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Mexican Obsidian Sword

MEXICAN BLACK OBSIDIAN. This exceptional glosy obsidian is available to you. Spalled or by the rough nodule at only $2.50 per pound. MEDIUM FLAT RATE BOX SPALLS 20lbs. LARGE FLAT RATE BOX SPALLS 35lbs. Size: MediumColor: Obsidian Black Verified Purchase I was waiting all morning for the mail to run because i was so excited for my Aztec Death Whistle to get here. As soon as the mail man drove off, i was out to get it. Obsidian is found in Europe, Japan, Mexico, South America, the United States, and many other places. Jul 03, 2019 The Popol Vuh is a sacred Maya text which narrates the Maya creation myths and describes the early Maya dynasties.Most of the Maya books were destroyed by zealous priests during the colonial era: the Popol Vuh survived by chance and the original is currently housed at the Newberry Library in Chicago.

Mexican Obsidian Implements

Obsidian monkey jar from Texcoco

One of the most famous objects in Mexico City’s Museo Nacional de Antropología (National Anthropology Museum) is this exquisite jar, made of obsidian, depicting a monkey holding its tail above its head. Other similar - and larger - pieces exist, made of onyx or other colourful stones, in museums outside Mexico, but this one from Texcoco, just 6 inches high, remains a rare classic. The great Mexican archaeologist and historian Ramón Piña Chan described the piece, 50 years ago in the Museum’s first major catalogue, as ‘one of the most valuable pieces in the museum and an absolute unique model’.. (Written by Ian Mursell/Mexicolore)

But what is the story behind this exceptional Mexica vessel, depicting a ‘stylised monkey, as smoothly polished as a mirror’?
The Spanish recognised the supreme skill of Aztec lapidaries (precious stone workers) very soon after arriving in the New World. The skill of working prismatic obsidian blades had in fact first developed in Mesoamerica, among the Olmec, some 2,500 years prior to the Spanish invasion, remaining largely unchanged in all that time and based on a hard volcanic glass that scholars have since called ‘the steel of the New World’. The Spanish friar Juan de Torquemada, in his Monarquía Indiana (1615) admired ‘workmen who still make knives of a certain black stone or flint, which it is a most wonderful and admirable thing to see.. the ingenuity which invented this art is much to be praised.’ He noticed that the technique used involved splitting off pieces of obsidian using the force of pressure rather than the more percussive method of knapping the raw block with a harder stone. Polishing was generally accomplished with abrasives including sand, a piece of cane, and/or water mixed with powdered stone or flint.

Some clues into just how these fine stone vessels were made - and how complex it was - comes from finding unfinished examples. Javier Urcid outlines the stages involved: ‘Raw material was extracted from its matrix by cutting a block with strings. Mac control for ipad. The next step involved finishing the exterior features, regardless of whether the vessels were plain or decorated. This step required techniques such as cutting, drilling, grinding, chiseling, pecking, and polishing. Once the exterior was completed, the artisans carved out the vessels with tubular hollow drill bits made from animal long bones and reeds or perhaps with solid bits made of hard wood.. Finishing involved chiselling, pecking, grinding, smoothing and polishing the scars left by the drilling.’

Though several monkey effigy vessels are known, only one comes from a funerary offering, leaving scholars guessing as to the main purpose of these pieces; one thing is certain, though - they were only made for members of the élite. And why a (spider) monkey? Urcid suggests this may relate to ‘the saga of a failed creation, in which monkeys featured importantly, before the advent of true humans, or perhaps it alludes to the playful character of the patron deities of artisans.’

The Aztecs’ love of stones of different colours and shiny surfaces, such as obsidian and onyx marble, out of which they made a range of sculptures, containers and jewellery, led, however, to complications centuries later in the art world, since, as Esther Pasztory explains, ‘these pieces became favourite collectors items for Westerners in the nineteenth century for their precious material, generally small size, and beautiful carving; the market for such pieces led to the making of forgeries, which still continues..’
It was, unsurprisingly perhaps, in the 19th century that we first pick up the story of the famous obsidian vessel in the spotlight here. It arrived in Mexico’s National Museum in 1880, was catalogued as having come from ‘an ancient tomb, found in the grounds of an hacienda near Tezcoco’, was photographed first in 1891, and was the subject of an article written in 1884 by the French collector and archaeologist Eugene Boban, who claimed that a Dr. Rafael Lucio had obtained the piece in 1869 after spotting it in the home of a patient of his.

