Gentlemen,
As I understand it, taiahas don't have midribs. They are rounded in cross section, unlike Tim's club. REALLY unlike Tim's club. As for their ancestry, there are similar clubs here and there throughout Polynesia. It's an old design.
From the pictures, it doesn't particularly look like palm wood, but I could be wrong. Palm wood has longitudinal fibers, but it doesn't have rays or growth rings I see evidence both of those in this specimen, which suggests to me that it's from a broadleaf tree. (Explanation growth rings should be obvious. Rays are lines of cells in the wood that connect the different growth rings, and run perpendicular both to the length of the trunk and the circumference of the growth rings, if that makes sense).
I'm sticking with the Philippines on this one. It's a wooden sword.
F
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