Jade use in Mesoamerica

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Jade was a prized possession in ancient Mesoamerica.

"Jade" is a term like "marble" referring to extraordinary rocks formed from relatively common minerals. Extremely strong and translucent rocks based on magnesium aluminum silicates are called nephrite, found around the world and used by many Neolithic cultures, while the rarer high pressure sodium aluminum silicate mineral jadeite forms the jade most often seen as colorful gemstones. While jadeite was not widely used in China until the second millennium AD, the jadeite deposits of Central America started furnishing material for tools, weapons and art early in the second millennium BC, from the time of the Olmecs, who first started to work the stones, through the evolution and collapse of the Maya civilization. It was exported as tribute from the source region in Guatemala, albeit in diminishing amounts and declining quality, up to the Conquest.

Like all mono-mineralic rocks, nephrite and jadeite contain many trace elements besides the main ones in their crystal structure. The jadeite of Mesoamerica is often technically an omphacitite because of the magnesium, iron and alumiunum they contain, but just as heavily alloyed stainless steel remains steel, these often chemically complex minerals are still jade.

The "Olmec Blue" jade that has become eponymous(synonymous?) with the early culture that prized it enough to export it to Mexico owes its color to traces of iron and titanium, while the emerald green "chalchihuitl" jadeite that was worth a kings ransom in Maya and Aztec times contains trivalent chromium, and is technically a mixture of jadeite and the analogous sodium chromium silicate kosmochlor.

The archaeological search for the Olmec jade sources, which were largely lost around the time of the Maya collapse, began in 1799 when Alexander von Humboldt started his geological research in the New World; he wanted to see if the neolithic jadeite celts excavated from European megalithic sites like Stonehenge and Carnac shared sources with the similar looking jade celts from Mesoamerica. They do not.

From 1954 until 1999 the only documented source of jade in the region was the lowland Motagua Valley, into which jadeite eroded from the Guatemalan Highlands, but research begun by Harvard's Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology in the 1970's culminated in the redicovery of many ancient mines and alluvial sources in the mountainous regions flanking the valley at elevations up to 6,000 feet. From these, it was traded throughout the entire region and some of the ancient mines are connected by ancient dry stone paths. Large artifacts and preformed celts exported from these deposits in the formative period were extensively reworked and recut by successive cultures, and these second and higher generation artifacts are found in sites of many periods from Costa Rica to the Valley of Mexico.

Unlike nephrite, jadeite rocks are unstable at ordinary pressures and subject to corrosion and alteration by tropical weathering in the ground.

[edit] Uses

[edit] Art

Jade was used to make a variety of figurines, celts, necklaces, ear spools (circular earrings with a large hole in the center), belts, pectorals, small pieces which were inserted into the teeth, and other items. These sculptures include depictions of deities, people, shamanic transformations, animals and plants, as well as various abstract forms. Today, these jade sculptures are renowned as superb artwork throughout the world. Sculptures ranged in size from single beads, used for jewelry and decorations, to large carvings, such as the 4.42 kg head of the Maya sun god, found at Altun Ha.

[edit] Religion

The value of jade went far beyond its material worth: perhaps because of its color, mirroring that of water and vegetation, it was closely associated with life and death, thus possessing a great religious and spiritual importance.

The Maya placed jade beads in the mouth of the dead. Michael D. Coe has suggested that this practice relates to a sixteenth century funerary ritual performed at the deaths of Pokom Maya lords: "when it appears then that some lord is dying, they had ready a precious stone which they placed at his mouth when he appeared to expire, in which they believe that they took the spirit, and on expiring, they very lightly rubbed his face with it. It takes the breath, soul or spirit."

The Maya also associated jade with the wind. Many Maya jade sculptures and figurines of the wind god have been discovered, as well as many others displaying breath and wind symbols. In addition, caches of four jade objects placed around a central element which have been found are believed to represent not only the cardinal directions, but the directional winds as well.

The mechanical toughness of ground stone tools made of either form of jade explains their ubiquity in most Neolithic cultures with access to sources but the aesthetic and religious significance of the various colors remains a source of controversy and speculation. The bright green varieties may have been identified with the young Maize God, but the Olmec fascination with the unique blue jade of Guatemala, and its role in their rituals involving water sources remains a mystery.