How viable are Aztec obsidian blades?Drip aside, looking at this from a CQC perspective
>>62119579I'd rather talk about their woman and how I want to breed with Latinx instead.
>>62119603U one of those Spaniards mfers?
>>62119579IDK how this has been lost to pop history but Yuros also did that sharpened stone and animal bone crap and if it was worth a damn in the face of metal then they wouldn't have dropped it. Native Americans are only known for obsidian because they never moved past it and that's why most of them spend their time drinking Modelo and scratching only the barcode on cheap lottery tickets.
>>62119579>viable Against who? their weapons are described as wooden toys by the Spaniards in the chronicles, all that was documented during the conquest.
Side question but were the obsidian blades effective against spanish armour if they ever got close? I doubt the spaniards covered themselves up entirely.
>>62119657Hrrngh must spank
>>62119850they captured Spaniards here and there and ate them, the average soldier had a cuiras and a morion at best, some of them not even that, the biggest advantage were the horse and the wheel.
>>62119579That's the worst drawing of a weapon ever
>>62119657BREED BREED IMPREGNATE MAKE SEX MAKE SEX
>>62119657>throw me the idol and I give you my whip, bitch
>>62119850Not sure how you'd expect a fragile brittle blade to defeat any kind of iron or steel armor, or any armor at all really. It would only be an effective weapon vs flesh or very light textile armor or leather.
>>62119873So do better moron. Pist it.
>>62120174hahaha basado
>>62119873It's quite clearly a sacrifice, not combat.
>>62119579Obsidian is stupid sharp but very brittle, being glass and all. All things considered the macuhatl is a pretty solid design that compensates for the weaknesses of the material, since even after the blades chip and break it's still a big club, and one you can easily slot new blades into after the fight.
>>62119873They weren't going for realism dumbo
>>62119579Very viable they are still used today in surgical blades in some applications. If you looked at the edge of a steel blade it would appear as a feather so it's more ripping than cutting. An obsidian blade will look like a single line often 1 molecule thick.As a CQC weapon not so much as the other guys 100% guaranteed to have a steel blade. But for the time if the other guys rocking the same technology as you it's a fair fight at least.
>>62120265>rocking
>>62119579
>>62119579fitting weapon for subhuman conflict
>>62119777>if it was worth a damn in the face of metal then they wouldn't have dropped itTrue but they didn't drop it overnight. There was a long transition period where metal was rare and stone was the good enough poorfag option. And stone tech continued developing in the copper age. Polished stone axes were better than knapped and iirc they got popular after copper became a thing. Some cultures reserved copper for ornaments and kept making almost all their tools from stone.
>>62119579Based on what happens when someone gets cut by obsidian in some places that shit is really nasty. Not only does it cut with very little contact like a razor blade but it can break off and embed the shards in the wound making everything worse so between obsidian and any old rock, obsidian is a no brainer.
>>62119579Yo why is he grabing the dudes dick?
>>62119871>horse>The macuahuitl was sharp enough to decapitate a man. According to an account by Bernal Díaz del Castillo, one of Hernán Cortés's conquistadors, it could even decapitate a horse:>Pedro de Morón was a very good horseman, and as he charged with three other horsemen into the ranks of the enemy the Indians seized hold of his lance and he was not able to drag it away, and others gave him cuts with their broadswords, and wounded him badly, and then they slashed at the mare, and cut her head off at the neck so that it hung by the skin, and she fell deadthere are several of these accounts
>>62119850Weren't macuahuitl famously capable of decapitating a horse?
>>62123369>>62123375That's partially due to the design of the weapon. These weren't a "Swing and off comes the head" decapitations, this was "Slam it into the neck and take off the head with one good pull" decapitations.The damn thing is basically a weaponized saw.
>>62123381thats pretty horrific. imagine seeing a dude get sawed in half in the middle of a battlefield in a matter of seconds. sounds messy.
>>62119579Obsidian loses its edge very quickly.
I've got some zirconia knives which have fairly similar properties to obsidian. They are very sharp and stay very sharp, but are also very brittle. They tend to chip or crack easily when cutting bone. I think they could make a decent slashing weapon, but not a good stabbing weapon.
