So whilst looking into the Macuahuitl, I ran into various claims on how we don't actually have any authentic surviving specimen of the Macuahuitl type. According to wikipedia the last one was destroyed back in 1884.
After seeing the excellent weaponry collection over at the Peabody museum in Harvard, this struck me as somewhat surprising. We seem to have have quite a lot of ancient weaponry, recovered from ruins, battlefields, bogs, tombs and so on. I've even seen several surviving Aztec Atlatl in some collections. Yet, we have never managed to find a single authentic Macuahuitl in more than a century?
Is there a particular reason the Macuahuitl is "extinct" in terms of surviving specimen? Was it originally already rare? Is there something about its construction that makes it it unlikely to survive? Was there an active policy to destroy these weapons? Or is it just plain bad luck?
More generally, is it common for us to know of weapons through the historical records, but without ever finding a single physical instance of it?
As far as I'm aware there are no surviving Pot-de-fers.
Is there something about its construction that makes it it unlikely to survive?
Wooden weapons don't do too well (depending on the environment of course). I don't think we had many surviving 16th century Longbows before the Mary Rose was excavated. Gun carriages are an issue even from as recently as the Victorian period. (Andrew Lambert Warrior: Restoring the World's First Ironclad talks about having to recreate them from photos).
Obsidian blades would do better but I don't know how easy it would be to indentify them as coming from a Macuahuitl.