the competitors. In this respect, these matches were a point of pride for the
villages themselves. The warriors were representatives of the village or so-
ciety, and when intersociety or intervillage competitions were held, each
competitor fought for the society’s as well as for his own honor. This type
of nonlethal outlet for warrior instincts allowed for a cathartic release of
energy that helped to avoid all-out warfare.
Stickfighting also gave warriors a foundation for armed combat.
Learning how to strike, block, thrust, and move with the weapon is criti-
cal for any aspect of armed combat. Learning how to perform these basic
moves with a stick can be a foundation for building the movements needed
for different weapons. In the case of the Zulu, for example, two sticks were
used. One was grasped in the middle and used to block and parry the op-
ponent’s blows, while the other stick was used to deliver offensive blows.
This practice served to develop skills similar to those needed for the com-
bination of shield and offensive weapon typical of their warfare. For
African military societies, this practice provided a method for training war-
riors that was both nonlethal and inexpensive, and the latter is a relevant
consideration. Iron weapons in most cases were expensive and hard to pro-
duce. Moreover, in Africa iron weapons, like the smiths who produced
them, were often thought to have supernatural properties. Therefore, their
use entailed supernatural as well as practical sanctions.
African societies developed systems of unarmed combat as well. Per-
haps the best-known type of unarmed combat was wrestling. From the oral
accounts that survive, from Egyptian etchings and paintings of Sudanese
Nuba wrestlers, and from the few remaining native wrestling traditions still
practiced, African wrestling systems, beyond serving as a means of combat,
fulfilled both a ceremonial and a sporting function. In most recorded cases,
primarily from the Sudan and Nigeria, wrestling was associated with the
agricultural cycle (e.g., harvest, yam-growing season) or the individual life
cycle, as with the southern Nigerian Ibo, among whom wrestling was as-
sociated with male initiation.
Many African wrestling systems seem to have resembled modern
freestyle methods, which is to say that the competitors were allowed to
throw and to seize any part of the body, including the legs. The well-
understood, though unwritten, rules of Nigerian traditional wrestling may
be taken as representative: (1) opponents are matched by age; (2) contestants
cannot use charms or drugs; (3) the genitals cannot be seized; (4) striking is
prohibited; (5) attacks cannot take place before a signal to begin; (6) the
match ends when one contestant is prone on the ground (Ojeme 1989, 251).
There are exceptions, however; the Senegalese style called laambmore
closely resembles Greco-Roman than modern freestyle wrestling. Neverthe-
less, in sporting and ceremonial wrestling, as in modern amateur wrestling,
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