Metal-working Pre-Columbian cultures, the result?

If this fits better in world-building,please put it there.

I know that Pre-Columbian cultures knew about gold, silver, copper, and to an small extent even bronze and (meteoritic) iron. However, the Americas were in general an area with Stone-Age materials. (Still a lot of large civilizations tough...) What I wonder is, what would the impact of native bronze- and iron-working would have been to the Americas in the centuries (or even milennias before Leif Eriksson.)

Questions:

• When, and where would these metals be discovered in the new world?
• How far would it spread?
• How fast would it spread?
• Would the fact that the Americas are diagonal (containing different climate zones) and not horizontal (all in one or a few climate zones) affect the spread of the metals?
• Would the lack of Megafauna be to much of an problem.
• The impact on the European conquestof the New World?
• The larger impacts on Native American way of life.
• Your own ideas.

edited 1st Jun '14 4:11:05 AM by TheBorderPrince

Hmmm. I know this for a fact: Aboriginies in my country were extremely keen to get pieces of iron and steel, because they could be worked into vastly superior cutting edges to their own stone tools. In that sense, I'd wager that these metals would spread as fast as traders and travelers could carry them. Also, it might have made something of a difference in the warfare department. I know for certain that pre-Columbian Native American weapons didn't stand up to European steel ones, in addition to the guns and smallpox issues.

Hope that helps a little!

Yeah, the diseases were the secret weapon of the "palefaces", thinning out the Native American ranks a lot...

However, the Native Americans were still at at an great advantage when it came to numbers... And for the first 350 years of colonising the Americas were an bow better than an gun. (Add to that the posibility of iron arrowheads...)

Mmm. I can find you the sources if you would like more specificity...I am also not sure if this might help but I think I will just throw it in...just in case it will!

But the thing is that, in the particular case of the Spanish conquest of the Aztec empire, the Spaniards donned the armor of the fallen Aztecs. The padded leather/cotton armor that the Aztec warriors used was more effective than the crappy low quality steel the Spaniards wore. Not to mention it was clunky, uncomfortable, and really, really low quality.

The muskets the Spaniards used was really low quality too, and it was really just really hot pebbles fired in a distinctly vague direction. Shots from those muskets killed more because of the infection they left on the wound than the mostly superficial damage they did.

And Obsidian, the rocks the Aztecs used? Obsidian is very sharp. I cannot insist on how seriously dangerous Obsidian actually is.

What facilitated the conquest of the Aztec empire was the fact that they built their empire based on slavery, defeating neighboring tribes, and sacrificing them consistently, making these tribes really eager to find some extraneous help to take down The Empire. Many Aztec tribes joined the Spaniards.

If it had been ONLY the spaniards against the Aztecs, the Spaniards would have probably all died, and the Aztecs would follow due to diseases. My point is, that in the specific subject of Aztec vs Spaniard weaponsmith and armorsmith, the Aztecs probably had the advantage with padded cotton and leather and obsidian axes and mauls over the Spanish steel and muskets.

Being really, really sharp isn't the end-all be-all of weapons. Not breaking is the first think your weapon needs to get right, and stone is too brittle to ever be as strong as a weapon needs to be without being big and heavy. Especially when you're trying to penetrate armor. A steel arrowhead can be much thinner without breaking, which is really more important in trying to penetrate something than having your absolute edge be as sharp as possible.

Also, guns replaced bows for a reason. A bow is a superior weapon with somebody who is well-trained with it, but a gun in dangerous in the hands of even a rank amateur and bullets are cheaper than arrows.

The Spaniards needed allies to beat the Aztecs because it was a handful of soldiers with no logistical support versus an empire on its home turf. If you put an Aztec army up against the actual Spanish army the Spanish would obliterate them.

edited 2nd Jun '14 9:48:17 AM by Bloodsquirrel

The Obsidian weapons the Aztecs purportedly used were cudgels with the embedded pieces of obsidian as serrating edges. They varied in size and were supposedly capable of easily lopping horses´ heads off.

To focus solely on the metal-working aspect... I simply brought up the information of the Obsidian weapons and the Spaniards using the Aztecs´armor as something to consider that perhaps the specific case of the Aztecs already sported weaponry and armor capable of standing up to the Spanish armories. Never said anything about their numbers.

As for Spaniards vs Aztecs, who knows. Not the subject of this thread. Diseases alone woulda probably been enough anyways without the need to bring weapons, so that is something else. The result of Army vs Army is in history.

I doubt that they were able to lob a horses's head off, as doing so would require the entire weapon to pass through the horse's neck. That's why kitchen knives are thin: once the edge cuts the material, the rest of the blade needs to separate it in order to pass through. You can do that with metal, of course. No so easily with obsidian, which would be too delicate at that thickness. Certainly not with a wooden cudgel.

