The Macuahuitl: Aztec Sword with Obsidian Blades
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- Опубліковано 29 вер 2024
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A thing to remember is that the aztecs didn't really want to kill their enemys. In battle, you gain notoriety for how many enemies you're able to capture. If you killed too many enemies, you would be looked at as a bad warrior.
A slave empire in its truest sense.
At first I was going to say that this sounds much more honorable than many other cultures of the time, but thinking better about it maybe I should first ask *_"what did they do with these so-called prisoners?"_*
@@Call_Me_The_StorytellerBlood sacrifice and slavery. I'd rather be killed on the battlefield personally.
I love Aztec history, but that love comes with a healthy respect for how malicious and cruel they usually were (With some exceptions). Really incredible architecture and technology though.
@@Nervete Ah yes... i forgot about that...💀
yeah, but seeing as what they would do to those who they captured, Id rather be dead
There were at the cutting edge when it came to your still-beating heart, too.
U also have to remember that the testing of this was done by someone largely untrained and not by a seasoned warrior, I’m sure there are fears we still believe impossible because we ourselves cannot accomplish them
They should have channeled that energy into developing antibiotics.
The reports of my deadlines are not greatly exaggerated
Yuh💪🏽🇲🇽
Kind of makes sense; it’s much more lightweight than a sword and the obsidian can be made razor sharp
Obsidian is brittle and light weight don't helps with force. So it's not that intuitive.
Best guess is that the saw effect is the key. More like sawing then cutting like an axe.
No the sword is the better of the two decapitation is a lie stretched very thin the heads men had a hard time using a heavy sharp blade axes don't even do a better job its recorded many decapitations took more than a few swings so the chance of taking a horse head of wile having spaces in between the sharp parts will flat out never do it in one swing
Unless the Macuahuitl is about one pound only, then the weights of the weapons will be about the same. If you do a historical study on the weapons and armor throughout everyone's history you'll find that the one handed weapons don't exceed more than a 3 pounds, generally. Exceptions always exist but human's hand tools and weapons tend to be ergonomic and not heavily weighted since they have to be used several times over a battle or through training. That means a cudgel in the 20lb range would need a man with HUGE amounts of stamina as well as muscle to operate that weapon in a long battle.
That said, this is a cricket bat with a glass, sharp segments of stone inset in the edges. I don't know about decapitation because you need a consistent length across the blade to consider attempting a decapitation. But it would do massive damage to unarmored, or naturally made armor wearing opponents. Or I'd have to see someone try to dissect a pig carcass in half with one to be proven to me.
@@dragonsword7370 And then I hit him with the wooden bat I held in my other hand.
@@Sapphier4Davbeing lighter does help with force if you can swing it faster (f = m×a). Also, it would have more energy, as energy = 0.5 × mass × velocity squared, so swinging something half as heavy twice as fast would have twice the kinetic energy.
Fun fact: there are in fact surviving macuahuitl that you can see in the Templo Mayor museum in Mexico city!
Thanks bro
We need a disclaimer: “No horses were actually harmed during the reenactment of these experiments.”
Yes, humans we're used instead because killing horses is deemed "Inhumane"
@@BRUH-lx3jv and Killing humans is not??
I recently made a macuahuitl for a video. Finding sources was a pain, and this is why. There's also the Tepoztopilli, a spear/halberd version, the last original of which was destroyed in the same fire mentioned here.
Unlike the last macuahuitl though, someone either did an early photograph or a full sketch for the armory inventory.
I'm trying to make one of these as well, I'm having a hard time finding the dimensions for the sword itself. I have some of my blanks already knapped. But if you have any other information that's extremely accurate I would appreciate it
Your channel is interesting, you earned a new sub.
@@seth6700I mean it’s a stick with rocks in holes glued in place I can explain it more but it’s very very very self explanatory if you look at it tbh you could use sinew as well to hold it in plave if you drill holes in the wood and obsidian
@@draconian_dragons6588 did you not read my comment? I'm looking for the exact dimensions, to be historically accurate. Can't tell if you're having a go at me or you're just a bit daft!
@@draconian_dragons6588 to be authentic and as historically accurate as possible its likely much more complex
Razor sharp edges work well with obsidian (and flint). I personally tested just how good a fresh edge of hacked flint was and lightly ran it over my thumb. Yeah, I was stupid. The cut was thin and deep af. Hurt like hell, bled like crazy. Upshot, I haven’t felt the need to repeat the experience with obsidian.
You can set up a controlled “cut” on your fingers to test sharpness. If you have sufficient callouses, you can control the pressure and cut into the pads of your fingers very lightly for a very small amount of time. The extremely past hair shaving sharp blades will sink in before you can even react.