The patient had apparently ‘bought the object from a peasant farmer who found it on an hacienda, in exchange for a sheep “worth 12 reales”’. According to Boban, the good doctor, aware of the value of the piece and to salve his conscience, gave his patient a diamond ring the next day. He later sold it to the Museo Nacional ‘for a bargain, so it could remain in the country where it was made’. Jane Walsh, who researched this story, suspects that Boban was somehow involved in assessing the value of the object, which would explain his intimate knowledge of the conversations and deal between Lucio and the campesino. We know that Boban was not only highly knowledgeable on the subject of the value and whereabouts of Mexican antiquities at the time, but also of the existence of numerous fake pieces, including obsidian ones, hailing from the small town of San Juan Teotihuacán. He later wrote, rather cryptically, that the ancient Mexicans ‘never made figures or idols of obsidian’, concentrating their work mainly on masks, jewellery and adornments, concluding ‘all obsidian objects with body, arms and legs can be considered fakes’. No-one, though, is suggesting this almost-too-perfect-to-be-true piece is anything other than ‘the real deal’; or are they? Actually, yes! Follow the link below to see who..

Sources consulted:-
• Walsh, Jane M. (2004) ‘La Vasija de Obsidiana de Texcoco’, Arqueología Mexicana vol. XII, no. 70, 66-67
• Pastrana, Alejandro (2006) ‘La Obsidiana en Mesoamérica’, Arqueología Mexicana vol. XIV, no 80, 49-54
• Pasztory, Esther (1983) Aztec Art, Harry N. Abrams, New York
• Ramírez Vázquez, Pedro et al (1968) The National Museum of Anthropology, Mexico, Harry N. Abrams, New York
• Urcid, Javier (2010) ‘Valued Possessions: Materiality and Aesthetics in Western and Southwestern Mesoamerica’ in Ancient Mexican Art at Dumbarton Oaks (Ed. Susan Toby Evans), Dumbarton Oaks Research Library, Washington, 191-199
• Heyden, Doris (1991) ‘Dryness Before the Rains: Toxcatl and Tezcatlipoca in To Change Place: Aztec Ceremonial Landscapes (Ed. Davíd Carrasco), University Press of Colorado, 188-202
• Tylor, Edward B. (1861) Anahuac Longman, Green, Longman and Roberts, London
• Florentine Codex. Book 11 - Earthly Things (1963) trans. by Charles E. Dibble & Arthur J.O. Anderson, School of American Research and University of Utah, Santa Fe, New Mexico
• Bray, Warwick (1968) Everyday Life of the Aztecs, Dorset Press, New York.

Picture sources:-
• Main pic: photo by Ana Laura Landa/Mexicolore
• Pic 1: image from the Florentine Codex (original in the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Florence): images scanned from our own copy of the Club Internacional del Libro 3-volume facsimile edition, Madrid, 1994
• Pic 2: image scanned from Valued Possessions.. (see Urcid, Javier, above)
• Pix 3, 4 & 6: photos by Ian Mursell/Mexicolore
• Pic 5: image from the Codex Mendoza (original in the Bodleian Library, Oxford) scanned from our own copy of the James Cooper Clark facsimile edition, London, 1938
• Pic 7: image downloaded from last link below.

This article was uploaded to the Mexicolore website on Apr 04th 2018

“See and Be Seen: (‘Smoking’) Mirrors” - learn more about obsidian and the Mexica

‘The “Skull of Doom of Lubaantun” and other spectacular forgeries’ - scroll to bottom of page..

The state of Jalisco hosts the fourth-largest obsidian deposits in the world. In pre-Hispanic times, obsidian was perhaps as valuable as oil is today because from it could be made knives, scrapers and arrowheads, as well as jewelry and mirrors.
Because obsidian was so abundant in western Mexico, a typical mine was nothing more than a hole or trench no deeper than a meter or two and open to the sky.
Today their remains typically resemble shallow depressions, surrounded by the broken bits of tools that didn’t pass muster.
But one day archaeologist Rodrigo Esparza told me about an exception.
“Not far from San Isidro, we found an obsidian mine that’s completely underground and dark as a cave. It’s just the sort of place you would love . . .”
San Isidro Mazatepec is located 13 kilometers west of Guadalajara. Here, members of our Zotz Caving Club found Rodrigo Esparza and Phil Weigand, the legendary discoverer of the Guachimontones, waiting for us next to a beat-up truck.