Also, source on Aztec armor actually being as effective as steel armor? I'm not seeing any source on Spanish soldiers systematically replacing steel plate with Aztec armor (Plate armor was, in fact, very expensive and most of Cortez' men didn't have any). Besides, metal armor was worn with cotton and leather underneath it already; layered armor was nothing new to Europe.

The point is; Medieval Europe wasn't using steel because they were just a bunch of morons who didn't know teh awesomeness of rocks and cloth. They knew what stone was. They built castles out of it, because a stone wall should be thick and heavy. But for almost anything else metal was a better material. More malleable, more durable, and can get the job done while been far lighter. Steel arrowheads replaced stone ones in North America as soon as the Native Americans had a steady enough supply of them (And guns, for that matter. The Native Americans sometimes had better firearms than the US army).

edited 2nd Jun '14 10:59:39 AM by Bloodsquirrel

The horsehead loping stories come from accounts of the Spaniard historians. Bernal Diaz del Castillo, Francisco de Aguilar amongst them. You can find their books on Google books, since they are super old, their titles are the following:

"The History of the Conquest of New Spain" by Bernal Diaz del Castillo, page 94

And various horse head-chopping descriptions Here that would also fit in a Mafia tale. There is of course, the possibility these people wanted to exagerate the fierceness of Aztec warriors but the sources are diverse enough that it does warrant consideration.

As for the Spaniards wearing Aztec armor, there are a handful of quotes but many untrustworthy. The best one I found was "Aztecs & Conquistadores. The Spanish Invasion & the collapse of the Aztec Empire" by John Pohl and Charles M Robinson III, again in Google books. (page 70) and I do not really like to use sources from Mexican archaeologists because they are really, really biased.

There is no real rumor or source either of Aztecs using Spanish armor or weapons. They were not as useful, and they were impractical. The layered armor techniques the Aztecs used (tecniques they did not create: They stole it from the Mayas) were purportedly very effective, more flexible, and very capable of stopping arrows, bullet pellets, and so. Their effectiveness is narrated by Spaniard accounts.

Also, to compare the conquest of the Aztecs to the conquest of the Native North Americans is quite a different thing. The first one began in 1519, and more standarized warring with native north american tribes did not even begin until like 100 years later: The guns the Natives would buy from their enemies would be far more effective by 100 years of gunpowder and rifling technology. Really: No conquistador, Dutch, British, Spanish, or Portugese really cared about North America at all. The first North American settlement was St. Johns in Canada, in 1583, more than half a century after the Aztecs were annihilated. Compare to Plymouth in 1620.

Also: The North American tribes did not have as much access to Obsidian. They did not use it.

Point is: in relation to the question posed at first, while metallurgy was not as developed in central and south america, the warfare tools specific to the Aztec empire according to several different accounts by several different authors of various eras, depict the Aztec weaponry and armor as something to consider, regardless of it not being the metal we love to romanticize.

If metallurgy had come more into play for them it would have been in more mundane tools: not in the warfare ones. Or that is what I believe seems likely.

Yes, those kinds of accounts tend to be full of exaggerations. According to wikipedia, Deadliest Warrior tested it and it took three swings plus some sawing on it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macuahuitl

I wouldn't expect there to be many instance of Aztecs using Spanish weapons or armor seeing as they would have to somehow acquire them first. The Spanish didn't exactly bring boatloads of spares with them. That's hardly a basis for saying that they were less useful.

So really not much basis for claiming that their armor was nearly as good.

I didn't say they did. But they still used stone arrowheads, which they gave up for steel ones.

Aside from the reasons I've already given for why metal is a superior material for weapons, what civilizations with access to good metallurgy have ever *not* used it for weapons?

This really isn't an issue where there's a whole lot of room for speculation. Europe spent thousands of years testing very diverse styles of weapons, armor, and combat against each other. What you see in the late medieval period is what survived as the most effective, practical way to wage war short of more advanced technology. If you could afford plate armor, it was *the* way to go into combat. Weapons were universally made of metal. When the new world was discovered they did not see a sudden resurgence of stone weapons. The Chinese and Japanese advanced roughly along the same lines as Europe. Even copper weapons, which were vastly inferior to steel, were prized over stone weapons when they came onto the stage.

Metal weapons will replace stone ones for every warrior who can get his hands on one. In fact, they'll spread even faster than tools- warfare is a life and death affair. Metal armor will come into fashion for those who can afford it.

Obsidian is Volcanic Glass. Its hardiness in Mohs scale of hardiness is higher than Steel, which is itself stronger than Iron.

