How effective were these things? Obsidian is said to be extremely sharp and multiple edges instead of one straight blade might be extremely painful.
>>64634465>MacuahutitlCouldn't they have used an easier name to pronounce or remember?
>>64634465The problem is that Mesoamerican combat was highly ritualized. The goal was not to kill the opponent, but to stun and maim him to provide captives for sacrifice. You are basically looking at an alien civilization. They did not fight to kill the opponent.For the goal they were designed for, they were highly effective.
>>64634465They were perfectly fine for native-on-native warfare. Problems arose when they encountered the Spaniards because obsidian (aka volcanic glass) had a tendency to shatter against steel breastplates.
>>64634477All of that is a common explanation that everyone says, but it's not based on anything the Aztecs said, but just some later Europeans trying to explain everything. It was an expansionist empire, and no one ever gimps their own armed forces or their equipment for "rituals". It's more likely their weapons were just better at maiming than killing, and they collected prisoners for sacrifice later.
>>64634571>It was an expansionist empireAh but that's the thing. It wasn't an Empire at all. It was a confederation of three city-states (Tenochtitlan, Texcoco and Tlacopan) and many tributaries. The Aztecs did not in fact conquer the Tlaxcalans, they subjugated them. A different thing.They never occupied Tlaxcala despite having the means to do so. Instead, they would collect tribute from the Tlaxcalans, and leave them strong enough for waging the periodic ritual war on them, so yeah these obsidian swords were pretty much designed for that. You don't see them on the actual expansionist empires. The Incas used lances, archers and slingers, and even bronze axes. But the Incas were true expansionist empire, who annexed and assimilated the peoples they conquered. They kidnapped the elites of their rivals, raised their children to be Incas, and sent them back to rule as part of a united polity.But in Mesoamerica the prevalence of obsidian swords increased as the warfare became more and more focused around captives.
>>64634465They're aighthttps://youtu.be/12GP6ktNIk0?t=9m19s
>>64634571>no one ever gimps their own armed forces or their equipment for "rituals".Come on now, we see russians doing that all the time.
>>64634495>muh steel IIRC most battles the Spanish underwent they had something like 30:1 native allies to Spaniards. And most Spanish didn't have steel armor, nor a horse, nor a gun.
>i saw a video and now im making a thread on /k/!
>>64634639I was hoping some one would post this. This guys stuff is great. You can tell he has a real passion for history and isn't just trying to get Youtube bucks. Macuahuitl seems pretty fragile but I suspect his was not build to the same standards and the old ones. There's also some debate on the shape and size of the obsidian pieces.
>>64634465>be extremely painfulYou're a big guy
>>64634748Did someone say big guy?
>>646347534u
>>64634571Ritualistic warfare was not confined to Precolumbian America
>>64634788Nobody cared who I was until I put on the skin table
Well, they certainly work (for a while at least), and you can find (or perhaps did find) some youtube videos showing this. The basic idea of setting stone shards into a wooden weapon to make for a larger edge is also something we see in a number of places, pic shows stone age arrow- or spearheads from Sweden, and a display in the National Museum in Tokyo talk of similar things being done in palaeolithic China. I doubt the idea would be so widespread if it wasn't a decent one.On the other hand, don''t expect miracles out of these things. Obsidian in particular can have a horrendously sharp edge microscopically, but to cause wounds that aren't likewise microscopic you need to consider the macroscopic side of things as well. If we look to Diaz el Castillo's account of his time as one of Cortez' men we find that he mentions both Aztecs making use of captured European swords, and the conquistadors making use of local armour (most having none from back home), but nothing about conquistadors making use of local weapons. And while the idea of the stone-edged wooden blade had global reach once upon a time, it also appears to have gone out of use whenever metal became cheap enough for everyday items in the region. As such weapons like the macahuitl and tepoztopilli were likely used not because they were superior to steel, bronze, iron or even copper, but because it's the best they could do with the materials they had readily available.
>>64634639>literally disintegrates on first use>aight
>>64634639dude's out there making the safety squints
>>64634465You wouldn't want to get hit by one and it's better than a plain wooden club, but that's about it. They were also clearly massively inferior to steel swords. Memoirs say that Aztec warriors were virtually helpless against what must had seemed like lightning-quick attacks of unparalleled deadliness.
