We must now briefly consider their arts and manufactures. Stone was the material principally used for their weapons and implements. They were essentially in their Stone Age. Their knives, razors, lancets, spear and arrowheads were simply flakes of obsidian. These implements could be produced very cheaply, but the edge was quickly spoiled. Axes of different varieties of flint were made. They also used flint to carve the sculptured stones which we have described in the preceding chapter. They also had some way of working these big blocks of stone used in building. But they were not unacquainted with metals—the ornamental working of gold and silver had been carried to quite a high pitch. Were we to believe all the accounts given us of their skill in that direction, we would have to acknowledge they were the most expert jewelers known. How they cast or moulded their gold ornaments is unknown. They were also acquainted with other metals, such as copper, tin, and lead. But we can not learn for what purpose they used lead or tin, or where they obtained it.40
Cortez, in one of his letters, speaks of the use of small pieces of tin as money. But we have already seen that the natives had not risen to the conception of money. They certainly had copper tools, and bronze ones. It seems, however, that their bronze was a natural production and not an artificial one—that is to say, the ores of copper found in Mexico contain more or less gold, silver, and tin. So, if melted, just as nature left them, the result would be the production of bronze.41 They were then ignorant of the knowledge of how to make bronze artificially. This shows us that they had not attained to a true Bronze Age; and yet the discovery could not have been long delayed. Sooner or later they would have found out that tin and copper melted together would produce the light copper that experience had taught them was the most valuable.
The most important tool they made of copper was the ax. The ax, in both Mexico and Yucatan, was made as represented in this illustration. From their shape and mode of hafting them, we see at once they are simply models of the stone ax; and this recalls what we learned of the Bronze Age in Europe. At first they contented themselves with copying the forms in stone.
