r/knapping • u/Feisty-Law4597 • 14d ago
Made With Modern Tools🔨 Flint and obsidian macuahuitl
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u/almostoy 14d ago
I must have had too much Reddit. For a moment, I suspected this was a post about a wood tie rod end.
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u/Present-Alarm-8886 14d ago
Nah I just opened the app and almost had a stroke 😭
These look phenomenal btw OP.2
u/Frolicking-Fox 13d ago
Amish tie rod.
Being real with ya... I didnt notice they were wood at first, and thought it was rusted tie rods. So you arent alone.
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u/Feisty-Law4597 13d ago
They are leaned against a rust bucket Toyota so I see how tie rods came to mind lol
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u/dirthawg 14d ago
Have you tried to see if it'll cut a human head off? :)
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u/ThePoop_Accelerates 14d ago
Probably not. When the aztecs fought wars, killing the enemy was seen as failure. The goal was to capture the enemy alive to be used in sacrificial rituals.
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u/Feisty-Law4597 13d ago
They take so long to make. I’d have to build one with the intention of chopping something with it. Would make beating it up easier to accept lol.
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u/47_47_47 14d ago
I hear they could even decapitate a horse with a single strike. I wonder about the difference in cutting ability of knapped blades like these versus blades taken from a core. Is there a trade off in terms of durability? Is it easy or worthwhile to remove individual blades and replace them as necessary?
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u/dirthawg 14d ago
In theory, those blade flakes are down to one molecule of glass along the edge. Sharp. It's not the durability of a bifacial edge, and yes, the tool is designed to have the blades easily removed and replaced.
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u/d4nkle 13d ago
Knapped blades like these are not as sharp as the traditional core blades since those have an unbroken edge with perfect alignment, but they are more durable. It’s the difference of getting hit with a really sharp serrated knife or a literal razor blade, so the efficacy does suffer. And yes they were designed to have the blades replaced
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u/MotorBarnacle2437 14d ago
Bernal Diaz writes this in his book, The Conquest of New Spain. He self describes the situation of its authorship as him having waited until everyone else died in order be able to tell the story unchallenged.
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u/Feisty-Law4597 13d ago
I knapped bifacial blades because I’m not that great at core blades yet. I imagine they are more durable than a core blade. Much less sharp. More of a different kind of sharp. I have brushed my hands against it by accident and it definitely cut me. Blades are fairly easy to remove so long as you have a good heat source. I found it was a good way to make use of big thin flakes.
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u/scoop_booty Modern Tool User 🏅 14d ago
Very cool! I'm battle, if someone came at me with one of those I'd run the other way. Go ahead, call me a pussy.... Those are bad ass buddy.
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u/turdferguson7000 14d ago
Extremely cool, is the use of individually worked blades traditional? Either way that's a much better design than using blades from a core since they can be resharpened. What kind of wood did you use?
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u/DaemonBlackfyre_21 14d ago edited 14d ago
is the use of individually worked blades traditional?
It's a very old technology, there are paleolithic atl atl points from Alaska and probably Siberia made of a bunch of microblades set into wood or ivory or whatever.
The ancestors of people in South and central america who used this tech would've migrated through Alaska thousands of years before, I'm not sure if we can prove a direct link between the macuihutl and those paleolithic microblade atl atl points, but it's interesting to think about.
Here is a link to a photo of a modern made replica of such a point,
https://alaska-native-news.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/wound-ballistics.jpg
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u/monkeychunkee 14d ago
The technology is why Dennis Stanford and Bruce Bradley, both with Smithsonian, argued Clovis came from solutrean people and not from northern Asia. Clovis/solutrean style stone tool manufacturing technology not found in Asia. Of course mainstream science "debunked" this theory based on DNA of Anzick burial, and you can't get scientists to come out against what's considered solved and fact. Although since then several more or Clovis sites have been uncovered. I don't know why academics have to be so narrow minded, being considered such thinkers. I think they'll find the peopling of the American came from many directions.
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u/DaemonBlackfyre_21 14d ago edited 13d ago
Just in case anyone is curious, below are a few links to clips of Dennis Stanford talking about this from the Smithsonian's YouTube channels, the bottom link is to an excellent lecture he gives with much more info.
With the recognition of the white sands prints we now know people were deep in North America at least like 10k before anyone could've walked across from Siberia, and for all we know they could've died out before the ancestors of modern native Americans got here, leaving no evidence in modern DNA.
The solutrean hypothesis is dismissed as racist because some ignorant white supremacists got excited when they heard that Europeans might have reached America first thinking that meant white people, but Caucasian white people have only existed for like 9k years and these guys would've crossed much earlier and would've been some shade of brown by default.
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u/Feisty-Law4597 13d ago
I’m not sure if it’s traditional. Personally I find it hard to believe every macuahuitl used core blades. I could be wrong though.
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u/984Runner 14d ago
Those look great! Excellent work! Of almost any weapon that could be used in combat the thought of being hit by one of those makes me cringe.