It is not malleable enough to mold into armor, but it is strong, and sharp enough to chop limbs off. Again, take up the concerns of what the weapons did, or did not, to the Spanish historians that wrote that, all I am doing is bringing them up. Same with the armor: more sources exist, but in spanish, single quotes and of course, museums on mexico. No one has been able to replicate Damascus Steel, so mayhaps no one has been able to replicate an Obsidian cudgel proper.

Also you are assuming the Aztecs never won a single battle against the Spaniards and never had access to their still armored bodies. Which is patently false. The Aztecs had their fair share of historical warfare, even before the Spaniards showed up.

I think a fair share of information regarding the specific case of the Aztec weaponry and armor has been relied to the first poster. I hope it helps him, as the decision is in the end, up to him.

Obsidian is hard yes, but it is also extremely brittle. A good material for a weapon strikes a balance between hardness and brittleness. Obsidian is glass. Look at all the cultures that knew/know how to both make glass and work metal and count up the number of them that ever routinely used glass over metal as a weapon material — you won't even need all the fingers of one hand. The Aztecs used it because it was better than anything else they had and could work, not because it was good.

edited 2nd Jun '14 6:42:40 PM by Madrugada

That's not material strength works. There are about a dozen different ways that materials can be "hard" or "strong", and which is important depends on what you're using them for. The Mohs scale of mineral hardness measures scratch resistance. It doesn't translate into taking impacts well, which is what a weapon or tool needs to be useful. Extreme hardness is actually counterproductive for most engineering purposes, since it means that the material is going to shatter completely when hit hard enough rather than deform enough to survive.

If you look at the scale you can see that regular glass is higher than unhardened steel. Smash a steel rod against a glass one and see which breaks.

Okay, provide a source detailing the aftermath of battle where the Aztecs killed a significant number of Spanish soldiers wherein it describes the weapons being thrown away because they weren't good enough.

Not against anyone with metal weapons and armor.

You are making some very wild conjectures that aren't really justified by the evidence that you've provided. There's nothing to take up with the historians. Pretty much every source I look at says that the Spanish weapons and armor were superior.

"Let us return to our battle. When they began to engage us, what a hailstorm of stones from their slings! Then archers, all the ground covered with double-pronged spears that cut through any kind of armor and the entrails where there is no protection!" page 120 from the aforementioned Spaniard account of Bernal Diaz del Castillo "The true history of the conquest of new spain" available in google books

"The Ichcahuipilli ("padded cover for war") [..] was adopted by spaniards whom called it 'caupile' by corruption" Jose fernando Ramirez, Obras Historicas I, page 333, in spanish. Available in google books.

Pages 19 and 20 oh John Pohl and Aadam Hook's "Aztec Warrior AD 1325 - 1521" details why the Aztecs used Obsidian why it worked against the Spaniards, and adds more depictions of the effectiveness, how the aztecs got it, WHY they got it and WHY they used it: it was plentiful, it was easy to work, and they had a method all dealt with to set up enough weapons that it did not matter how brittle it was: they had an armory reserve of them. This is from UCLA.

Plenty other physical copies of more archaeological recounts of it in spanish books.

Even your recount of the attempts to recreate it admit that the obsidian they used was not as refined as the ones the original weapons had. The show itself says it. not to mention they mention how impractical the Spanish armor was

Likewise, the Spaniards did not have the knowledge of fighting against people using slings that could tear faces apart, and swords so sharp they cut limbs off in a hack, so the argument is double-edged. Again, Obsidian was not to be underestimated when used as a weapon. The Spaniards won because there were other variables at play besides the weapons.

I'm of the mind that there is enough evidence to assume spaniards possibly did not have military technological advantage as a given.

Really, this is all missing the point: If the Aztecs not only had their sturdy leather armour and extremely sharp obsidian hand-weapons at their disposal, but flexible worked metal to reinforce that armour and weaponry and perhaps gunpowder to produce better projectiles, would they not have been well-matched to the Spanish expeditionary forces? I think so. They were perhaps the most brutal fighting force that the world had seen since the Assyrians.

...did you even look at that video?

"The steel armor of the Spaniards could have withstood most Aztec weapons."

Their problem with it was that it didn't cover the entire body (which is a pretty silly complaint; if the armor is protecting what it's covering then it's working). And they show how the steel sword wipes out the Aztec weapon's edge when the two clash.

Not being as refined as the Aztec weapon doesn't change the basic physics involved. A weapon that thick simply isn't suited for slicing, and isn't going to produce a clean cut through a large body. And what the hell good does having an armory full of them do when they won't even last a single blow?

No. Because of the diseases.

Yes. I saw limbs unprotected, faces smashed in, and the videomakers own commentary admitting that the Aztec weaponry was more than meets the eye. The sentence you quote is even ambiguous and says "could".

