It’s because people want to imagine themselves as a hero, engaging in one on one combat. A knight or samurai.
They don’t want to imagine themselves as a barely trained serf in a block with 30 other people holding 3m long pikes trying not to shit yourself as arrows start to rain down.
Shit, even in one on one martial combat, give me range and I’ll take it. Knife < Sword < Spear < Bow
It was only folded so many times because the ore on Honshu is pretty low grade and had to have the carbon worked out of it more than European steel.
Wait, you mean it’s not because it gives me the ability to part steel plate in a single slash?
Obligatory “It wasn’t folded 1000 times, it was folded 11 times giving it more than a thousand folds.” Fun fact, the older traditional Japanese forges were basically assembled from mud found right there on the rivers where they found their low grade iron, and this process was kept alive by spiritualism and tradition conservatives, so it’s honestly a miracle they assembled anything long and sharp at all. Most of the iron in Japan is considered low grade Pyrite at only 46% iron, while other places in the world had access to Magnetite with up to 72% iron before any refining.
Long stick > any other melee weapon
the bow and arrow is just a logical extension of mankind’s desire to poke each other at ever longer range.
rock->spear->bow and arrow->cannon->handheld cannon->auto-repeating handheld cannon->howitzer->ICBM->Predator drone
->relativistic kill vehicle.
You see it coming, omae wa mou shindeiru.
Only thing more scary would be triggering a vacuum decay event. But these tend to backfire quite spectacularly.
This just in- being able to hurt your enemy from farther away than they can hurt you conveys a large tactical advantage. More at 11.
I think a shield and sword together are better than a spear https://youtu.be/uLLv8E2pWdk?si=vXiyUTTnSbIq-vC8
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Even for all who had swords, their primary assault weapon was usually some form of pointy murder stick, usually handheld and horse-propelled
The sword is the pistol of ancient times whereas the sprear is the assault rifle.