>>64634647>>64634810haha>captcha:GAYUM
>>64634465Obsidian doesn't have multiple edges itself but it's slightly more durable than regular glass due to trace elements in it which affect its structure marginally and can be fractured more cleanly when shaping, but the main reason as to why it's seen to be used more is primarily due to the high silica content in it. The uniform fracturing in general allows it to slowly be chipped away into an extremely small fine edge which is what gives it the sharpness and as to why it's sometimes used in surgical scalpels, though the use of it for scalpels is a lot more uncommon in general.It's volcanic glass, outside of the specific factors that I mentioned it's not really any different than regular glass which is why you see its use in weapons and certain other contexts. The multiple edges thing isn't true for obsidian itself but the macuahutitl itself does have numerous chunks of obsidian as you can see which do have multiple edges due to there being individual chunks; it'd be like making a giant serrated club where each serration is the size of a small rock; on top of that if it breaks in someone which because obsidian is glass it definitely would, then that'd hurt even more. >>64634746The obsidian is fragile; but if it breaks you just replace it. Flint-knapping isn't something that takes forever and people back then would've done it more frequently than people do today.
They probably had a special martial art for it with a gentle slicing motion to protect the blade, as well as aiming for soft areas, seems like a really good weapon to me though
>>64634596Fuck Tlaxcala; had to kill those guys in Age of Empires 2
>>64636140It wasn't meant to be used for killing people, just injuring them in a non lethal way. You have to look at it from an anthropological perspective and understand that mesoamerican culture and theologies back then revolved around taking people captive either for bartering or to use as sacrifices. It's brutal but true. The blade wasn't necessary to protect and if it fractured it didn't matter because all of these tribes were near areas where you could easily get massive amounts of obsidian whilst also having numerous people on hand that could knap them into a blade so that you could replace a broken one. They didn't run around with steel forges and giant metal swords, weight and adaptability was a very important thing in their tribal nations. You can go and bring back a fuckton of obsidian for knapping from a volcano or area of harvesting but bringing back a fuckton of ore for metallurgy is way more arduous and time consuming.It was just more efficient for tribes like that and it still has use in nomadic and non-nomadic tribes today that don't have access to metal or find it cumbersome. A lot of people who are weapon enthusiasts tend to view these from a modern perspective which is why there's a shitload of confusion surrounding them but if you study anthropology, geology and material science then it makes way more sense.
>>64634475Mfw it almost sounds like a name for "caveman club" in my language.Kek.
>>64634753The Vast Expansion Of Flesh.I still remember the sick realization something was wrong here
>>64636184It's very lethal though
>>64634477They ate the sacrifices.Without refrigeration, long pork needs to be alive not to spoil.
>>64634946>he needs more than one swing to end a fightskill issueblade placement is the only thing that matters
>>64634465They're pretty effective and great for training attack and strength too. I prefer a rapier so I can use my Avernic defended though
>>64636293Most stuff is lethal in general, but this is better for incapacitating someone without killing them because you're not going to be damaging internal organs by stabbing into them or shooting them with an arrow. Less risk of taking a fuckton of time clubbing someone with a blunt weapon because you have the risk of knocking them in the head and killing them or brain damaging them, or them being able to retaliate in a way that isn't beneficial to fighting. Without a doubt this is lethal but the use of it wasn't designed for killing people unless necessary, they weren't the easiest things to use though... but when you see most people using bladed weapons in modern times it's not really too hard to believe since most people don't ever actually use them outside of stabbing since people fuckin suck at using them. The only people that do tend to know how to use them are people that train historical arts and those people tend to never be actually using them in actual combat meant to be lethal. Traditional blade use is a dying art that's being kept alive by people that train it based upon tradition and respect rather than actually using it against people. Which you know it's cool to see it being kept alive but you never get any good examples seeing actual combat because of it.
>>64636278It's even in 38 super.
>>64634465They used obsidian because their metal working abilities were lacking and they didn't have access to better minerals that would conchoidally fracture. You don't pick obsidian because it's your best option, you pick it because it's your only option. Every society that had access to obsidian and something better (chert, quartz, etc.) used the better option preferentially...because it was better.>t. fucked around with knapping for a bit
>>64634465>15 hours and no one's posted itThis board has fallen. This is an actual illustration of a Macahuitl, the last real one that was destroyed in a fire at the Madrid armory. The "crude club with chunks of raw obsidian" that's peddled by popular media isn't a real thing, it's based on tards speculating what a tool used by people they see as complete primitive cavemen would use based on a loose description.
>>64634465so effective they thought cortes with a few hundred spaniards were angry gods sent to punish them
>>64634465Replicas have been made and tested, and the results are that it kills real good actually but is also very brittle (as the cutting edge is literally made of glass). It is significantly sharper than any steel sword you can create due to the properties of volcanic glass.
>>64634900>not because they were superior to steel, bronze, iron or even copperWait wait wait.Someone unironically thinks that clubs with glass in them beat metals? Seriously? How fucking retarded are people? It likely shatters on contact with bone, pretty trash tier as far as weapons go.
>>64637322>>64634900No one fucking thinks it's BETTER than steel. It's SHARPER than steel. Those two words are not synonyms.
