Gem Profile 16: Guatemalan Jade   
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    While diamond is the hardest gem known to man, jadeite is the toughest. It has to be. Just look where it grows: in geological bumper zones, called faults, between jostling continents. There, in veins and trenches along the tectonic boundary lines of shifting land masses (called “plates”), dense , mammoth boulders of ornery, pressure-resistant jadeite form.

        When most people think of geologic faults, they think of the West Coast’s San Andreas Fault that links the North American and Pacific plates-and whose bumps and grinds often trigger earthquakes and cause frequent ground tremors in cities like San Francisco.

        But America’s jadeite is found in Guatemala’s less testy Montague Fault that connects the North American and Caribbean plates. There, nestled in the country’s central highlands 6,000 feet above sea level, is a jade-rich zone 400 kilometers long and 80 kilometers wide. The jade does not occur in large areas. Rather is occurs as intermittent rocks and boulders-most quite small but some the size and weight of automobiles.

        For thousands of years, precious jadeite from the Motague jadeite zone was plentiful enough to allow this sodium aluminum silicate to become the principal gem mainstay of the Olmec and Mayan cultures, which flourished in Central America from around 2000 B.C. until the 16^th century A.D. That’s when the Spanish Conquistadors subjugated the native tribes. Because the Spaniards were obsessed with finding gold, they ignored jade. Gradually, the location of the mines was lost.

        But somehow the mystique of American jade lived on and jade enthusiasts dreamed of finding the original source. The dream made sense. Some surviving pre-Columbian jade artifacts have a gemological beauty equal to their sculptural attractiveness. What’s more, jade was the predominant material used to make both sacred and secular objects in Meso-America (part of Mexico and all of Central America). Indeed, it seems to have been the mineral equivalent of gold for the indigenous Indian civilizations. For them, jade was as much an asset and an amulet, as an adornment. Was quantity the sole reason for its importance? Or did quality matter also?

        As early as the 1950’s. prospectors, treasure hunters, archaeologists, and gemologists began to recover jade from the Motagua region and to suspect it was the home of a great jade motherlode. Yet most of the material they found was opaque and afflicted with an over-dark spinach-green color, making it more suitable for souvenirs and trinkets than fine carvinfs and jewelry. Then, in 1975, Mary Lou and Jay Ridinger, two of the best known miners and marketers of Guatemalan jadeite, rediscovered the first of the ancient Motagua deposits and, with it, a better grade of material.

        But it wasn’t until 1998 when Hurricane Mitch rampaged through the area and left many jade outcroppings exposed for the first time in centuries that the full Motague motherlode was discovered. It’s easy to see why Guatemalan jade began to capture attention. Miners at operations launched since 2000 have been finding boulders with gemmy sections that have yielded some of the most promising cabochons and carvings ever to come from Guatemala. Now these miners hope to cut finished stones that may ultimately rival those from Asia.

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