There’s hair shaving, hair popping, and hair whittling sharp so hair is a good tester as well
@@lindboknifeandtool yeah, nah, pass lol. I love your comment though, I super appreciated the knowledge and then laughed because I’m an absolute klutz and I could just imagine a rather daunting time explaining the bloodbath that would likely follow. Going to A&E saying I was testing sharpness for scientific purposes. 🤣🤣🤣🤣 I mean, I walked passed something today (no clue what) but found a two inch long seam of dried blood on my elbow, clearly my own, clearly obtained walking by something 🤷♀️ I’ve also managed to break a toe by failing to slip my foot into a shoe and accidentally booting a dolphin torch across the room. The one experiment with fresh flint was more than enough for me to realise the folly of trying with anything else. Thanks for bringing a smile and laughter into my evening 💕💕💕
@@lindboknifeandtoolcan use your fingernails without the chance of degloving
Am I the only one that finds it interesting Polynesians had a similar weapon. Except they used sharks teeth rather than obsidian.
Maybe they share a common ancestry?
Well, neither culture had metallurgy, so it's not too far-fetched to think they had similar ideas for a sword like weapon.
Simon’s voice lulls me into such a relaxed listening mode every time, it takes me at least 45 seconds to realise he’s talking about something absolutely horrible
Their obsidian sword is no match for the Spaniards smallpox brought over.
Well they had steel armor they really weren't all that worried it would have taken a lot of skill to even match the spanish and it didn't
Would that count as a biological mass destruction weapon?
@@ChesterManfredOvbiously not. It isn't like the Spanish wanted to bring pox to the New World. And it wasn't useful in battle either because the smallpox doesn't differentiate between ally and enemy natives, and 99% of the Spanish army was composed by natives.
They literally cut a ballistic gel horse head off on the tv show deadliest warrior around 2010
Ballistics gel is made for guns, not knives.
With the city of Tenochtitlan and how its construction rivaled if not surpassed most European cities as far as layout organization and cleanliness, we're really going to say a war club with obsidian blades was "cutting edge" tech for them? I get it was a pun, but come on.
"Cutting edge", "innovation"
*Ties brittle rocks to wood because no metal......IN 1500s 😭
Would like to point out that they tested a modern reconstruction on Deadliest Warrior and it did (eventually) sever a horse head.
I remember that one, too. I used to love that show.
Ya more than a few swings it's scary looking but it will always take second to a metal sword using a sword headsmen had a hard time this won't do any better
Ballistic gel isn't a good approximation of real flesh and bone. Deadliest Warrior does some pretty dubious experiments in general, there was one where they used that same ballistic gel thing to claim some kung fu guy could rip out people's throats with his bare hands. So I would take anything they show with a large pinch of salt
@brettjohnson536 Agreed. Although, if I remember correctly, that was from the Vampires v Zombies episode- or when they basically gave up on real match-ups.
Glad I'm not the only one who remembers DW, though.
Not a REAL horse, though, thankfully! We don’t want to cause anyone unease!! 😂
Glass vs steel. I’ll let you be the judge of that
In case you’re interested in how to correctly pronounce “tl” in Nahuatl there are many speakers here on UA-cam who can provide examples😊
Here’s some correctly pronounced words in Nahuatl with the “tl” sound
ua-cam.com/users/shortsO9fcZKNNEG8?si=pTylS0LbubIEx11u
It seems like a "glass cannon". Sharp, but fragile.
That is why they had the flat part, onlly using the edge at the right time.
I mean even if the obsidian breaks it’s just going to make more edges
The edges of the paddle have a groove in them that was filled with pitch. When the blades broke, you'd just warm the thing by the fire until the pitch softened and put in fresh blades.
Very Brittle
🙋♂️🐈👍🙂
Yes a good smack with something hard and it's broken the Spanish with steel won for a reason
Considering that metal tools were largely non-existent in many areas of the Americas, the innovation to make up for that was incredible.
Edit: words
The Aztecs were savage, bestial, and sadistic. Everybody hated them.
Obsidian blades are freakishly sharp, it will go right through leather and hide armor like it's barely even there, it would have been a rather devastating weapon in it's time versus it's peers.
Worked great until steel came on the scene
Fun fact! Obsidian is so sharp that when it cuts it actually cuts on the cellular level! Metals cant get as sharp and tear cells, but obsidian slices them
its*
@@adamsmasher9769then why don’t we use obsidian knives? Steel is more reliable
@@Themanwiththeplan1899because obsidian, unlike steel, is brittle. Just because something is sharper doesn’t mean it’s better.
