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The Cult of the Ax 



By George Grant MacCurdy 



COMPLETE genealogy of the ax would form an inter- 

 esting chapter. Our modern ax (as well as hatchet) is a 

 combination tool, being used both for cutting and as a 

 hammer. This twofold character has been retained through 

 long ages, so that the history of the ax proper is inter- 

 woven with that of the hammer or club, and the long phylogenetic 

 history of both entitles them to rank high in the domain of archeology. 

 The need of something with which to cut or sever, to bruise or break, 

 is primal, whatever may have been the immediate purpose to be 

 served. The prototype of the ax in the broad sense, then, was perhaps 

 primitive man's first invention. With it he blazed his way to civili- 

 zation. In time it came to be in a very real sense a part of himself, its 

 origin as mysterious as his own. That to the ax should be attached 

 unusual significance therefore is but natural, inevitable. 



In the paleolithic prototypes of the ax there is little to suggest the 

 existence of a cult, ' unless it be on the one hand the diminutive, and 

 on the other the exaggerated, size of certain specimens. During the 

 neolithic and later periods however the evidence is unmistakable. 



In the New World the cult of the ax is especially evident in the 

 more or less elaborately carved effigy axes of semi-precious stone from 

 Mexico and Central America, in stone statues represented as hold- 

 ing hafted axes, and in the monolithic axes from our own Southern 

 States, the West Indies, and the West Coast. 



The author's interest in monolithic axes has crystalized about a 

 remarkable specimen (fig. i), the history of which has been lost. 

 Many years ago this ax was turned over to the Peabody Museum of 

 Yale University by the Yale School of the Fine Arts. It had been 

 broken into three pieces by its aboriginal owners; for two of the 

 fragments retain the greenish color of the chloritized porphyry out 

 of which the ax was carved, while the third has taken on a uniform 

 reddish-brown tone due to fire or exposure. The three pieces fit to- 

 gether perfectly, and with the exception of a few slight chips the 

 specimen is complete. Whether it had been "killed" or only acci- 

 dently broken will never be known. It is of a type now known to 



1 A. Rutot, Sur les traces de l'existence d'un culte de la hache pendant le paleolithique in- 

 ferieur, Congr. preh. de France, C. R., VI e session, Tours, IQIO, Le Mans, 191 1. 



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