CHAPTER VI—MEXICO: CRAFTS, DRESS, AND DAILY LIFE
FOR most practical purposes the Mexicans at the date of the Spanish conquest were living in an age of stone. It is true that they both knew and worked two metals with great facility, namely, gold and copper, especially the former; but gold is useless as a material from which to make implements, and copper was not sufficiently plentiful to be employed very freely. Both these metals were therefore utilized principally in the manufacture of ornaments, though copper tools were employed in wood-carving and a few minor arts.
Hard stone from which adze-and axe-blades and chisels could be manufactured occurred in quantities in Mexico, and various volcanic rocks were quarried for the purpose of making implements. Chalcedony and other flinty materials were used in the manufacture of knife-blades, and the workmanship of these, especially of some of the specimens from the Mixtec country, are surpassed only by the finest examples of ripple-flaking from ancient Egypt (see Fig. 19,8). Knifeblades of this form were usually thrust into a simple ball of resin to form a handle, though for ceremonial use elaborately carved wooden hafts covered with turquoise and shell mosaic (PL XVIII, i) were fitted to them. But the material which perhaps was of the greatest use to the Mexicans was obsidian. From blocks of this natural glass long flakes could be detached by pressure, each of which came away from the core with a razor-edge. Such flakes were used as knives without further preparation, or were inset along the borders of wooden
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