>>212591733Kicking, punching, wrestling, throws, and controls/holds are universal to all martial arts across the world.
You're saying people who engaged in physical combat for 5000 years didn't know how to kick?
No, what happens are several things:
1. People take and popularize what traits make individual martial arts unique, and discard what makes them the same. Over time this leads to a flanderized version of the martial art in public consciousness.
2. Martial arts evolve in tandem with weapons. A lot of the outdated martial arts you see are outdated because of the change in weapons. Some martial arts might seem stupid hand to hand, but maybe they were designed for unarmed peasants to fight against armored soldiers with weapons or vice versa. Unarmed kung fu is more like an exercise to train for flexibility, endurance, stamina etc so that you could eventually integrated it into sword/spear/other weapon kung fu. I'll bet kung fu masters wielding weapons is still just as effectively lethal today.
3. Government purges suppress and change martial arts, so people learn to adapt it to avoid being classified as a martial art.