bronze ones were, if not stronger, because as soon as you start smelting iron, you're inadvertently going to be adding in certain amounts of carbon, no matter what, especially if it's a bloomery furnace, which is from a carbon fuel source fire. And so, especially when you start making low-grade steel by accident, then you're going to have much stronger swords. But still, unless you really know the correct percentages and how to get the furnace really hot, you're not going to be making decent steel in the early period. But swords were getting bigger, and because they were more iron than steel, their strength would have been about comparable. An interesting thing about a leaf blade, right, is they're thinner in the midsection. And so, with both bronze and iron, it could be, I haven't again, it's speculation, but it could be that the material just wasn't strong enough to support longer swords of this shape when they were made out of weaker materials. And that could have been the catalyst reason as to why they went out of practice, maybe, and no one picked it up again when material technology improved and they were able to make stronger swords out of steel. It could be a combination of reasons, because that could be a small reason that, you know, we're trying to make bigger swords out of this, they're just not structurally strong, so we're going to make straight edges all the way down, structurally stronger for longer swords, and then, you know, and they continue on that way. The other thing is, though, is that with bronze, you can do something quite interesting when you make them. You can cast them. So when you make a bronze sword, you can melt down the bronze, make an actual sand mold, and pour it into this shape, and you then grind out, polish, and you have the finished sword. That was a common way that bronze swords were made. You can't do that with iron, okay? Oh, well, let me caveat this. You can, but not with the technology of the early medieval period. They, uh, bloomery furnaces cannot liquefy the iron to the point where you can just pour it out into a mold. You need something called a blast furnace, and then from a blast furnace, you can make something called cast iron, which is different to wrought iron. Wrought iron is iron with a load, very low to no carbon content, then you have steel, and cast iron is actually iron with a very high carbon content, higher than what the standard carbon percentage of steel has, and it's usually quite brittle, but you can make useful things out of it, and you can pour it into molds. That's why it's called cast iron, because you're casting the iron into a mold. Technology limitations there, and the result would be a sword made out of cast iron, not steel, and it would snap really easily. And so, another problem. So, when people try and show, especially in movies and things, I think it's in Conan, it's also in Game of Thrones, where they, they have the molten metal pouring into a mold, a sword mold, right? It's fancy, it looks amazing, it's not how you make steel swords. Suddenly, you need to forge the sword, hammer it into the shape that you want when you're working with iron, and getting this shape out of a forged sword is, by its nature, going to be more difficult. It, it just, the, the, it's more involved to hammer out a straight shape versus one that has more sophisticated curved edges. You can do it, but it increases the work, and so, if they're thinking, well, look, the, uh, the actual mechanical advantage of the cutting ability and stuff, they, they didn't really care too much about it. They maybe didn't think about it, or they just didn't think there was a big advantage out of it to warrant the extra work to make swords of this shape. So, they went with straight, because it's not only the forging difficulty, because you would have to flatten out the top more than the center, and, and you, then you'd have to be really precise about the distal taper to, to make, because you want it thinner up here to warrant it being flared out here, but then you want to be structurally strong and everything, so more work, right? But then, you'd have additional grinding work. It's much easier to grind, like, a convex curve on a grinding wheel than an inverse one. Grinding work on something like a falchion, which has a flared tip, not that much more difficult than a straight sword, and especially, you're only dealing with one edge. Now, if you're dealing with two edges to get the leaf shape, and you have complex kind of inwards curves and outwards curves, a lot more work, and so it could actually be the double kind of thing. Both the extra work in forging, and the extra work in grinding, and in the early medieval period, they're dealing with low carbon steel or just wrought iron swords, uh, well, even just in the Roman period as well, by the way. All those factors combined could have made leaf blades very impractical and unfeasible to make. Another interesting point could be that medieval people might not have been too aware of swords like this. I'm not sure how many museums they had showing bronze age Xiphos swords, right, because the Romans, right, well, it's funny, there's one type of gladius that has a slight kind of, it's not really a leaf blade, but at the tip, there's kind of flared points at the tip. Um, but still, by, you know, the heyday of the Roman period, when they're gladiuses and the longer version sparthes, right, the Xiphos and leaf blade swords, they're almost like, what, 900 years forgotten or out of fashion at that point, and so it could be that they just didn't really think about it or they didn't have a point of reference to see, oh, look, swords could be made, and they stuck with what was around, uh, and what they knew, and it was just forgotten. So I actually think it's probably a combination of all those factors that, uh, you know, they probably didn't have a point of reference to see, hey, swords could be made that way, they weren't pouring them into mould, so, you know, uh, in terms of difficulties, it was just much easier to forge straight edges on a sword, grinding work and finishing just easier, and, uh, the advantages, pros, and cons, like, even though there's advantages, it doesn't mean it's a universally better blade shape. There's a lot of blade profiles that are more distinctive, that have really significant pros and cons just around them. Maybe they were just happy with all the different blade profiles, they had to, I don't know, think too much about a leaf blade, even though I still think leaf blades are really cool, it doesn't mean they're universally better, like I said, they're just very, very cool, and there are certain awesome things about them. So when material technology did advance to the point where perhaps you could support this shape much, much easier, yeah, all those reasons played into, um, why they weren't around. But what's interesting, as soon as you have material that does advance enough that you could support a longer leaf blade shape, well, those are such gorgeous swords, and I've given credit to Glamdring, I've even, I've even got a leaf blade in one of my own fantasies I'm working on, because I think they're so awesome. Good spring steel, good quality, would absolutely support the leaf blade shape. Do you like it? What do you think about the leaf blade shape? Like I said, one of my favorites. We can see it more in fantasy adaptations, because that's where it can be justified, and you can give a reason why it was brought in, but do you, are there any reasons that you think that the leaf blades went out of fashion design, and they just weren't around in the medieval period? But hang on, have I just not seen examples? Maybe there is the occasional odd leaf blade sword. Okay, I think you might have better luck finding them on knives, but swords, right? If you have a reference, I would love to see it, because that's something like, awesome, you know? Uh, share them in the comments if you know of any. Thank you for watching, and if you want to see, like, the review of this strange, weird thing, right here. It's a very odd sword. Find out why it's odd. It's a, look, it's a fun, interesting video. I hope to see you there. I'll let, I'll let that just sit there for a bit.