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.
>>64634475Ma-kwa-wilth
Considering that 300 spanish sailors conquered the whole continent, not so effective. Specially if you read that the Conquistadores didn't even wear plate armor all time because it was too hot to we wearing it 24/7
>>64634465If you're limited to stone-age technology then it's about as close to perfect as you can get.
>>64634753Almost as great as the one image on wikipedia where it shows the gun and someone’s balls in the pic. A quick look shows it was the Bergmann-Bayard pistol, and it’s been removed as of 30 September 2023. I have a screenshot somewhere on an older drive I think.
>>64637384Mace
>>64636490>Great Jaguar the enemy army assembles!>fear not turqoise turtle we have exactly 1 Macuahutitl for each of their soldiers!>Great Jaguar I uh... accidently dropped mine and the blade broke>I see, sound the vuvuzela of surrender
>>64634465I wager designs like those have slapped more asses than cut them in reality.
>>64634465For cutting people and fighting other club weilding natives? VeryIn combat against a sword?Not at all.
>>64634465Shit. It's a wooden club with volcanic glass glued onto it with semen. It breaks when you hit anything with it. No wonder those latinxes got btfo'd and are still buck broken about SPANISH BVLLS running a train on their women while they sit back and watch.
>>64634475they make the names by throwing clay dishes and wooden utensils down the pyramid stairs.
>>64639055LMAO. The names are the sound their women make when they are taking BWC down their throats.
>>64634596>It wasn't an Empire at all. It was a confederation of three city-states (Tenochtitlan, Texcoco and Tlacopan) and many tributariesBullshit. They were a Tenochca empire pure and simple, the "triple alliance" was just words, power remained with Tenochtitlan over the others
>>64639076Based Spainard throat invaders.
>>64634659Eh sorta wrong, the Spanish raised huge native armies b/c the Aztecs were so fuckin horrible. It's more like Cortez and his og army were the officers/commanders of an equally matched and/or (more likely) overmatched army cause they rode around like:>"hey! You like these fuckers?!"-to all of the enslaved subjects of the Aztec empire, and these brutalized and enslaved tribes were like:>NO!>wanna join us and kill 'em all?>YES!The history after that is obv not so clean, but if the Aztecs had managed and provided for their colonies, or integrated/assimilated their subjects in a fairer or more effective way (American-style btw/ftw), they may have stood a better chance..
>>64634659>>64639246My bad..Doublepost cause I apparently can't read..Think we're on the same page
>>64634900Rel, the saltwater-soaked cotton armor was apparently so OP that the Spanish swapped it out for the original steel after said plate armor was defeated by atlatls.That could certainly be apocryphal, but even so, apparently shit twerked
>>64637512>Retard
>>64639076>>64639142The Spanish were only very recently made white to support our American racial politics..Not saying it's right or wrong (I actually don't give a fuck), but know your history for fuckin sake.
>>64634465I do wooden club swinging exercises and sometimes I think about how much more I'd focus on my form if any misaligned swing or bad form would slice me with sharpened obsidian on my naked back.anyway, don't ever try to use a large wooden club as a weapon, caveman style. They truly are sufficiently unwieldy that by the time you finish a swing, the other guy has actually had time to get behind you and do a full dark souls backstab animation.
>>64639350Id imagine most wooden clubs are on the smaller/lighter end for that reason.
>>64634465https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=12GP6ktNIk0
>>64634477They lost an abortive expansion into Texas to a bunch of tribals who didn't give a fuck about the Sun's hunger for hearts or weird sodomy rituals and just chucked spears at them.People forget that a few hundred men who weren't even soldiers not only repeatedly defeated "armies" of thousands of squatguats but crushed them sometimes with no recorded casualties. And this was before said redmen sided with them against their habitual enemies in the triple alliance. They didn't engage in ranked fighting and had no way to deal with the Terrico. And they were physically small, very small, which might have been a contributing factor to the endemic cannibalism which occurred from the top of the city state elite to bottom of the tribals they preyed upon. Their agriculture was shit and seems to have been poor in useable protein, thus cannibalism became rampant. Even in European antiquity it was the bones and guts which were used in sacrifice and augury while the priests and followers consumed the good shit. Hence why cultures which burned the whole of the offering often bragged about being rich enough to do so.Is a neolithic or early chalcolithic weapon, similar short swords were made in Europe with chert. It' all right but likely became ineffective quickly. Any lateral force could snap or loosen the teeth. That said I assume that they simply pre-made teeth and may have even switched out to "poorly" made teeth when going on campaign. If you didn't care about looks you could quickly bag out very sharp teeth which worked well enough and replace them if needed.Also they got what they deserved for being weak.
