

The main and only benefit of an obsidian blade is its potential for sharpness.

Certain states want to prevent over-picking by making permits a requirement. If you’re ever wanting to find some cool stones (or glass in this case), make sure to check if you need permitting to take them home. To get really specific, if you’re ever passing through Yellowstone National Park, there’s been tons of obsidian discovered between the Mammoth Hot Springs and North Geyser Basin. Specifically, in America, deposits have been found in Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, Texas, Utah, Washington, Oregon, and Idaho. Just to name a few: Argentina, Australia, Canada, Chile, Georgia, Greece, Italy, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, Papa New Guinea, Peru, Turkey, and the United States of America. This naturally occurring volcanic glass can be found in places where there are, or were volcanoes. The human race may have evolved very differently otherwise. Think about it! We have some very brave and hairy people to thank for heading straight into a cooling lava field. Obsidian can be used as a flint starter, and coincidentally, humans started utilizing fire around the same time that obsidian was utilized. The way that obsidian fractures are so sharp, that it wouldn’t even require the tool to be sharpened into anything. Obsidian blades were often found with the remains of Homo erectus, and it is believed that these technologies developed nearly 1.76 million years ago. This age is classified through the first practices of stone tool usage. The first-ever known historical use takes us into the Acheulean age. But at the same time, it is classified as a mineraloid, since it has mineral qualities, but they are too variable to be pure mineral. It cannot be considered a mineral, because as a glass it is not crystalline, whereas minerals are. It is extremely hard, but unfortunately brittle. It’s an amorphous element, meaning that when it fractures it does so into impossibly sharp shards. High silica content in lava results in high viscosity, so when it runs it cools very quickly and turns into glass. Lapis Obsidianus is an igneous rock - ignis comes from the Latin word for “fire” - and it’s formed through the cooling and solidification of magma or lava. In order to understand the pros and cons of an obsidian blade, we must first know where it comes from. Where can I find an obsidian knife? Obsidian is Literally Lava
