[Omnirizon]

I'd have a problem such a strong statement as "the Spartans gave birth to the first martial art", since as you pointed out these are dark points in history, and there is evidence of even the Native Americans developing open-handed styles of personal combat.

I'm more concerned with Middle Ages era of martial arts. It is at this point that we have specific styles developed for warfare (not just personal fulfillment or sport) in both East and West. Yet while the east developed a consistent style for each weapon or even multiple styles for one weapon, sometimes depending only on how you wore it on your belt, the West had a much more general focus; so while the east have specific terms for each style related to a weapon, the West has the more general term "fencing". Western styles are limited to the schools they came from, and typically when the teacher of a school died his style died with him. Eastern styles are focused on the weapon itself, and many schools would teach the same style with some variation. We just didn't see this in the west.

So my original question: how should the learning of of something like Kenjutsu vs the italian Dardi school be represented in a game system?