>>64634659In the early battles the Spainish defeated several "republics" as they defined them, in one case in a 10k v 500 battle. These people then became their allies once they realized how effective they were. The local axillaries were likely most useful for logistical support, allowing the Conquistadors to advance very quickly and always be well supplied in food and water. It's funny that they've basically forbade the recitation of the campaigns on youtube even uploads of college lectures for political reasons. All first hand accounts are suspect but there was a reason why the Aztec system fell so quickly . The Inca could partially resist and had actual formations after a fashion. They were still crushed but it required real effort, the Aztecs' entire system was extremely fragile to any outside force since it was held balance by lesser towns raiding tribals for captives which they would present as tribute to the city states. And the tribes would raid one another to pay off the towns with captives. And due to the spread of the elite culture sacrifice seems to have been endemic even in the tribal societies. It was human sacrifice and cannibalism all the way done.
>>64639284There is no actual evidence of that, they also already knew what gambesons were and likely had them under their breastplates. There are similar stories about the Spanish being reluctant to cross rope bridges, and this is attributed to them under understanding what a tension bridge is despite having crossed the sea on ships with fucking rigging identical in function and form to a rope bridge. More likely they were warry about the condition of a fucking rope in a wet environment as they lugged small cannon across it. However given the relative poverty of the invading force and the fact that shit breaks on campaign I can see anybody taking whatever they can get, because that's always how it works.Ironically almost all narratives pushed about colonial expansion are anti-colonial due to the biases held by academics for at least a century at this point. And a century prior to that the narratives were pro-yourcolonialism and anti-everybodyelsescolonialism. The entire narrative around the Belgian Congo for example was constructed by the Belgian parliament who wanted it out of King's hands and into that of the government, or the British because they wanted it. As for my own biases, I would have preferred to march on the Aztecs with 30,000 hardened Landsknechts, kill everyone in Mexico, metal down all their metal, and dip their skulls in it for convenience of carrying obviously and no other reason.
>>64639284>>64639545Atl atlas aren't doing shit to defeat plate armor. Lances, with the mass of an armored horse and rider behind it, couldn't reliably defeat plate curiasses at this point. If people were picking up gambeson from the locals it was because:>Rodelleros didn't reliably have armor to begin with>Gambesons are perishable. They get so fucking gross you'll stop wearing them, they tear so badly it isn't worth fixing them, and they can literally get stiff with blood and sweat >Plate cannot breathe. Sweat will not evaporate under it, you get hot fast, and stay hot. If you opposition are stupid cavemen with sharp clubs, you may very well elect to not wear your breastplate unless you're going into a pitched battle >Firsthand accounts suggest the Aztecs were.... not very skilled. Armor is less important if you're confident the other guy can't hit you
>>64634465>can't pierce steel>outranged by gunkek
>>64634753>Natural Canvas Backgroundkek
>>64634900>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 weaponsI seem to recall him mentioning a horse getting it's head cut off at one point, perhaps by a Tlaxcalan
>>64634465I saw a video about these recently.The gap between the obsidian pieces is supposed to be a lot smaller its a sword not a sharp club
>>64641826The guy talked how these things could kill horses very effectively.It didnt stand a chance against steel armor.Obsidian being a prittle as it is
>>64638022>If you're limited to stone-age technology then it's about as close to perfect as you can get.Most of their technology was on a bronze age level. Except for metallurgy, but even that was a matter of time, considering that the Inca had developed bronze.And I wouldn't discount spears and bows. Or maces.
It's an impressive example of ingenuity from the era of wood and stone, but I'm concerned about the way the blade pieces are fixed.
>>64634465will break on hitting bone after the first strikeI will not elaborate further
>>64641916There's a problem with thinking technology in terms of ages like an AOE tech tree. The Mesoamericans were pretty advanced when it came to agriculture, astronomy, and sanitation. Arguably higher than Europe. Incan architecture was also interesting, it was anti-seismic, which is a world first.But yeah on most other aspects they were quite primitive compared to Europeans, did not have immunity to disease, and lacked iron, steel, horses, etc. And the Aztecs were hated by everyone around them.So they got BTFO by 300 alien invaders.
>>64642045They were glued in and intended to pop out if it hits something hard enough.
>>64642130They had no writing. They thought that the world is flat. Ahead of Europe in astronomy? Nigger, please.
>>64642462>They had no writing.Mayans had a full writing system including the zero numeral.Aztecs used pictrographs.And the Incas used the most alien system of all which were khipus (knotted strings) used to record statistics, census results, and basically number data.Ahead of Europe in astronomy? Nah, all three civilizations knew the year had 365 days, they had well-developed calendars and could predict eclipses, etc.They did very well in astronomy.
