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Post by ineffableone on Mar 25, 2012 19:49:27 GMT
Since these cool unique swords aren't really part of Asia or Europe and don't really fit other sections I figured the general section is a good place for them. ![](http://pds7.egloos.com/pds/200804/12/26/e0014726_48000c7362816.jpg) I like to post the obsidian edged Aztec Macuahuitl when ever the which sword is better debate starts up. Often the katana vs longsword debate, which happens about once a month. Part of me posting it into these debates it to remind people that stone age tech came up with sharper weapons than any metal age. Even today obsidian blades are used in surgery of the most delicate nature because obsidian makes the sharpest edge. There are two main styles,
one with multiple points like teeth![](http://rpgforum.cz/files/bronz2.jpg) ![](http://www.mormonmesoamerica.com/macuahuitl.JPG) And another style
with in line edges more like a continuous blade.![](http://images.wikia.com/deadliestwarrior/images/2/20/Maquahuitl_3.png) ![](http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_OGgkQyDNOds/TOQmXGu_-EI/AAAAAAAAAIc/8JRDU5_gimQ/s1600/macuahuitl-macahuitl-aztec-sword_1037154.jpg) ![](http://home.comcast.net/~mattg115/img/macuahuitl_pair.jpg) ![](http://i18.photobucket.com/albums/b113/Red_Coyote/Aztecs/Macahuitl.jpg) Photos above are to help show what these weapons looked like, and how different they can be. Like any other sword there was evolution and design changes in them. Different ideas tried and tested. A thrusting tip was a latter innovation, and the fighting style was mostly cutting slashes and flat blocks. Some good places to learn more about these great weapons www.maquahuitl.co.uk/ very well done site dedicated to Macuahuti with lots of info en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacuahuitlSFI thread on them www.swordforum.com/forums/showthread.php?99450-MacuahuitlDeadliest Warrior had an episode with the macuahuitl. The "experts" were not really, and the test to show if like reports from the Spanish, if it could cut the head off a horse were done poorly. A horse would not be standing so its neck is vertical. The neck would be horizontal or at an angle and above the persons shoulders. The weight of the head and neck would aid in the cutting as the cut would have to be over head and down cutting. It is quite likely that the reports of horse decapitation were true if a strike hit between vertebra. Here is the video though quite DW failure to be authentic or have real experts. here is a Discovery channel video with a bit better experts A video of a guy who made a pseudo macuahuitl from baseball bat and razorknife blades Now a very good video about how to make one of these from a true stone knapper How to make a Macuahuitl, Part 1 (part 2 will be uploaded in a couple days)
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Post by William Swiger on Mar 25, 2012 20:08:28 GMT
Very interesting. Thanks for posting.
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Post by ineffableone on Mar 25, 2012 20:39:50 GMT
Your welcome, since I had been posting these in all the what is the best sword debates I figured it was about time to give them a bit bigger exposure with a full thread about them. They are a very interesting design and concept. Though not the only culture to produce a nonmetal sword. Many other cultures made their own nonmetal swords usually using teeth as the blade. Pacific islanders commonly made shark tooth swords![](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41cxWmKkjCL._SL500_AA300_.jpg) ![](http://www.huntsearch.gla.ac.uk/archimages/E506_2a.jpg) close up of the above sword ![](http://www.huntsearch.gla.ac.uk/archimages/E506_2b.jpg) Even Africa had shark tooth swords![](http://www.icollector.com/images/1622/21518/21518_190037_1_lg.jpg) ![](http://www.icollector.com/images/1622/21518/21518_190037_5_lg.jpg) Though shark teeth will never equal the sharpness of obsidian, nothing will as it is the sharpest material. But the macuahuitl was not the only nonmetal sword made.
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Post by ineffableone on Mar 25, 2012 21:12:15 GMT
Your welcome. I should mention to people who might think of getting or making one of these, they are extremely sharp! I mean like cut you and you don't even notice until you see all the blood. Obsidian blades are very dangerously sharp!I am glad I have shown these cool weapons to people who had not yet known of them, they are worthy of respect and knowledge in any sword loving group.
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jhart06
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Post by jhart06 on Mar 25, 2012 23:21:16 GMT
Very cool, it's all too easy to get caught up in the European and Oriental cultures and forget these other styles. Nice to see them get some love, i've wanted one for ages.
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Post by ineffableone on Mar 25, 2012 23:34:40 GMT
The last video I posted is a very good tutorial of how to make one, It is Part 1, the making of the wood section, Part 2 coming soon, will be on how to knap the obsidian blades. You might be able to make your own following the tutorial. ![:D](//storage.forums.net/forum/images/smiley/grin.png) Just be careful obsidian is sharp no joking.
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Post by Dave Kelly on Mar 25, 2012 23:45:47 GMT
Glass blades were tremendously successful and critical stone age tools with tremendous cutting capacity.
The shortcoming of the medium is their relative brittleness once in contact with denser metals.
Swordlike, but more a tactical axe.
Nice write up. Thanx for sharing.
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jhart06
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Post by jhart06 on Mar 26, 2012 0:18:35 GMT
I've had a fist sized chunk of obsidian and had it break once.. I'd rather not touch knappig it, i like my fingers in one piece.