“This is the first underground obsidian mine we’ve found in Jalisco,” said Weigand, “so it needs to be surveyed and mapped. However, to get inside of it, you have to crawl on your hands and knees through low, narrow passages . . . and we suspect there are plenty of vampire bats inside . . .”
“So you thought of us,” I replied, “but to tell you the truth, it does sound like a place we would love!”
We climbed into the truck bed and the old archaeologist drove us out of town along a dirt road full of ruts. Eventually we passed through a fence on to private land.
“We’ve been riding on an expressway until now,” said Weigand, “but here comes the rough stuff.”
And rough it was. We had to make sure some of us were sitting on two concrete slabs (kept in the truck bed for ballast) so they wouldn’t fly around and land on top of us.
In parts of the mine, the ceiling is less than a meter high.
After half an hour of bouncing and bumping, we pulled to a stop among tall oak trees at the base of a small hill. Pieces of obsidian covered every inch of the ground around us like autumn leaves in New England.
Rubbing our sore bottoms after the hammering they had received on the awful, rocky road, we picked up unfinished arrow and spear heads, knives, flakes, scrapers and other fragments that had obviously been worked on and discarded.
We were standing in the middle of a typical obsidian workshop and it brought home the importance — perhaps unimaginable to us moderns — that obsidian played in the lives of the people living here for most of the last 2,000 years.
Those ancients had no metal tools or weapons but they knew what few people today would believe, that nothing on earth is as sharp as an obsidian blade.

Green Obsidian From Mexico

“All other liquids crystallize when they turn solid,” explained Phil Weigand, “except obsidian, which has no crystal structure whatsoever.”
Metal can’t be sharpened less than the size of its smallest crystals, but obsidian has no such limit. In the old days, indigenous Mexicans used to line the edges of their flat wooden sword — called the macahuitl — with obsidian flakes, and it is said it could slice off a man’s leg with one blow.
Several pieces we picked up did indeed have a smoky-green luster and a very shiny surface. “Do you think they made mirrors out of this?” I asked.
“Oh no,” replied Phil. “They only used the blackest obsidian for that because they believed mirrors depict how you will look in the afterlife and black was the color of death.”
As we discussed death and obsidian, we walked up the hill to the mine. Emanating from the small, triangular entrance hole, barely large enough for a human being to squeeze through, was a light current of air carrying the unmistakable smell of a dead animal inside.
Immediately, it was decided that I would go first into the Smelly Unknown. I wriggled through the small hole and was received by a welcoming committee of little black flies which angrily flew around my head. As they didn’t bite, I started crawling along until I found myself in a room where the roof was just one meter above the floor. The evil stench was coming from somewhere in here but I couldn’t find the source.
Above me there was a small skylight. A few meters on, in another room where there was almost no daylight, I nearly put my hand into a gooey black puddle that I immediately recognized from so many visits to western Mexico’s caves.
“Yup, we’ve got vampire bats, alright,” I shouted to the others, who were listening at the entrance hole, hoping this would encourage them to rush right in. Of course, the fresh vampire guano added yet another tantalizing odor to the already notable aroma of the mine.
Ten meters from the entrance, I came to a steep down slope. I glanced up at the ceiling and gulped. My headlamp revealed sharply pointed “spears” of obsidian pointing down at me and it looked like any one of them could easily be pulled out — or even fall out by itself — perhaps resulting in the collapse of the entire roof! This was a unique substitute for the stalactites found in limestone caves.
“Amigos, you have to come in here. This is something you’re never going to see in a cave.”
To my surprise, my compañeros (but not the archaeologists, by the way) did come in, braving the bugs, the decomposing corpse and the slimy vampire guano. By then, I was moving down the slope to total darkness and another, much bigger pool of tar-like vampire goo.
Now, they had told us that this mine was as dark as a cave, but I would say “darker than the darkest cave” because the black obsidian ceiling, walls and floor — with a little help from the vampire guano on the floor — absorbed light even more than the black basalt walls of a lava tube, making it exceedingly difficult indeed to see anything using flashlights and headlamps.
The creatures living in that black room, however, had no problem “seeing” us thanks to their marvelous echolocation skills. All around us we could hear them darting.
Suddenly one would land on the wall near us. In the dim light of our headlamps, we could see it shifting left and right, showing us its fangs, shaking its head menacingly and then flying right at us.
Ah, but we knew about this little trick. It’s all a show and they never actually hit you (much less bite you, which they only do to sleeping or immobile prey).
One nice thing about this room which we soon christened “The Boudoir of the Vampires,” was that at last we could stand up and move around easily, truly a blessing as we had been crawling along on the natural equivalent of broken beer bottles: shards of volcanic glass that tinkled every time we moved.
In Stygian blackness we walked down the slope to what turned out to be the end of the mine. And suddenly we were standing at the very last spot where the ancient miners had been at work. This was a perfectly vertical wall.
It was flat, except for a beautiful nodule of creamy-green obsidian — big as a basketball — embedded in the wall and protruding from it.
What had stopped the ancient miners from prying out this prize? Was it a shout from a fellow worker: “Hey, Mixtli, forget that rock! Some bizarre creatures are coming down the hill, half men and half animals. We have to get out of here — run for it!”
For whatever reason, they left, their job incomplete. We, instead, were able to complete our survey and then we too, left, allowing the old mine to return to its habitual darkness and silence, broken only by the occasional flapping of vampire wings.