>>62123395I've seen a dude get chopped in half with an axe, I imagine it's pretty similar.
>>62120342Lol
>>62123552Story time
>>62123375>>62123381A wooden club with sharp stones bound to it never decapitated a horse unless we are talking about a horse-shaped papier mache pinata, why do you believe things that people just say?
>>62119850Well considering we have multiple engagements where the natives suffered thousands of dead and a single spaniard suffered a cut we can probably say they were useless against soldiers in metal armor.
>>62119579Sharp as fuck but fragile. They won't do much versus any kind of armor but would probably fuck up a random home invader. A Macuahuitl is essentially a cricket bat with razors on the edges and a bat is already a decent weapon
>>62126240Fucking this
>>62126240It's not sharp stones, it's glass, literally sharper than steel, just prone to fracturing if it meets anything hard. Note that in the accounts it's not a clean off-with-the-head, it's hanging by the skin. I can absolutely see a good two-handed swing cutting to the neck-bone and breaking it.
>>62126858Stones, glass, sharper than a scalpel, it does not matter. Small pieces of material, however sharp, that are bound/wedged into a thick wooden frame will not sever a horses head, or even come halfway close to doing so.
>>62123509The Aztec war objectives were to seize human sacrifices not to kill enemies
>>62126864I think you're overestimating how much it takes to get a horse's head to fall off. There's more weight there than a human in a less stable position and if you go halfway through and shatter the bone, gravity will do a lot of the rest for you.You absolutely wouldn't get a clean cut, more along the lines of a baseball bat continuosly forcing a jagged shallow cut open than a proper slice, and you'd need a good swing, but it's doable.
>>62126864the undulating pattern of the blades creates a sawing effect, that's why it's so much better at cutting then a straight bladed sword, but you're going to break/chip blades if you chip blades you're just probably getting another cutting edge, if you crush a blade you still have a dozen other blades, or could flip the weapon around to use the other side which might be unscathed still. If you lost ALL the blade potential you still have a weighted club with the end bits of the obsidian still glued in, it would be like a heavy cricket batI wouldn't wanna fight dudes in plate armor with it but I also wouldn't want someone swinging it at me unless I had a full suit of fucking armor. ALSO the man wielding it is some fucking actual psychopath that will rip out your still beating heart and drink the blood so...
>>62126912you'd basically just have to sever the spine and yeah the thing is more or less going to be decapitatedif anything it happened once or twice where a horses head was lopped clean off and it was likely some scrawny nag lookin mule and everyone lost their shit cause it was an awesome story to tell
>>62126912Okay, so now the goal-posts have moved from "severed a horses head" to "cracked the bone and then the rest of the horses head just sloughed off the meat because it's heavy I guess". I can absolutely buy that you can break a horses neck with a heavy wooden club, sure.
>>62126931Yeah I'm not at all saying that the macacoxtltltlcxlxl is a bad weapon, or a bad idea for a weapon. It could probably produce gruesome wounds and break bone. But I am saying that it never severed a horses head.
>>62126884Flower wars confuse me. I understand what they are and like you said why they did them, but why. Why didn't they fight war "normally" for resources and territory like the rest of the world?
>>62120342what words aren't allowed, anon?
>>62119579Macahuitls were wooden clubs with very sharp rocks stuck into them as an afterthought, which sounds pretty viable to me if all your opponent is wearing is some animal skin kilt. If he's wearing plate, on a horse and shooting a gun at you...maybe not so viable.
>>62119657My grand-grand-grand-grand-grand... grandma :D
>>62127030Read the quotes from the accounts you dumbass, "hanging by the skin" implies it wasn't a clean all-the-way-through ordeal in the first place. Nobody claimed a clean guillotine action. You do genuinely underestimate the cutting ability of something very sharp being backed by something sturdy and heavy. It's not the sort of smooth wound like a traditional sword and would offer more resistance, but blunt force pushing a bunch of razor blades deeper still shreds flesh.If the neck is chopped deep enough to be dangling off the body, it's still a decapitation in my books.
>>62127447Religious purposes aside, it was a way to flex on their semi-enslaved neighbors while also keeping them too weak to rise up on their own by regularly culling their warriors.
