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obsidian | PLAINS of  STONE

Traded as tools and luxuries since the very earliest days across the Aegean Sea, Obsidian fractures like glass yielding sharp-edged fragments, which have been used in many localities around the world as arrow-points, spear-heads, knives and razors. Mirrors, masks and labrets found across Central America show it was extensively employed, under the name of itztli, by the ancient Mexicans who quarried it at the Cerro de las Navajas, or “ Hill of Knives,” near Timapan. The natives of the Admiralty Islands have used it for the heads of spears while the Ancient Greeks and Romans worked obsidian as a gem-stone.

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