Basic Aztec facts: AZTEC TOOLS
The Mexica (Aztecs) lived in what'south called the Bronze Historic period, which came late to the Americas. For thousands of years the ancient Mesoamericans had done very nicely without the use of metals at all - by quarrying first andesite (a volcanic rock) and then obsidian (a strong merely brittle volcanic glass) to give them some of the best cut tools around... (Written by Ian Mursell/Mexicolore)
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| Pic i: Razor-abrupt obsidian blades in the Templo Mayor Museum, United mexican states City (Click on image to enlarge) |
OBSIDIAN has been described equally the steel of the New World. Elite Aztec warriors were nonetheless using super-sharp obsidian blades (pic 1) on their weapons some ix,000 years after its earliest utilize. And why not? Mesoamericans perfected the technique of 'prismatic blade production', giving them knives, scrapers and weapon points with some of the sharpest edges known to modernistic scientific discipline!
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| Pic 2: Obsidian mirrors were associated by the Aztecs with the cracking god of fate, Tezcatlipoca (Click on image to overstate) |
Mind you lot, they didn't just utilise obsidian, andesite and flintstone for making blades to cutting and puncture things, they fashioned some seriously beautiful objects from them likewise: like fine ear plugs, vessels, and this highly polished obsidian mirror (pic 2). They got impressive results from the simplest of technologies...
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| Moving picture 3: The Aztec farmer's earth-shaking digging stick (Click on image to enlarge) |
As old of class every bit a tool-making resource was Wood, used to make ane of the most traditional of work tools in Mexico, yet employed today past poor farmers effectually the country, the classic wooden digging stick (moving picture 3). No digging stick, no crops! Called a uictli in Náhuatl, y'all can learn more about it from the link beneath.
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| Pic 4: Fire kindling, Aztec fashion (Click on image to enlarge) |
And without matches, wood was used in its simplest form to make the ultimate Aztec Boy Sentry tool: fire kindling sticks (pic iv) that were rubbed together vigorously and at high speed. Every 52 years the Aztecs held a New Burn Ceremony to celebrate the start of a new 'century': the hero of the 24-hour interval? The high priest who lit that crucial first fire on the chest of a sacrifice victim. (Discover out more than in our Aztec Stories section...)
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| Moving-picture show 5: A Mexica (Aztec) farmer with a precious copper axe, aslope his digging stick and carrying strap (Click on image to enlarge) |
It was just in the terminal few centuries before the Spanish Conquest that metal-working arrived in United mexican states - probably past sea from South America. It was the Tarascans (who were never defeated by the Aztecs and whose lands to the West of the Aztec Empire formed the second biggest state at the fourth dimension) who were skilled at making copper and bronze tools and even weapons. Copper axes (pic 5), like cocoa beans and cotton capes, were valued by the Aztecs as a kind of 'currency' (a bit like money).
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| Film half-dozen: Aztec stonemasons sculpted huge and stunning pieces - the nigh famous existence the Sunstone (Click on image to overstate) |
Metallurgy involves quite complex techniques, and the Aztecs used these mostly to fashion pocket-sized copper, gilded and silver bells, pins, figurines and jewellery. They mastered other circuitous technologies to make rubber goods, textiles, ceramics and featherwork. Simply ironically they're best known for creating monumental stone sculptures - from massive jaguar figures to calendar stones - with the simplest of stone chisels (motion-picture show 6), unchanged for thousands of years...
Once an Aztec wrote a story nearly the invention of fire. He claimed it was all down to magic. Nosotros'd only phone call it 'a work of friction'...
Report the digging stick
Read the story of the New Fire Ceremony
See how large the Aztec Calendar Stone was/is...
Hither's what others have said:
two At 4.02pm on Saturday November 19 2016, Samantha wrote:
Wow, and so much information. Thanks Mexicolore for all this skilful information!!
1 At 3.43pm on Sat September ane 2012, tecpaocelotl wrote:
Obsidian is always hard to photograph especially backside glass. Here'south a flick of 1 of my obsidian arrows to give people the beauty and shininess of them:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v258/tecpaocelotl/IMG163.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v258/tecpaocelotl/IMG164.jpg
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