>>62127882They did still have regular wars as well, mind you.
>>62119579the macuahuitl is better than some people here give it credit for. apparently, the smaller obsidian blades would be combined to make a single nearly seamless edge, essentially making an obsidian sword of sorts. (it would probably be heavier than a real sword though)i imagine that obsidian weapons sucked though. if they were worth the trouble, then why didn't bronze age civilizations use them?
>>62130391It's pretty rare to find large amounts of obsidian in easily accessible areas. Real life isn't minecraft and obsidian requires very specific conditions to form. Pre-industrial stoneworking is also a massive pain in the ass and requires a lot of practice if you want precise, usable shapes, especially with something as brittle as obsidian, and any obsidian tool or blade will need replacement very quickly due to said brittleness. In short, too rare, too hard to make, and too fragile. Obsidian was mostly limited to decorative goods and art past the paleolithic in the old world.It also works great when everyone's wearing hides and cotton with only the very rich wearing copper (and even then, nobody's wearing very much of it and not dying of heatstroke) but sharpness' importance in a weapon falls off really fast as soon as metal armor gets involved.
>>62130461And it's worth noting that in pretty much all pre-metal cultures across the globe it did see use in blades and arrowheads, and based on archeological evidence was a valuable trade good similarly to flint, with artifacts ending up thousands of kilometers from the deposits the obsidian was sourced from.
>>62130391Against enemies at the same level of technological warfare as themselves yes it's a fantastic weapon, it's an absolute shitstopper of a hand to hand weapon.Issue is that the Spaniards were leagues above that.>armor>horseback calvary>steel weaponry>flintlocks and cannons>war dogsAztec warrior runs up on a guy, hits him in the armor. He being unfazed turns around and shoot then stabs the Aztec warrior then jumps on horseback as a dog with spikes and armor on it rips his face off.
>>62130569
>>62130573While waiting for Ponce de León to arrive from the capital, the troops amused themselves by harassing the captives. Guilarte de Salazar gave an old Indian woman a folded piece of paper and informed her that it was a letter that was to be carried to the governor- if she refused, she would be fed to the dogs.>The frightened woman accepted in the hopes of surviving, but after she turned and began down the road Salazar released Becerrillo and commanded him to take her. As she was charged by the dog, the old woman dropped to her knees and prayed "Please, my Lord Dog. I am on my way to take this letter to Christians. I beg you, my Lord Dog, please do not hurt me.">According to witnesses, Becerrillo stopped short and regarded the woman intently. He sniffed at the woman and the paper in her hands, before turning away, lifting a leg, and marking her with urine. He stood by as the woman returned unharmed to the Spanish troops. Upon his arrival, Ponce de León was informed of what had occurred. He commanded the troops, "Free her and send her safely back to her people. Then let us leave this place for now. I will not permit the compassion and forgiveness of a dog to outshine that of a true Christian."
>>62130569>>62130573>>62130578
>>62127563Obsidian is volcanic rock, retard-kun...
>>62119603Aztecs, Mayans, etc were not Latinx. Spaniards, on the other hand...
>>62130578neat and mercypilled
>>62119777>if it was worth a damn in the face of metal then they wouldn't have dropped it.Don't think that really works as an argument. Iron didn't replace copper becaue it made for better weapons and armor.There are more reasons to replace a material aside from it being better for the job. Ease of manufacture, availabilty, cost etc. Especially the first two are a great advantage of metals over bones, stone and obsidian.
>>62130582i'll give you a pity (you) mr spanish obsessed schizo.
>>62130582
>>62131410>i-it doesn't matter that they fucked our women for centurieswhy are you crying, pablo?
>>62131698They did this as well
>>62119850most spanish soldiers were rodeleros, that is sword and shield. there were lots of unarmoured spots to hit if you get past said sword and shield but that's a big if. also having your torso and head protected by impenetrable steel armour probably helps a lot when fighting against stone weapons. constant european warfare put them on a martial level the azzies couldn't cope with.
>>62126864I could decapitate a horse with a length of cotton twine if you gave me a powerful enough motor
