The typical military arms of the I-Kiribati at this time were shark-tooth-embedded wooden spears, knives and swords, and garbs of armour fashioned from dense coconut fibre. They chiefly used these instead of the gunpowder and weapons of steel available at the time, because of the strong sentimental value of the equipment handed down through generations. Ranged weapons, such as bows, slings and javelins, were seldom used; hand-to-hand combat was a prominent skill still practised today, though seldom mentioned because of various taboos associated with it, secrecy being the primary one.