Hawaiian Axe Made with Shark Teeth and Other Fearsome Weapons of Yore

Trifter has a pretty neat post about some gruesome weapons from the past. I like this one, the Hawaiian Throwing Axe, made with ... shark teeth!

This Hawaiian Throwing Axe was a deadly hand held weapon that could be used at both short and long range. This weapon was made out of wood and shark teeth had the power to take men's limbs off. This weapon was mainly used when opposing Hawaiian armies closed upon each other. They were then thrown at the opposing troops to help soften enemy ranks before close combat. They could also be used in hand to hand combat and had the muscle to rip open skin as if it was butter. This was a very dangerous weapon and is not something you would want to go up against.

Link - Thanks jon jason!


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Hawaiians did not have throwing axes. The ranged weapons they favored were spears and the use of slings with rocks as projectiles was also prevalent.

The image pictured would be called a leiomano, although this is more of a modern take, and in function would not be thrown. It would be used as if it were a short-handled axe, with cutting and slicing motions to important areas of the body, but it was not thrown.
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The hunga-munga looks particularly frightening. i wouldn't want to be on the business end of that thing.
And am I the only one who wasn't reminded of 'Robin Hood: Men in Tights' when they saw the crossbow pistol, 'cause that would make me feel like a dork.
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@ stevo

Well, from what I gather that with the power of the swing from the mace and the mass of the blow I'm sure your skin would break and alot of blood would flow. For instance, a simple to the head would crack the skull and the thin skin covering. Major blood vessels in and around the head would rupture as a result.

From my research and thesis papers about Modern Warfare the use of infected booby traps in Vietnam was quite common. The Vietcong who were masters of jungle warfare would do this because as a result of fearing for booby traps because of injury the added fear of a deadly infection would demoralize the US and South Vietnamese troops. However, I cannot vouch for the 90% statistic since I don't know where the author got his information about that. But I'm guessing that when stuck in the middle of a jungle away from a clearing for helicopter pickups soldiers injured by infected booby traps could possibly succumb to the infection easily.
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@2: I don't know if you learned about maces from D&D or something, but I'm fairly certain that if you were hit by a heavy object (such as, for example...a mace) travelling at speed, you would probably end up rather bloodied - whether or not it was blunt is fairly irrelevant, although many maces were flanged.
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