Friday, January 7, 2022

Ross Hassig vs. James White on the macuahuitl/macana being labelled as a "sword"

 Mesoamerican scholar and expert on Mayan and Aztecan warfare:

 

Images of battles between brightly garbed Aztec soldiers armed with wooden swords edged with razor-sharp obsidian blades and ornately feathered shields and brightly shining steel-armored Spaniards with Toledo swords and charging horses are not long in dominating the popular imagination. (Ross Hassig, Polygamy and the Rise and Demise of the Aztec Empire [Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2016], 1, emphasis added)

 




Reformed Baptist with no training in ancient history and anthropology on why the "macana"/"macuahuitl" cannot be a sword:

 

[it] is a war club with sharp rocks embedded in it! (source; see the review of this article by Matthew P. Roper, Of Cynics and Swords)