Not far from the discs, on the shelves of the Museum of Anthropology and History in Mexico City, you can see strange objects that very much resemble … bobbins (spools of thread) in modern sewing machines. They are almost the same in size.
However, bobbins for modern sewing machines are stamped from plastic (in the twentieth century they were metal), and here they have exactly the same shape, but from obsidian!.. Small discs only a millimeter thick on a common cylinder, which is made hollow and has the same millimeter wall thickness - and it's all monolithic!..
There can be no question of any manual production and primitive tools. It is difficult to imagine anything other than a lathe with diamond (or similar in hardness and strength) cutters. The entire shape of the "bobbins" indicates just such a manufacturing method. Indeed, to obtain such accurate round shapes, the workpiece must be rotated in a strictly fixed position. Hard obsidian requires even harder cutters. And in order for obsidian to be cut off, and not chipped off, a high rotation speed of the workpiece is needed. So we get a lathe in its purest form!..
Did the Indians of pre-Columbian Mesoamerica have something like that?.. No. But the "spools" are quite real!.. And they were found during archaeological work on ancient sites, and were not brought from a modern workshop. There is absolutely no reason to doubt the authorship of the products - they were made by the civilization of the gods.
Even more surprising are similar objects made of another material - of rock crystal. Crystal has a much higher hardness than obsidian. And you can only cut it with even harder materials. A diamond cutter is fine here. Something else is unlikely …
Rhinestone bobbins (Mexico City).
Historians believe that "bobbins" were used as just … ritual decorations. Say, the Indians - representatives of the nobility or priesthood - cut a hole in the skin under their lower lip and inserted this "spool" there. Such is the exotic piercing. A banal assignment for an item, the manufacture of which requires technologies that the Indians did not have at all.
Historians generally call “ritual” all those objects whose real purpose they cannot explain within the framework of the picture of the past they have adopted …
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Although, however, the Indians could really use the "bobbins" precisely as decorations - give some Papuan from a wild tribe living deep in the jungle a used ballpoint pen, he can easily insert it into a pierced earlobe or even nostrils as a decoration instead of a simple the wand he used to carry there.
And in the hypothesis about the ritual purpose, historians may actually be right. If the Indians understood that the "spools" came to them from a civilization much more developed than themselves, then the Indians could well consider the representatives of this civilization as gods, and the objects they inherited from the gods as divine. And divine objects, of course, should have been used only in the most significant rituals of worshiping these same gods.
However, such use says absolutely nothing about the original purpose of the "bobbins".
What could it be like?.. Here, alas, one can only guess.
Directly the shape of the "bobbin" most of all corresponds to a certain rotating component of some complex mechanism. But confused by the fragility of the material used. Because of it, the "bobbin" will not be able to withstand any serious load. Rock crystal, of course, will be stronger than obsidian, but still not by much, and it does not remove the problem. It is unlikely that the gods used such fragile products in their devices. Still, the "bobbins" look more like an imitation of really some parts of mechanisms, but the original parts themselves could have been made of metal or other durable materials.
However, bobbins in sewing machines are not particularly stressed, so obsidian can be used for them …
Electromagnetic coil.
In addition, the shape of the "bobbin" suggests another variant of its use familiar to us. If instead of threads we wind a metal wire around it, then we get an electromagnetic coil - an object that is now very widely used. The hollow cylinder in the center of the "bobbin" is quite suitable for placing a metal rod there, which improves the magnetic properties of such a coil. And if you use a rod made of nickel or its special alloys, then such a structure, when passed through an alternating current coil of the corresponding frequency, will be able to generate ultrasonic vibrations that have a wide range of applications …
Similar in shape to the "spool", two obsidian products are on the shelves of a local museum in Oaxaca, Mexico. Only here they have a size of about 5-6 centimeters in diameter and are more like the rims of small wheels or some "cuffs". Next to them is another object, similar to some kind of "sleeve". The similarity of these three finds with the details of some complex mechanical device is even greater.
However, both for the “cuffs” and for the “sleeve” all the same problems associated with the fragility of obsidian remain, both in manufacturing and in operation …
Obsidian Cuffs (Oaxaca).
In a small museum located at the very entrance to the Mexican archaeological complex of Tula (Tollan), there is an even more incomprehensible find. Here, among the uttermost primitive clay vessels, the simplest tools and roughly worked stone sculptures, a strange obsidian object, literally 10-12 centimeters in size, is suddenly discovered. The quality of its workmanship again brings to mind high technologies: the shape along any of the intermediate radii and boundary circles - both external and internal - are perfectly maintained. And all this is also polished. Nothing comes to mind except a lathe and a milling machine with diamond cutters!..
The shape of the object is rather strange. The find found in Tula is similar, perhaps, except for a cuff in some kind of device. For the Indians, such an object was clearly unnecessary. Unless you put dishes with a rounded bottom on it. But such use is clearly beyond reasonable, given the enormous amount of labor that would be required to manufacture such an item by hand. Most likely, the "cuff" should still be attributed to the ancient highly developed in a technical respect civilization of the gods. And the Indians, it seems, got it only by inheritance from distant predecessors.
It is quite possible that a small "spool" of the same obsidian, located next to the "cuff" (in the picture, it is located between two obsidian knives, in the manufacture of which the Indians have no doubt), also belongs to such an inheritance. Its quality, of course, is significantly inferior to analogues from the Museum of Anthropology and History in Mexico City. However, even here it is just right to remember a lathe with a hard and durable tool. Especially when you consider the small size of the "bobbin" …
Obsidian "cuff" and "bobbin" (Tula).
The initial source of data for historians about Tula (Tollan) and the Toltecs who created this monument at one time was the legends of the Aztecs (or Astecs, as modern researchers of the past of the Mesoamerican region increasingly prefer to call them). The Aztecs attributed most of their knowledge, arts and wisdom to their predecessors, the Toltecs, considering themselves their cultural heirs.
The Aztecs literally romanticized the Toltecs, praising their all kinds of talents and virtues. The very word "toltec" ("toltecat", "toltecatl") in Nahua (the language of the Aztecs) meant "artist", "master". Moreover, such a master differed from a simple artisan in that he created not just objects, but actually works of art. There was even a term "toltekayotl", which was understood as "toltext spirit" - a kind of combination of sciences and arts, which was based on the constant communication of the Toltec master with the gods. And Tollan was considered to be the concentration and center of "Toltekayotl", which archaeologists and historians in the end decided to identify with Tula.
However, Tula does not at all give the impression of some kind of center of high arts and knowledge either in its architecture, or in the construction techniques used, or in the quality of the household items found here. Another thing is the “cuff” and “bobbin” from the local museum. But these two items are so sharply out of the range of local artifacts that they give the impression of completely alien elements.
As a variant of resolving this contradiction, the following hypothesis can be put forward.
It is not excluded that the Aztecs inherited from the Toltecs a fairly large collection of some very high-quality artifacts, which were then taken out of the Tula region and later "identified" as created by the Aztecs, Mayans or other peoples, after which they ended up on the shelves and in the bins of museums with the corresponding tags. And the "cuff" and "bobbin" in Tula are only pitiful remnants of this collection.
But the Toltecs were not the authors of this collection themselves, they also inherited it - perhaps through third, fourth and more hands - from the ancient highly developed civilization of the gods.
A. Sklyarov
