Origin of the Kalinga Axe

[migueldiaz]

Funeral activities re headhunting:

[migueldiaz]

The "usually mile long" parade of Igorot warriors must had been a sight to behold as they snake through the rice terraces ...

[migueldiaz]

Pics showing the "context" within which headhunting took place:

[migueldiaz]

Finally, some Tingguian activities pics (and here's a recent news article on the current status of the Tingguians).

[Tim Simmons]

I move away from weapons but would just like to say that these pictures and others, show these people had/have a fasinating and beautiful sculptural sence in building and landscaping with natural stone forms.

[migueldiaz]

Originally Posted by Tim Simmons

I move away from weapons but would just like to say that these pictures and others, show these people had/have a fasinating and beautiful sculptural sence in building and landscaping with natural stone forms.

Yes, those 2,000-year old Igorot rice terraces are a sight to behold (it's been declared a Unesco World Heritage site by they way).

I've been to Bali, Indonesia once and they too have hillside rice terraces in there. But the scale is much smaller compared to the ones made by the Igorots.

On the head axes, I've been fooling around with two recently acquired Kalinga head axes. After etching, one of them exhibited a hardened edge, along the chiseled cutting edge (see pics).

I understand though that there's a wide variation on how these axes are made. So, this hardened edge feature can be absent in other authentic samples.

[migueldiaz]

Radleigh's Head Axe... A good one? revived my interest on the origin of the northern Luzon head-axe.

From Fay-Cooper Cole's 1922 book on the Tinguians [aka Itnegs], an upland tribe which shares the Cordillera mountain range with the Igorots:

While the axe is primarily a weapon, its use is by no means confined to warfare. It is used in house and fence building, in cutting up game and forest products, and in many other ways. Fig. 8 [below] shows three types of head-axes, the first two, the Tinguian-Kalinga axe; third, the Igorot; fourth, the Apayao. There is a noticeable difference between the slender blades of the first group and the short, thick blade of the Igorot, yet they are of the same general type. The Apayao weapon, on the other hand, presents a radical difference in form. Despite these variations, the axes of these three tribes present an interesting problem. So far as it known, these are the only tribes in the Philippines which make use of a head-axe, and it is believed that no similar weapon is found in the Malayan Islands. However, blades of striking resemblance do occur among the Naga of Assam [10]. It is possible that the weapons of these far separated regions may hark back to a common source, from which they received their instruction in iron working.

xxx

[10] Egerton, Handbook of Indian Arms (Wm. Allen and Co., London, 1880), p. 84; Shakespear, History of Upper Assam, Burma and Northeastern Frontier (MacMillan, London, 1914), p. 197, illustration.

Clearly, the book cited is an old one (1922). On the other hand, so far it still looks like that the northern Luzon head-axe is an original form, endemic strictly to northern Luzon ...

Unless evidence to the contrary is uncovered ...