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El jade y su relacion cultural
Primeros reportes de yacimientos
Jade in Guatemala
Jade in Chiapas

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For a long time the archaeologists, who studied the cultural evidences of the Mesoamerican people, have been asking themselves about the stone sources, which were the base for the excellent jade works. Unlike the other materials, which as well were used for the production of art objects, such as turquoise, amber, gold and obsidian, there is no evidence of the existence of a quarry or mine, which supplied the raw material for the Olmec, Mayan and Aztec craftsmen. 

This situation lead to the conclusion that the sources of the Mesoamerican jade were completely exhausted or that the jade, which was found in the Mesoamerican art work came from other latitudes. Some theories refer to the great cultural relationship of some Asian people with the Mesoamerican people. On both sides they used to burry royal personages with jade garments, including masks of this material.

This caused the question of the posibility that across the Bering strait there was an emigration from Siberia to Alaska which allowed as well the transportation of China’s skills. But there has to be considered that these migrations took place about 10 000 years before, in China as well as in Mesoamerica, the jade works were objects of devotion.

There has been proof that marine migrations contacted people from the south Pacific and Polinesia with American people, mainly from the south of the continent. It is probable that these contacts were an interchange of the skills for the work and devotion of the jade stones. On the islands south of New Zealand, where jade sources of the variety Nefrite are located, the Maori Indigenous people have worked and venerated the jade since 10 centuries with the same devotion as the Mesoamerican people.

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In 1910 the minerologist Wiliam Niven, found in the Mexican state of Guerrero, on the banks of the Oro River, stone nodes, which were given to the National Geological Institute in March of the same year, for their analysis. In 1927 it was reported in the newspaper Excelsior, that a jade vein had been discovered in the Toliman ravine in Zimapan Hidalgo. According to documents of the Bachelor Ramon Mena, head of the archaeological department of the National Museum in 1927, there were also found small nodes in the basin fo the Balsas River, in the mountains of Oaxaca and near Xochicalco in the Mexican state of Morelos.

It is very important to point out, that between the years 1863 and 1875, the french geologist Augusting Alexis Damour classified for the first time the different jade varieties, he used for the analysis of stones from places all over the world. In Paris he received from the Mexican government various samples, including jade beads found in the valley of mexico, an axe from Oaxaca and a thin plate with relief, which was taken from an Indigenous man of San Miguel Mitontic, Chiapas, who died in the rebellion of 1869.

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Jade in the Motagua River

In 1952, Robert Leslie, an American farmer, who worked on a tomato plantation in the Zacapa province in Guatemala, found between the discs of his plough a 10 kg stone, which drew his attention due to its weight. This fact was reported to the archaeologists, who were working at the archaeological site of Tikal. And so the geologist William Foshag from the Smithonian Institute investigated the evidences and determined so the jade sources of the variety jadeite, which are located in the Sierra de las Minas on the left bank of the Motagua River in the east of Guatemala.

In 1954 this first stone was brought to the Smithonian Institute in Washington D.C., where it was identified with the number 201238.

After that there were found nodes in mountain outcrops on both parts of the banks of the Motagua River and round pebbles in the lowlands of the tributary rivers of the Motagua, such as the San Diego, Tambor, Palmillas, Huijo and Jute Rivers.

A very highly-regarded variety of jadeite, the rose lilac colour has been quarried in the last years in the surroundings of the mountains, which form the Tobon volcano in the province of Jalapa.

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Jade in Chiapas      

In the cronicles of the Mexica people (Aztec), it is mentioned that around the year 1498, Ahuizote, the 8th Mexica king, finally conquested the Soconusco area and the towns of Chamula and Zinacantan. These towns were destroyed and the people were taken as slaves, avoiding their total destruction  before the promise  was kept to deliver periodically Chalchihuites (the name of the jade in Nahuatl language), which were found in the nearby mountain.    

Small quantities of jadeite and serpentina have been found and analysed since 1988 in outcrops in the basin of the San Pablo River, which flows down from the Tzontehuitz mountains through the municipality of Chenalho and Chalchihuitan.

Banks of Serpentina, a material associated to the jadeita, were reported in northern parts of the sierra de los Cuchumatanes and also in the mountain massif of the Sierra Madre between Mexico and Guatemala, which forms the basin of the Grijalva River in the vicinity of the Motozintla region.

The Cuchumatanes are a mountain system connected with the Sierra de las minas and the Sierra de Chuacus. The origin of these mountain systems goes back more than 120 million years to the cretaceous period of the mesozoic era, when the carst terrain, which makes up the north of the Yucatan peninsula, emerged as well.

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