Aztec,Maya and Incan Warfare

true, but when embroiled in the war with the spanish and their Tlaxcalan allies, they certainly seemed to kill whenever they had the chance, and to do it pretty well.

As paul said, there's a lot we don't know about how effective their armor and weapons really were, when used by those who had trained to fight with them. Also as he said, it's unsurse as to how well a katana or other steel sword might penetrate 2" of quilted cotton armor. However, their armor wasn't just cotton-from what i hear, they treated it with something (the official explanation is seawater, but it's been found that that wouldn't work very well and might have just been a lie told to the spanish) that made it even more resilient. 

The macahuitl was a deadly weapon, although hampered by it's inability to be used in a thrust. It wouldn't have penetrated metal armor (probably), but, to be fair, a solid breastplate wouldn't be bothered much by a metal sword, either. Medieval knights used axes, hammers, and maces a lot because their swords just wouldn't penetrate, unless the blade was inserted into a joint.  Probably, someone with a macahuitl would go for joints, extremities, fingers, toes, and other such hard-to-defend and generally unarmored (or less armored) places.


Edited by TheARRGH - 13-Aug-2007 at 20:38

thanks for the recommendation! And the interesting thing (one of; there are so many) is that the tendency to debilitate the opponent could easily be adapted for the purpose of killing. Striking joints and other areas which are hard to defend is one of the most effective techniques for winning a fight-by the conservative use of your energies to wear down and debilitate your opponent.

It's interesting to think about because far too many people think that the aztecs, for instance, lost to the spanish partly because of their unwillingness to kill. Records show that, when needed, they were quite willing to kill their enemies on the battlefield-apparently, i imagine, because the techniques used to debilitate their opponents translated fairly easily into ways to kill them.