Did you see any of the quotes of the several books I provided, read how the methodology of the Aztec maces, like Damascus Steel, has not been able to be reproduced, and how the accounts of the Spaniards themselves are the ones narrating the effects of obsidian Aztec weaponry?

Have you read any of that?

Really. Take your complaints to those authors, and to those quotes, and to those long-dead Spaniards, because the subject of the thread is not the Aztecs. They are but one of the cultures in the precolumbian Americas and all I am saying is that metallurgy might not have had such an impact on Aztec warfare. Their tools for gardening and cultivation would have likely benefitted, for example, but not their weapons.

For example, Incas did take up the Spanish weapons. They did take their swords. The incas did not have Obsidian, and the Spanish technology in warfare was superior because Incas used Gold or Silver in their weapon forging (which were just more primitive spears, clubs and such), whereas these are not as effective metals as iron, or steel.

Incas would have probably benefitted more from metallurgy in warfare than Aztecs.

Dude, obsidian is a rock. What do you think the Aztecs could have done with it to make it into this superweapon you think it was?

And you're seriously talking about unprotected limbs and faces as a way of criticizing a breast plate? Did Aztec armor somehow protect them in places that it wasn't worn?

You seem to think that just throwing out some centuries old prose and demanding that we leap to the same conclusions that you have without any analysis is somehow proving your point. It's not. You tell me to take things up with historians as if historians are never skeptical or more deeply analytical when looking at these kinds of writings. Believe it or not, modern historians don't believe in El Dorado or the fountain of youth just because they have some writings about them. At the end of the day, the Aztec weapons died with them. The Spanish were nowhere near impressed enough with them to study them or equip their men in the rest of the New World conquests with them. It would be steel that would spread across the Americas, not obsidian. And you've still yet to tell my how you know that the Aztecs had an opportunity to take up Spanish weapons and failed to do so.

Meanwhile, this is not an issue that needs to rely on ancient prose. Modern society has spent a lot of time and energy studying materials. Even Damascus steel is not the magical mystery that you think it is. Straight from wikipedia:

"'Although certain types of modern steel outperform these swords', chemical reactions in the production process made the blades extraordinary 'for their time',"

It doesn't really matter what spin the Discovery hosts try to put on their video of Aztec weapons failboating against steel swords; we can watch the video and see which weapon comes out ahead.

I'm guiding you to books revising current information we have about the Aztecs up to and including the findings of archaeological situations. You ignored them. We know Spaniards recorded when the Natives took their weapons and used them, and we know the Aztecs did not, as opposed to the Incas who definitely did, as we know from Spanish records, depictions and so. I included you descriptions of their armor in the books you refused to read (where it described them as going as far as knee-length)and the recordings of several ancient historians, and modern ones are dismissed as "prose".

You even go as far as reducing the claims of obsidian being a harmful weapon to the levels of fairy tales.

You are completely and absolutely ignoring the archeological findings, the historical recounts, and patching it up to a board cleaved in half with rocks between it in a TV show as the best, most accurate representation of what the world has ever seen for obsidian weapons, blatantly ignoring what the people wielding these representations say after wielding them.

The entire purpose of the thread is to discuss how things worked for their time.

Yeah, of course if you compare it to modern uses, even the Spaniards' steel will fall short to what we have, that's obvious. You seem to accuse me of describing obsidian as a superweapon, while all I am saying it would be as much of a superweapon as the spaniards' swords were: what I am saying is that the notion of technological advantage in warfare for the spaniards as a given deserves reconsideration.

And the Spaniards did not take anything. They were not scientists: men like cortez and pizarro were pig farmers or uneducated mercenaries, and never did they seek amongst people what they could find to benefit themselves from, but instead, they just wanted the gold. The Spaniards did not send their scientists. No one did. Not even 100 years later was anyone sent to the native north american tribes to see what everyone else could learn from them.

Wikipedia also quotes the Aztec weapons as reportedly cutting horse heads. Wikipedia also quotes they were capable of lopping off heads. Obsidian and all. So it is either a source deserving consideration, like yours, or just a fairytale, in which case please contact Wikipedia and tell them they need their facts and sources straightened.

Seriously. Look. Let me get this little straw doll you have been rabidly attacking off your teeth: you are biting it too much and that cannot do any good to your dental health. OBSIDIAN WAS NOT BETTER THAN STEEL OR IRON, POTENTIALLY IT WAS SIMPLY JUST AS GOOD BUT ONLY AS A WEAPON. THE AZTECS WERE POSSIBLY EVEN-LEVELED IN TECHNOLOGICAL WARFARE COMPARED TO THE SPANIARDS, NOT CLEARLY SUPERIOR.