When we consider the beauty of the Mexican stonecutter’s work, it seems wonderful that they should have been able to do it without iron tools.  It is quite clear that, at the time of the Spanish Conquest, they used bronze hatchets, containing that very small proportion of tin which gives the alloy nearly the hardness of steel.  We saw many of these hatchets in museums, and Mr. Christy bought some good specimens in a collection of antiquities which had belonged to an old Mexican, who got them principally from the suburb of Tlatelolco, in the neighbourhood of the ancient market-place of the city.  Such axes were certainly common among the ancient Mexicans.  One of the items of the hieroglyphic tribute-roll in the Mendoza Codex is eighty bronze hatchets.

A story told by Bernal Diaz is to the point.  He says that he and his companions, noticing that the Indians of the coast generally carried bright metal axes, the material of which looked like gold of a low quality, got as many as six hundred such axes from them in the course of three days’ bartering, giving them coloured glass-beads in exchange.  Both sides were highly satisfied with their bargain; but it all came to nothing, as the chronicler relates with considerable disgust, for the gold turned out to be copper, and the beads were found to be trash when the Indians began to understand them better.  Such hard copper axes as these have been found at Mitla, in the State of Oajaca, where the ruined temples seem to form a connecting link between the monuments of Teotihuacan and Xochicalco and the ruined cities of Yucatan and Chiapas.

We want one more link in the chain to show the use of the same kind of tools from Mexico down to Yucatan, and this link we can supply.  In Lord Kingsborough’s great work on Mexican Antiquities there is one picture-writing, the Dresden Codex, which is not of Aztec origin at all.  Its hieroglyphics are those of Palenque and Uxmal; and in this manuscript we have drawings of hatchets like those of Mexico, and fixed in the same kind of handles, but of much neater workmanship.

But here we come upon a difficulty.  It is supposed that the pyramids of Teotihuacan, as well as most of the great architectural works of the country, were the work of the Toltec race, who quitted this part of the country several centuries before the Spanish Conquest.  It seems incredible that bronze should have been in use in the country for so long a time, and not have superseded so bad a material as stone for knives and weapons.  We have good evidence to show that in Europe the introduction of bronze was almost simultaneous with the complete disuse of stone for such purposes.  It is true that Herodotus describes the embalmers, in his time, as cutting open the bodies with “an Ethiopic stone” though they were familiar with the use of metal.  Indeed the flint knives which he probably meant may be seen in museums.  But this peculiar usage was most likely kept up for some mystical reason, and does not affect the general question.  Almost as soon as the Spaniards brought iron to Mexico, it superseded the old material.  The “bronze age” ceased within a year or two, and that of iron began.