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Post by ineffableone on Mar 28, 2012 16:35:27 GMT
(I put in the part 1 here with the part 2 for easier reference to both videos)
How to make a Maquahuitl, Part 1
How to make a Maquahuitl, Part 2
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TomK
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Post by TomK on Mar 29, 2012 16:04:41 GMT
I have tried to nap both flint and obsidian in the past with little success. the people who did this sort of thing back in the days when it was the way to make good tools were absolutely highly skilled craftsmen.
some of the central american tribes used to do some sort of ritual where they'd cut the top of people's heads off and then put it back on and they'd live through it. as far as I know we don't really know much about why they were doing it or even what they did when they had the "hood up" but we know from skellital evidence that the people who ahd this done to them lived for 20-30 or more years afterwards. it is also figured that whoever was doing the operation had a very high success rate as there have been very few bodies found of people who have had this done and don't show the bone having grown back together. even modern medical science has a very hard time keeping people alive and unharmed during open skull surgery. when I say they took the top off, I don't mean they made a small hole, no, I mean they made the cut a little above the ears and whent all the way around. I'll be the people doing it used obsidian blades.
just amazing what ancient people could manage.
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Post by Neil G. on Mar 30, 2012 13:28:51 GMT
Tom, Check out this article on Trepanning/Tephination en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TrephinationSeems the practice of boring/cutting holes into our heads (voluntarily) goes back all the way to neolithic times.
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Post by ineffableone on Apr 5, 2012 6:34:55 GMT
How to make a Maquahuitl, Part 3
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Post by ineffableone on Apr 5, 2012 6:56:01 GMT
Yep I think people often underestimate what "primitive" people were able to do. We have this incorrect concept as modern humans as the best most knowledgeable people but really people have lost a lot of knowledge. We can make the Great Pyramid, with all our modern equipment, the experts, and by experts I mean the people who build stuff not Egypitoligists, say there is no way for them to build the Pyramid. Similarly the walls in South America built with megalithic stones in a jigsaw construction style, again building experts say we have no way to do such feats in our modern age. Then of course maps made with accurate longitude and latitudes in times that predate (the need of accurate time device) modern invention of longitude ability. There are many amazing things through out history that don't fit with the theory of upward mobile cultural evolution. The reality is it was fits and spurt and many falls and rises. Egypt lost the art of glass making and at the time of King Tuts burial glass was worth more than gold due to it being so rare. Later they again discovered the glass making secrets. As Tom points out these brain surgeries have shown up and been successful and seemingly a very high rate of success. Imagine in a dirty primitive world exposing someone's brain and them surviving the surgery. You would expect infection if nothing else would end up killing the patient. I discovered this a decade ago and actually thought of getting it done. ![:o](//storage.forums.net/forum/images/smiley/shocked.png) Yes it sounds crazy but there is evidence of this procedure actually enabling increased metal ability. I don't mean giving special powers, just an increased ability for thinking. I came across it researching body modifications, back in my days when I wanted to get tons of piercings. While the possible ability for higher ability to think sounds nice, two draw back to the procedure. No real doctors will perform the surgery, and your left with a soft spot, hole, in your skull. These two down sides quickly made me reconsider getting it done.
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Sean (Shadowhowler)
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Post by Sean (Shadowhowler) on Apr 5, 2012 7:10:36 GMT
Uh... flight and space travel... internet and cell phones... nuclear power and bombs... I think we have gained far, FAR more then we MAY have lost. I'll take modern science thank you very much. Also... for all the vaunted medical skill of the old cultures (Hm, bleeding, leeches, drilling holes in the skull to let the evil spirits out...) I'll take modern medicine and its vaccines and antibiotics as well. As to Obsidian swords... They are very cool and certainly sharp... but they are not durable and would get jacked up in a single combat. Also, they are large and club like, lacking the agility and balance of more modern steel swords. Again... I'll take tempered steel... what I lose in pure sharpness I more then make up for in durability and balance. To each their own tho.
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Post by ineffableone on Apr 5, 2012 7:43:58 GMT
There are many things that might show ancients did have flight. From carvings that look like planes. They have done wind tunnel tests on some of these and found they were designed truly aerodynamically. ![](http://www.world-mysteries.com/sar_7gpl2.jpg) Also the Hindu texts that describe flying Vimanas. Go over to India and ask who invented flight and they will give a much different answer than your used to. As for nuclear power, there is evidence alchemists knew it before modern science. The French physicist who torched open Hitler's safe with plutonium in it. Was actually visited before the success of the Manhattan project by the last living alchemist. The last alchemist described radioactive fall out and radiation sickness to the physicist and even mentioned the physicist's failures had to do with their failure to understand how to geometrically stack the radioactive material. This was all told to the physicist as part of a warning to him, the alchemist said they had done this stuff already and could do so with equipment as simple as found in a normal modern kitchen (remember the time period of that conversation as it was at the beginning of the Manhattan project era) and that this knowledge was dangerous and the world not ready for it. Sadly the physicist did not listen then but did start to wonder about this strange encounter after they solved the geometric stack, saw radiation poisoning, and effects of radioactive fall out. There have been found similar green glass fields that date back a long time ago that appear to be just like the green glass fields we created with atomic testing. Later in life this physicist believed the ancient alchemists did truly know and achieved atomic blasts in ancient history. So we might have lost just as much as we have gained.
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Post by ineffableone on Jul 30, 2012 5:22:50 GMT
What this forum needs is more MaquahuitlMaquahuitl Madness! He just posted it up on youtube and I had to share some Maquahuitl Madness! with SBG.
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