Little known fact the Conquistadors lost their steel-shod pikes when retreating from Tenochtitlan when the entire population rioted. They later made their own using bronze/brass they made themselves and armed a militia of local injuns with them. That as the army which finally achieved total victory. So they had some copper and tin deposits, they just didn't figure out how to use them.
>>64642130>agricultureInca and Maya were alright, the Aztec agriculture was shit because they chose their staples poorly.
>>64634596They had both forms of warfare, they wages traditional wars of conquest and "flower wars" intended for the purpose of religious sacrifice. They had already conquered the area surrounding the Tlaxcalans and it provided an easy source of captives for sacrificing so they didn't bother lose a ton of warriors to finish crushing the Tlaxcalan enclave simply because there wasn't much upside but there was a lot of downside
>>64634465>be extremely painful.You’re a big guy
>>64642805365 days calendar and predicting eclipses are ancient, Euros were well ahead of that by 1492. Ancient Greeks knew about the world being round, and even measured it's circumference. Mesoamericans were thousands of years behind.
>>64644673>even measured it's circumference.Lost knowledge, Columbus thought he could sail straight to India.
>>64644812Columbus underestimated the circumference, which had been calculated repeatedly using different methods to within 500m as far back as 100AD. He just happened to crash into a new continent where he thought China would be. That said is backers mostly just wondered if there was virginal land somewhere which could be used as a stopover for circumnavigation. They knew about islands in the Atlantic for example.
>>64640151>Sparke recorded that ‘they are so good archers that the Spaniards for fear thereof arm themselves and their horses with quilted canvas of two inches thick, and leave no place of their body open to their enemies, saving their eyes, which they may not hide, and yet oftentimes are they hit in that so small a scantling.’(this is vs Caribs)>Thevet reported that their arrows were ‘so strong that they will pierce a good mail corselet’, while a Portuguese eye-witness wrotein 1601 that Tupí arrows could go through ‘quilted breastplates or curates’.This V. Tupi>As early as his coastal voyage between Brazil and Venezuela in 1499–1500, Amerigo Vespucci noted that the only reason the Indians they encountered each time they landed had dared to attack them was because ‘they did not know what kind of a weapon the sword was, or how it cuts.’ Used as a thrusting weapon it was unbeatable — a straight-armed lunge could pierce right through Indian shields and cotton armour whilst the swordsman himself remained beyond the reach of the enemy’s slashing weapons. Time and again Díaz remarks how the Indiansdrew off ‘when they had pretty well experienced the sharpness of our swords’, and the Spaniards soon learnt the advantage of closing with the enemy rather than standing off, since the Indians ‘had the advantage of their missile weapons when at a little distance’.These from Ian Heaths Armies of the Sixteenth Century, armies of Aztecs/Inca/Conquistadors.
>>64644812Not lost, Columbus was a crank.
>>64644830Too lazy to copy and paste the full passages, but the author contends the cavalry was the most important arm relative to the steel and gunpowder, which:The effect of the Spaniards’ other principal militaryintroduction to the New World — gunpowder firearms —was surprisingly small. Even though Cortés wasaccompanied by 14 artillery pieces in his initial advance toTenochtitlan in 1519, and by 15 more when he returned in1521, they seem not to have excited any undue panicamong the Indians on the few occasions that we know theywere used, despite an observation by one conquistador thatthe massed Indian formations presented them with an idealtarget. Probably whatever advantage they might haveimparted was negated by the speed, mobility, and verynumbers of the Indians facing them. Handguns weresimilarly inconsequential compared to the considerablefirepower of Indian archers, slingers, and javelinmen,though they did have the advantage of greater range. Inaddition they were present in only very small numbersthroughout the first half of the century (just 13 of Cortés’infantry in 1519 were arquebusiers, as were only four ofthe defenders of Cuzco in 1536–37), so that during muchof the initial Conquest period crossbows were present in atleast equal and often superior numbers. Both weapons hadthe disadvantage of being slow to reload, which placedthem at a severe disadvantage when confronted by anenemy who almost invariably outnumbered them. It was inan attempt to minimise this deficiency that, when fightingthe Tlaxcaltecs in 1519, Cortés is recorded to have orderedthat his arquebusiers and crossbowmen should firealternately so that some of them always had their weaponsloaded and ready. With me forgetting to copy for the vespucci remark that "The most effective Spanish infantry arm was the sword..." then that passage
>>64644838Tfw my warham 3 campaign is Crashing to desktop after a big battle. sadge.
Come on guys.9 parts copper, one part tin. It's not that hard.
Are these really any better than hammers or plain clubs?The fact that you have to set the shards into something means you have a more complicated device, and thus more points of failure.Why not just use wooden spears?
