martial arts can be traced back to over 5000 years ago, in almost every nation that i can think of had some foam of martial arts,
the basic history would take a few books,
you can start as far back as africa and the middle east from there it went to india and china, then okinawa nad japan, and thats just one small section,
you also have the philippines, korea, europe, and the rest of asia.
wikipedia although i dislike the website would be a start but not one of the most reliable sources