Sad to hear how the last known old one was destroyed
'Cutting edge technology': sharp club
Tell me you cut off a horses head for anthropology without telling me you cut off a horses head for anthropology
People don’t realize how sharp obsidian really is. That thing would have been like a five pound 2+ foot long X-Acto knife.
obsidian is CRAZY sharp. for the unattentive, even working with a small shard can result in deep gashes
Vsauce is intellectual in every Verse
I want a Macuahuitl now...
Such weapons were actually poor. While the obsidian teeth cut fairly well and could indeed sever a horse's head.. the teeth tended to rip free from the weapon fairly easily while cutting anything that was remotely difficult to cut. As such it is a poor design for combat overall.
... How did homeboy find out the stories were largely true? *How did he find out*?!
Same idea as Hawaiian Leiimano
Tests have shown that it would no decapitate a horse. Probably not a man either. The wooden portion is too thick to allow that kind of slice.
Zombie apocalypse weapon.
You’d die because you have to frequently replace the blades and if you don’t then it’s no better than a wood bat
Sure will work against the white walkers
Now, you can have the honor to RELOAD YOUR MELEE. Isn't that funny?
Not sure if id really consider this a great technolohical marvel.
It's a sharp rock attached to a stick.
Sure it's very sharp, yes. But not quite a cutting edge took.. compare it to the Toledo steel of the conquistadors.
No, but it looks cool.
They were early pioneers on heart surgery I've heard.
Remember, obsidian is just like glass, but sharper, lighter and even more fragile. This makes it quite useful for fighting, if you don't care to break some blades
If you also don’t believe it, if you ever find some lovely books and journals that Spanish forces actually wrote or the stories, they actually wrote about battling the Aztec it was bad remember, reading, where the Spanish technically would’ve lost the war if not for Gus the Spanish word of lost, because these weapons were designed for a very good for cutting and bludgeoning the enemy and a lot of plate I can’t pronounce the name, but it covers the chest all the way down to the stomach flu, wearing that as well as a plate helmet, those weapons did pretty damn well against plate armor and I was reading it that the Spanish army how to pitch battle with, an army of Aztecs and they lost a Spanish army what is destroyed in Spanish lost quite a few battles against the Aztecs
They made a lot of enemies two of which helped make the empire, the triple alliance which created the aztec empire they alienated the other two tribes. The fact the people were getting sick of human sacrifice and a long drought that struck when the conquest happened made it the perfect storm.
The weapon so OP it had to be banned from comp matches
still inferior to European and arab swords
Not sure I’d say their weapons were cutting edge considering the Spanish wiped them out with a faction of their numbers.
Well you need to count all the allies of the Spanish, that some founts estimate in between 80 thousands and 180 thousands.
weird way to say they didnt have metal working
Those were only effective against unarmored opponents. No stone age weapon is a real threat to anyone that was well into the iron age. The is why the Spanish so easily defeated them.
It was also due to introduced diseases wreaking havoc across around 90% of the Aztecs' and their loyalist thralls' populations, and the Spanish having the aid of tens of thousands of natives from neighboring tribes who joined up with them out of fear and hatred of the Aztecs.
Guess you missed the part where it doubled as a club😂
@@tillmen4444helmets?
@@f1shze4lot the macuahuitl's
The Spanish rolled up with the homies busting caps and splitting wigs.
It couldn’t behead a horse unless you took many many swings. It’s a good weapon in the bubble of the location and time it was created but isn’t going to be effective against say a knight with a steel sword or a samurai with a katana. Obsidian is razor sharp but very brittle. It would do horrific damage to soft targets leaving behind fragments of obsidian in the slash wounds.
It slices, it dices, it sacrifices!
**edited for incorrect grammar!😂😉**
“Oh, what? This old thing? It’s known as “The Macuahuitl.”
And: “Oh, well, devastatingly.”
The answers to the questions:
“What the heck is that?!?” And: “Just HOW dangerous could a “wooden sword” possibly be??” 🪵 🗡 👨🏻🦲🐴🩸🩸😵🪦🪦💀🏴 👋🏼
Garduño -> gar-DOON-yo
Macuahuitl -> mah-KWAH-weetsh*
*TL in Nahuatl is like the Welsh ll sound preceded by t
Get ready...
Homemade machuatl videos made with real obsidian, on the horizon..
Sorry for the spelling
This guy:”named the obsidian CHAINSAW”
Some idiot: “this name is evidence of the FACT that they had advanced technology, including modern chainsaws, and probably spaceships, and that they were taught by aliens!”
Each blade only had two, maybe three strikes in it before it was too worn down, but when it's that sharp, that's all you really need.
The what?!!! Mahoowahoot?!! 😂 worst pronounciation could ever done to that word. It’s pronounced ma-kwah-weeth.