>>64644830>Quilted>MailAka not plate. But yeah, people wildly overestimate the importance of guns- cortez had very few, and it was the rodelleros who broke the Aztecs in the field. Not surprising, even generous estimates and reconstruction put the macahuitil at 3-4 times the weight of a side sword. That's a disgustingly unwieldy weapon that wouldn't be able to defend at all, and wouldn't really be able to feint or otherwise draw out a man behind a shield. And fighting people who will lunge at you when you've never had to deal with it is comical - people are INCREDIBLY bad at defending against thrusts without training, and they're also the single best way to get around a shield. Perfect storm, really, one it comes to standing toe to toe, the Aztecs were in for lopsided casualties even if the Spanish were completely passive foe.
>>64645036I read about Vasco Nunez de Balboa who was ahead of his time in swordfighting as he was an early fencer and he stood over 6 feet tall.No native could ever possibly hope to land a blow on him unless they tried to tackle him with a knife.Which they tried but he was also a wrestler and still twice their size.So imagine that. Not only could they not deal with lunging thrusts but now you present only half of your body in fencing stance, at arms length, at the point of a sword. And you're a full foot taller than the enemy.
>>64644833Imagine the euphoria he felt for a short while though. Everyone back home telling him he was wrong and completely retarded, only to find exactly what he thought he was looking for.Like an early history flat earther kayaking down a foggy river thinking he finally found the edge of the world before sailing himself straight over niagra falls.
>>64634465>ctrl+f "for you", "4u", "uuuu">1 resultI'm disappointed in you guys
>>64636184>>64639439We wuz aztecs and shieettthttps://www.science.org/content/article/headless-bodies-hint-why-europe-s-first-farmers-vanished
>>64645121sorry that was meI just needed some skulls for something
>>64645075There are two Big guys in the thread
>>64644972>tinZinc and arsenic are also options.
>>64634465They were effective just had very limited durability. Spanish writers describe a horse being decapitated by one for example. Some guy made a couple and tested them on a large piece of pork, it sliced through the flesh but shattered on bone.
>>64644972They had metal weapons but obsidian basically allowed them to max out stoje weapons and because they didnt have to fight people with better metalworking like in the old world until it was too late to adapt they never really worked on smithing.
>>64634465They didn't look like that. This is like posting a replica of a pilgrim gun and questioning the effectiveness of modern fire arms.>>64637276Came here to post this. The Macuahuitl is quite possibly the finest stone weapon ever produced. My understanding is that it was mainly use as a wooden club that could also take a persons limb off with a change in grip. It's pretty clear that they wouldn't have been effective against steel plate; but the rank and file Spaniards wouldn't have worn full plate and the Spanish army in the Spanish-Aztec wars was majority Injun anyways.
>>64645748These are actually dogshit illustrations.
Mesoanon from /his/, /v/, etc hereI'll try to reply to stuff in here sometime in the next few days, feel free to post your questions in advance
>>64634465You could make a sick guitar with that as the machine head
>>64634477European knightly combat was similar. Not kill but stun and beat your opponent so you can ransom them
>>64646011How so?
>>64647358How accurate is this guys work? Its fetish adjacent stuff (I know, I'm sorry) but he's generally pretty good on his antiquity illustrations, so I'd like to know how far off he is on his mesoamerican stuff. https://www.furaffinity.net/view/58559171/https://www.furaffinity.net/view/59170733/https://www.furaffinity.net/view/56342973/
>>64636184>It 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.Then you'd use a net, a lasso or a club. Using a sharp blade that will cut and bleed out your opponent, or give them a cut that will get infected, or shatter and push glass shards into your opponent's body that will also risk killing them is a very bad tool for the job.
>>64642901The Aztecs and other Mesoamericans conducted enough cannibalistic raids into what's now the Southwest US that there is plentiful archeological evidence.>raid village>set up pot>eat a couple captives>the rest of the villagers watch from the hills
>>64647358>>64647867mesoanon, this guy's question is my question too. An obsidian bladed club has amazing cutting power though it degrades with use. If a 10 year old hit me with this it would make my arteries spray out blood like a Kurosawa film. But if you're trying to take captives alive in a flower war what do you actually use?
>>64647358Why are you latinxes so violent and smelly. Your farts are like a portable nuclear holocaust.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GNV0Hp5vkdM
>>64641826>>64641831Did "the guy" talk about how that couldn't be possible as there were no horses in mesoamerica at the time... I can understand though, for slaughtering animals
>>64648092I'm not him, but throughout history the best way to get captives is to first beat the enemy. So driving an obsidian flake into someone's throat does help you get captives if it induces his friends to break their formation and/or rout. Much easier to capture the enemy when they're alone or running rather than when they're actively trying cut your chest open with their own macuahuitl as part of an army.
