8 Deadly Fighting Styles You've Probably Never Heard Of

It would be lovely if we could all just hold hands and skip off into the sunset but, unfortunately, the reality is that humans have been developing new and better ways to inflict pain on one another since before we were even humans. Those us us who grew up on a steady diet of martial arts films and Wednesday evening Judo classes will be familiar with the big martial arts - karate, kung fu and the like - but with thousands of disciplines out there, there's a whole world of deadly hand-to-hand combat that's just waiting to be discovered. Before the advent of mechanised warfare, most cultures had devised their own systems for attack, defence and general badassery. Even nowadays, in the age of automated weapons, military personnel and civilians alike are still taught the art of pummelling a man to the ground with their bare hands. Some of these techniques are amazingly visually impressive, some of them are less pretty but even more deadly, and some of them are just plain brutal. Whichever discipline takes your fancy, you'd just better hope you're never on the receiving end.