In the beginning, says a Chinese myth, man stumbled helplessly over the earth, beset by wild beasts, until the storm god above took pity. He forged a rainbow into jade axes and tossed them to earth for man to discover.
Appearing in all the hues suggested by the legend, this stone has long obsessed us. It yielded
durable weapons and tools for our ancestors, many of whom revered jade more than gold. From Asia
to Central America to Canada we still scour the earth for jade—but look-alikes abound, and finding
the true Stone of Heaven can be like chasing a rainbow.
There are two types (names) of Jade: nephrite and jadeite. The more plentiful nephrite, a silicate of calcium and magnesium [usually with some iron], is jade from China. It is also found in British Columbia, Australia, New Zealand, Russia, South Korea, Switzerland, Italy, Poland, Taiwan, California, Alaska, and Wyoming. With the same chemical composition, a white stone with regular crystals is tremolite and a green one, actinolite. It is nephrite only when its needle-shaped gains are tightly interwoven in felted, fibrous structure—a physical state produced during its underground formation. Nephrite (5.5 to 6.5 on the Mohs' scale) is harder than most steel (5.0 to 6.0) and reputedly the toughest of all rocks, a measure of resistance to breaking. Depending on trace elements, nephrite occurs in a variety of colors, including white, which the Chinese long favored.
Jadeite, a silicate of sodium and aluminum, has the bright green associated with jewelry, though it is also found in a rainbow of less valuable colors: lavender, black, white, duller greens. Commercially it comes only from Burma, Guatemala, and Russia. Jadeite (Mohs' 6.5 to 7.0) is slightly harder than nephrite, but is not as tough.
When the Spanish conquistadors entered the territory of the declining Maya civilization in search of gold, they overlooked what the Maya considered a more valuable resource, their jade mines. Along with the Aztecs and other Mesoamerican groups inhabiting Mexico and Central America, the Maya were avid users of jade, sculpting and polishing the rare, hard, usually green rock into ornaments, figurines, and other treasured objects. But the material was new to the sixteenth-century Europeans, who had yet to appreciate the riches of Asian jade. In some cases they excitedly mistook jade artifacts for emeralds.
Spanish conquerors adopted the Mesoamerican Indian belief that the bright green material could cure kidney disorders. So Spaniards began wearing the talisman too, calling it piedra de ifada—stone of the loins. The name stuck and should have been translated into French as pierre de l'ejade; but through what some think is a printer's error, it appeared as le jade. And the name stuck.
Jade was prized by Mesoamericans as far back as 3,500 years ago. Prominent among the earliest
craftsmen were the ancient Olmec of southern Veracruz and Tabasco, Mexico, who were unequaled at
cutting and polishing jade rocks. Judging by the quantity and quality of their artifacts made of
blue-green rock, the Olmec apparently preferred that color over others. Maya jade artifacts, many
of which have been unearthed at important sites and graves of the Classic period (roughly A.D. 250
to 900), are more often a mottled green and white, while their choice pieces were of an emerald
green variety.
The Mesoamericans and Chinese worked jade in the same basic ways. Slices were cut using abrasive saws moistened with a slurry of quartz or garnet or sand. Holes were drilled by spinning bamboo, hollow bird bones, wooden or metal points coated with a wet abrasive. Carvings were polished with jade powder or sand. Months or years were often required to fashion a single piece.
The Indians of Central America also fashioned jade as cooking implements. After the heated jade rocks were red hot, they were placed in a pot which brought water to a boil in seconds.
Mesoamericans and the Chinese also used jade amazingly alike. They even developed comparable beliefs regarding the stone's influence on health and honored dead chiefs with mosaic jade masks and ornaments. Moctezuma, the Aztec ruler who confronted the Spaniards, pinpointed the difference between his Indian values and those of metal-crazed Europeans. After his first meeting with Cortés, Moctezuma reportedly told his advisers the equivalent of, "Thank God they're only after the gold and silver. They don't know about jade."
Knowledge of the source or sources of Mesoamerican jade was lost following the upheavals of the European conquest and remained a mystery as late as the 1950s. Since jade artifacts are distributed widely in Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean, for a century or more people have searched for sources over a large area, even speculating that the raw material originated in Asia. Finally, in 1952 a sample rock found near the small town of Manzanal, Guatemala, in the central valley of the Rio Motagua, was identified as jade. Further investigation revealed a nine-mile-long zone on the north side of the valley, paralleling the highway leading to the Atlantic coast, that was mined for jade in prehistoric times and can still yield commercially useful amounts.
But jade in Central America is often not what it appears. In recent years, it has been brought to light that most of the Mesoamerican pieces on the market are not only fakes, but are not even jade or jadeite. Many museum pieces have also been detected as "not-genuine" jade. The funerary mask pictured to the left in this paragraph has been tested to show that only the ear flares are true jadeite. The rest of the mask is made of another green-colored stone. However, there are many, many examples of Mesoamerican art which are crafted of genuine jadeite.
Jade Tidbits
Green jade - courage, wisdon, justice, mercy, fidelity, humility, generosity, and blood
detoxification.
Butterfat jade - relaxation.
Lavender or purple jade - inspires love, optimism, and beauty.
Yellow jade - assimilation, digestion, understanding and empathy.
The stone at work:
Two-headed jaguar
Maya funerary mask
Maya ear spools
