I’ve been coming across videos of people breaking obsidian chunks to make arrowheads but could never find the answer why it could be broken with light hits with a rock, and then not break when in use with said weapon.
In: 564
All tool materials are a compromise. And the native Americans at least had no steel or bronze technology. So they used what they had, glass. Glasses including obsidian are actually fairly hard, and they are easy to fracture into a shape with an extremely sharp edge, much sharper than you could ever get steel. In fact a fresh obsidian edge can be hard to see even under an electron microscope. Glass breaks along lines of atoms .
But really the answer is obsidian was all they had. I guess bone was an option and fire hardened wood and other rocks similar to obsidian
Latest Answers