It was probably the pinnacle of stone-age technology, which is a decent description of Aztec society. If they had a decent source of bronze or iron, things might have been much harder for Cortez.
Its Ma-CWAH-weet (ll) [you're british, you should be able to pronounce the welsh ll sound]
Flaked obsidian is harder and sharper than steel. It is very brittle, due to its hardness. They would've flaked new pieces to replace damaged or dull edges.
Was familiar with these from the film Apocalypto, honestly a really enjoyable movie tho I wouldn’t normally reference it for historical accuracies.
"The archaeologist tested his macuahuitl on an estimated 1,500 horses to verify these claims."
I'm very skeptical about that decapitating someone with their horse thing. Yes obsidian is super sharp, but it's also very brittle. Even attatched to the paddle it's hard to imagine it would even go through human bone, plus the Aztecs generally prefered to capture their enemies alive
Obsidian may be extremely sharp but it's also extremely brittle.. whoever wielded it would have to know exactly how to strike
What kind of "experiments" was that guy doing?! Lol
It’s a club. They had floating farms and one of the largest metropolitan areas of the time and you’re impressed by their clubs?
The absolute cutting edge at a great many things...
Especially cutting edges.
This is the one Aztec word that doesn't pronounce the huitl part of the word. That's more of an modern non Aztec way to say it. The actual word is pronounced more like ma-kwoo-it
That's why the Aztecs rule South American because they have a huge obsidian mine
I read three books about Herman cortez n the conquest of mexico. They all said the same thing it decapitated a horse.
It wasn't that great people have tried them the stones shatter on impact thats probably intentional it leaves shards in flesh that get infected, it wouldn't last five mins against a broadsword and certainly can not be compared to swords, it should instead be looked at as a kind of spiked mace or axe and yes the obsidian pieces are replaceable and they would have done so after every battle, they used to give those bats to warrior sacrifice victims to fight for their lives against aztec warriors only with the obsidian replaced by feathers but the opponents had the real things , fun fact one poor sod managed to kill many with a feather bat proving its more skill with the bat itself then the obsidian blades that makes them deadly
Eh any metalic sword will be superior, even copper. Yeah it might be sharp but it's wider in the centre.
Even with the best quaddle waddle or whatever they called it, they where not that great as warriors, as a small group of Spaniards steamrolled them.
Yeah but it's a consumable item you get one good swing out of before you gotta replace ALL that obsidian
Also, the blatant human sacrifice. They were really good at that, too.
How much experimentation did that archaeologist made to decapitate a horse or a man? 20 or 30 cadavers of each or more?
Yea when i think about Aztecs thats not the word or words that come to mind
(Cutting edge technology) 🙄
I find it strange how all these ancient cultures that were so advanced just disappeared. Where are they now?
Good riddance to that trash culture.
Human sacrifice to make the sun rise gtfo😅
Well yeah. The obsidian blades can be as sharp as, if not sharper, than a scalpel.
Yup I'd bet the spaces in the blades make it great for cutting off a head even though full length blades had a hard time doing it sorry but no there's no reason to believe the decapitation part men had a hard time doing it to a man with a sharp and heavy sword even the axe couldn't do it any better
I love your content. Have for years. But you talk too fast. I know you have a lot of info to cover but i often have to go back and have a second listen. But great facts.
They woulda been helpful against the night king..
Also. People could be capable of much strength back then
The"onyx bats" are interesting and I used to imagine making one...
How many youtube channels will this guy make?
Wait! Why was the kid from where the wild things are in one of those pictures?
They tested its ability to behead a horse on Deadliest Warrior and as far as I remember it worked.
Disembowelment is my favorite way to reward adversaries.
They had very advanced methods of human safrifice.
Obsidian flakes are 10 times sharper than a razor.
That's not even the scariest part of the weapon it was self honing and the debree was often used for spears
Fun Fact!
Some of them used shark teeth instead of obsidian
Similar to Hawaiian war swords, set with razor sharp sharks teeth instead.
Deadliest warrior had a ballistic gel of a horse head and this weapon did indeed decapitate it.
They weren't effing around, were they?
The cartels are about to revive this soon in mexico
Fine obsidian blades are sharper than scalpels.
But isn't obsidian also easily shattered
Wasn't obsidian one of the earliest raw material for human weapon? For hunting purposes?
Maybe that, wood, and stone
Either u talk fast or the video is fast forward 😅?
What "glue" holds the obsidian?
Not figuring out any metalergy in thousands and thousands of years is pretty crazy
The south American natives were just starting to enter the bronze age when the Spanish conquest happened. They didn’t have a chance to make weapons with it.
Obsidian shards are literally scalpel sharp