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After the Agricultural Revolution, people started living a more settled life. [People eating in their garden]

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Villages turned into towns, which evolved, into cities…

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…systems of government were invented… [Obama giving a speech]

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…societies got more complex…

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What a time to be alive. [Man complaining is shushed by others]

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But one of the many bummers about all that progress is the violence that came with it.

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Hey, bad stuff comes with the good.

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No matter how glorious and diversified a bag of jellybeans may be, there’s always a couple [Man picks a jellybean out of a bowl]

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of those gross licorice flavored ones hiding in the mix. [Man eats the jellybean and spits it out]

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So as society got more organized, war became bigger, bloodier, and…well, more organized, [Soldiers on a battlefield]

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too.

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And no, we're not talking new inventions. [Men hitting each other with sticks]

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People were stuck with their same old arrows and clubs until metalworking got popular. [Man shoots an arrow]

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But now, societies were big and organized enough to intentionally create armies and [Soldiers coming off a production line]

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go conquer peoples.

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Which is basically the first step in empire building.

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So if any of you are planning on building an empire of your own, you're welcome. [Kid with his thumbs up]

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Some of you may be saying…

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"You mean to tell us that we can build an empire with nothing more than stone-tipped [Kid asking a question in class]

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arrows and spears…?

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Get out of town."

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Well, we most certainly will not get out of town. [Man sat on his lawn]

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We like it here and we're still paying our mortgage.

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But we also have proof…

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Take the Aztecs, who dominated Mexico from the 1300s -1500s, relying mostly on weapons [Aztecs stood next to a map of Mexico]

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made of wood and stone.

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Yeah, the Americas never got into the whole, "metal weapons" thing.

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But that didn't stop them.

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The Aztecs had large-scale warfare down pat. [Aztecs chuck metal spears]

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Their entire society in fact was built around warfare.

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Men could climb in rank through military achievement…AKA killing people. [Aztec soldier kills man who has given him a medal]

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Their religion revolved around sacrifices to the gods…AKA killing animals and people. [Aztec man chucks a person into a fire]

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And a big chunk of the economy was built around tribute from conquered societies…AKA societies

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conquered by…killing people. [Aztec soldiers going around killing everyone]

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By the early 1500s, that culture of crazy bloody war had paid off.

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The Aztecs had built a loosely-stuck-together empire stretching across Mexico, and they

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did it all with Stone Age weapons. [Stone temple]

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They had bows, arrows, and atlatls, sure, but they also had their own special

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invention: the maquahuitl.

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A maquahuitl was a flat wooden club with super sharp pieces of obsidian attached to the edges. [Picture of a maquahuitl]

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They were the weapons of the elite…kinda like swords were for knights.

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And they were great for hacking and slashing at close quarters, which the Aztec were pretty [Aztec chopping down trees with his maquahuitl]

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into, as you might've guessed…

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Maquahuitls definitely didn't revolutionize the world of weapons.

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But they're a good example of creative, effective weapons that existed before metalworking came [Aztec hitting a rock]

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on the scene.

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And if nothing else, those Aztec warriors looked seriously ferocious while swinging

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them.

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If we pulled one of these out when someone was trying to mug us, we bet the robber would [Robber holds knife up to a man]

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go home and cry to his mom. [Man pulls out a maquahuitl and the robber runs away]

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