Yes Ian, I understood your comment to be within the context of knives from this geographic area. I added my post in an attempt to clarify exactly what that cutout was.
The addition of a choil to a blade is something that can occur anywhere, and without any outside influence. I used to cut a choil into the blades of knives I used as a kid, sub-12 years of age. I'd never seen a blade with a choil at that time, I did not know what a choil was, but I did know that if I didn't run a rats tail file across the blade edge up near the end of the cutting edge, I would damage the ferrule or the hilt itself, and the cutout made the blade easier to sharpen.
There is a theory known as "parallel development". Broadly it states that similar things happen at similar times in widely spaced places and without any cross contact or influence.
Possibly that is what we can see in these Tinguian knives:- they did not need to get the idea to use a choil from anywhere, they simply found that it was a natural development that made life easier.
Sometimes human beings act in similar ways simply because they are human beings.
|