A few decades ago someone told me about how the structure of his martial art came about. There were some basic techniques, strikes and drills until one of the main exponents went to Hong Kong in the 1960's, saw that the head of the style didn't have anything else much to offer, and so decided to fill out the framework of the art himself. It seems he didn't get any credit for his actions but I saw a few years ago that the style was welcomed back into the Shaolin temple after being 'lost' for the last couple of hundred years. You can trace one of the originators of this style back to the early 1900's in Hong Kong and then the monks of Shaolin start appearing in the narrative as you go back further in time, which is a red flag. It sort of indicates to me that the art might be of a similar age to Judo, which was created in the 1880's.
Just recently the same person told me about a book he read on the origins of Tae Kwon Do. The founders were a group of young Koreans who studied Japanese Karate before the start of World War II and continued to borrow from it in the 1950's. No doubt there was a bit of borrowing from other systems as well as some original stuff. The history and origins of the art were manipulated by the North and South Korean governments over the years in the name of nationalism.
I never would have guessed that Tae Kwon Do and Krav Maga are about the same age. Aikido came about in the late 1920's. By now my interest is piqued so I did a bit of reading. Most of the Chinese martial arts today may not be much older than Judo.
Shaolin temple seems to have a similar problem that the monasteries in England in the 1500's faced. Buddhist temples controlled large agricultural tracts and were economically important in their local area, which meant they were collecting revenue and amassing assets that government thought was diluting the tax base. Economic influence also means political influence. Burn a temple out and some of the tax revenue might flow again. If you are a temple then you might want a few warrior monks to head off the local bandits and give the local government types something to consider.
It's in the 16th century (1501 to 1600), after their temple getting burnt down, that the Shaolin Temple had a bit of a reputation for pole fighting which was your basic training for the average soldier carrying a spear. The spear was the primary infantry weapon at the time. The temple is a bit of a hub for military people, other warrior monks, etc. Unarmed combat was not all that popular; it was mostly about training weapons, but there is always some form of unarmed combat training for any soldier.
Unarmed martial arts suddenly got popular between 1580 and 1640 and the area around Shaolin had a bit of a renaissance in unarmed combat arts which the monks picked up on. Shaolin was sacked in the 1640's, the temple fell into ruin and had a few monks wandering around in it for the next 100 years.
So where does the Shaolin legend probably come from? Well, in the west there was a TV show in the early 1970's called 'Kung Fu' starring David Carradine and a movie in 1977 called Shaolin Temple where I seem to remember the final fight scene going on forever. In China a young Jet Li starred in a movie called "The Shaolin Temple", which revitalised the Shaolin temple's fortunes after the hardships during the cultural revolution from 1966 to 1976. Imagine tens of thousands of kids across China running away from home to become kung fu masters at Shaolin temple, all because of a movie.
China in the early 1800's had a huge number of fighting styles, most of them being village or family affairs. Over the next 100 years they were transformed and melded into popular brands or they disappeared. Of course if you need to compete with a style that is much more popular then it doesn't hurt to have a great lineage - it's all about marketing and money making - nothing too different to modern times. Nor were they above just declaring themselves to be a particular popular style. In that case it helped to have a lost lineage story when the local school heavies came to pay a visit to see why you thought you could get a free ride on their reputation.
The creation of modern Wing Chun is probably from around the time of Judo's beginnings or a bit before. Of course the creation story starts with the burning of the Shaolin temple. Surprise, surprise. There were plenty of cheap martial arts novels floating around in the early 1900's in China, much like the cheap "dime novels' in the US. It seems that characters from these martial art novels were borrowed for the creation stories in some of the Chinese arts.
The lesson seems to be that martial arts need to continually reinvent themselves to keep attracting a sufficient market share of students that will enable them to survive. Lineage is just another part of the marketing aspect of this.
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