[Billman]

Thanks for those images of the dreaded Dacian falx - again lots of debate on the origins - tool or weapon??? I guess that like the bill of the medieval English footsoldier, the beidane of the Italian Swiss border region of Piemonte, the trombash/trumbash of the Mangebetu and other sickle weapons of central Africa, the tool and the weapon are closely related, even interchangeable at times.... which came first is a bit like the chicken and the egg question..

In England a national standing army, centrally equipped, only came into being after the Napoleonic Wars - before that local squires raised local yeomanry companies that had to equip themselves.... hence the diversity of weapon shapes and types (with the possible exception of the long bow). The Romans may have been a bit better organised - but most of their enemies appear to have been small kingdoms locally equipped. Only large and powerful countries or city-states could afford to have and equip a permanent fighting force.

We have digressed a little from machetes, but it is likely that their development follows the same process - an existing tool (billhook, pruning hook or vine-leaf pruning knife) or weapon (sword or cutlass) altered to suit a local need - in the same way that over 200 regional billhook shapes exist in both the UK and France - all to carry out the same basic function of cutting geen wood, but all altered to suit the user and the local conditions (the hedges of Devon are different to those of Wales, which are different to those of the Midlands or Yorkshire and so on)...

Even the death of a smith can have an effect on the way a weapon or tool is/was made -the later Tenterdon billhooks made by Elwell c 1960 are the same shape, and have the same stamps, but are twice the thickness and weight of those made 20 years earlier.... different smith - different tool (or weapon)...