The team scanned 10 human bone daggers and acquired a modern cassowary dagger from the 1970s. They tested the cassowary dagger mechanically—stabbing it through urethane and bending it until it ...

“They made them to be stronger—which we interpreted as a deliberate effort to preserve the tremendous social prestige associated with possessing a human bone dagger.” Dominy and his ...

Writing in 1914, German explorer Schultze Jen described its use: The lethal point at which one aims [the bone dagger] is the neck just above the breastbone end of the collarbone, the area of the ...

Bone daggers from New Guinea. a) Human bone dagger attributed to the Upper Sepik River. b) Cassowary bone dagger attributed to the Abelam people. (Credit: Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College)Daggers ...

According to a new study, the dagger fashioned from human bone is stronger than the giant bird's thighbone, largely because of the way the warriors of New Guinea carved the weapons. [In Photos ...

In New Guinea, bands of brave warriors once used daggers crafted from bone to finish off their enemies in hand-to-hand combat. They expropriated bones from two very different sources – one was ...

“We slowly bent the cassowary bone dagger until it broke. All the while, we measured how the bone resisted breaking,” Nathaniel Dominy, who performed the tests, told Gizmodo. “We used this ...

On Wednesday, an unusual study concluded that human thigh bone did not make for better dagger material, but was rather a symbol of prestige. This can be deduced from the fact that daggers made ...

How did the scientists figure this little detail out? By using a bone dagger themselves, of course! They bought a bone dagger made from the leg bone of the Cassowary, a large ground-dwelling bird ...

On Wednesday, an unusual study concluded that human thigh bone did not make for better dagger material, but was rather a symbol of prestige. This can be deduced from the fact that daggers made ...

A handout picture released from researcher Nathaniel Dominy shows a human thigh bone dagger attributed to the Upper Sepik River (up) and cassowary bone dagger attributed to the Abelam people (down ...