Obsidian

Abstract

This chapter examines how the obsidian craters just east of the Sierra Nevada mountain range erupted in the last few millennia, some in recent centuries. Obsidian, because it lacks the constraints imposed by an internal molecular order, can in fact be flaked into tools with edges that are many times sharper than a razor blade. In the Sierra Nevada, the authors found flakes of obsidian, shards left by indigenous hunters who worked the black volcanic glass into arrowpoints, their edges sharpened to translucence, to hunt the animals that would sustain their loved ones. Throughout their millennia of continuous presence in the Mono Basin, they would have witnessed volcanic eruptions give birth to the region's pale hills. The chapter then looks at the deep resemblance between the making of a mountain and the making of a mind.</p