I've heard a theory that older forms of muay thai may have been influenced by Alexnder the Great's pankratidors.
Muay Thai has several moves in common with pankration. But, what I see as the most compelling evidence is muay thai moves with names such as "The Fall of Hera"(Hera is a goddess in the Greek panthion). If anyone has any evidence supporting or debunking this theory, or just an opinion I'd love to hear about it.

Hera is a snake in the Rama Kien. So there goes your greek theory out of the window.

I still stand on the side that Muay Boran, is an invention created by the Tai as the immigrated down towards modern day Thailand. The only influence it may have had may be some sort of ancient kung fu, but I still persist that Muay Boran is still a pure and not influenced by any art.

Muay Thai however, is much like me. A "Luk Kreung", half breed. Half Thai, Half British.

-Taison out

Can't say for the rest of the Asian arts, but Muay Boran has very little to none foreign influence in its development.

When it was exposed to British Quennsbury boxing however, it became the art we know today as Muay Thai.

-Taison out

Stone Carver

There is no strong evidence to suggest what the connection between Alexander the Great/Pankration and Eastern Martial arts were. There is not a great deal of academic study in this area.

If there were, it may be possible to establish something more substantive.

The best thing to do is to research the subject as best you can by reading books on Classical Studies and Ancient History. With all due respect to the members here (including myself of course), all we could likely do is speculate, like the rest of the world is doing.

I really like the look of Pankration, and as a amateur scholar of Classical Studies, it has a certain appeal to me in terms of its philosophy "Strong Mind in a Strong Body" etc..., but really, what we consider Pankration today was reconstructed, in part, from other contemporary martial arts (e.g. Judo, Wrestling) and the limited Ancient material (such statues, pictures, paintings etc) that were available.

Perhaps there are common techniques in Modern Pankration and Muay Thai because Modern Pankration included such techniques in its reconstruction? Who knows??

There's also the fact that what works, works. There are only so many permutations of the human body, and so many ways you can bend a joint. At some point you've got to figure that an idea that started up in one place, lets say kicking people with your shin instead of your instep, started up in another place too, without the need for one group to tell the other.

The example I guess I'm thinking of is that every culture I've ever heard of had some sort of indigenous form of wrestling. When you look at cornish wrestling and judo, or mongolian wrestling and greco roman, you can't help but see the overlap. Is it because of cross pollination or convergant evolution?

Good posts, PW and Viator. With the lack of any substansive record regarding the development of MOST martial arts, worrying about influences and lineage is an academic exercise with little practical benefit.

If the training is good, that is all that matters nowadays.

I don't really buy it.
Human Weapons is a TV show and they try to make every episode as interesting as they can. I think that someone may have had that theory but it is not something that is a fact.

They said that Modern Pankration was revived after they found some ancient artwork that showed some of the techniques used in ancient Pankration. For me that sounded a bit like people learning martial arts by reading a book.
(Sorry) It did look pretty cool, but it looked to me no different than most MMA styles here in the US.

Alexander the great never made it past India. So i don't know how much influence he had on the far east.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/40/MacedonEmpire.jpg

Meliam

These greeks seem to be trying to take credit for everything nowadays, only the other day was i told that Haggis wasn't Scottish at all! apparently it was an ancient greek sausage, which was described in a book by the philosopher Homer