HANOVER, NEW HAMPSHIRE—According to a Live Science report, Nathaniel Dominy of Dartmouth College and R. Dana Carpenter of the University of Colorado, Denver, led a study that compared the strength of daggers carved from human and cassowary thigh bones. Such weapons are thought to have been used by warriors in New Guinea to kill enemies or finish them off after they had been wounded with arrows or spears, based upon accounts written by missionaries in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The researchers collected information on the density of the bones by performing computed tomography scans of five of each type of weapon. They also a purchased a newly made cassowary dagger and subjected it to a bending test. The test results suggest the human bone daggers were about twice as strong as the daggers made from bird bone, but mainly because of the way they had been shaped. Dominy and Carpenter think the warriors may have been more careful when fashioning the human femur daggers, since they were harder to replace. “Human bone daggers have to be sourced from a really important person,” Dominy said. “It has to be your father or someone who was respected in the community.” To read about a dagger discovered in Denmark, go to “Artifact: Bronze Age Dagger.”
