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Utilitarian jade was still in evidence up to the end of Aztec times. Jade wedges, spears, axes, and knives, like those made in the earliest times, remained in use right up to the sixteenth century. Central America never really moved from the stone age to the metal age. Metal drills and metal tools were never used for jade-carving chores. As a matter of fact, even the rotary drill—extensively used—never was perfected beyond the simplest twirling of a hollow bamboo reed between the hands.
With bamboo reed, wood polishers, and abrasives of quartz sand, crushed jade, garnet, and hematite, the New World carvers managed to produce a marvelous assemblage of objects. Figures of gods, such as Kinich Ahau, the Sun God; Xolotl, the horrifying guide for the dead through the underworld; and the winged serpent god were three of many. Jaguar and skull carvings were typical examples of a tendency to accentuate the terrifying and grotesque. Ceremonial axe gods, roughly in the shape of an axe blade, had the upper half carved in a figure and the lower part in a curved blade.