Guatemalan jade find a
historic discovery: scientists
ABC ONLINE 24/5/2002
Scientists from the United States say they have found huge deposits of jade in Guatemala,
which they believe are the source of the stone used by early American cultures for their
most valued objects.
Thee BBC is reporting the discovery is the culmination of decades of searching,
particularly for the source of the blue jade, made into exquisite artefacts by the Olmec
civilisation in Central America thousands of years ago.
American scientists helped by local experts had been exploring a mountainous region in the
east of Guatemala for more than two years hoping to find the mysterious source of the
jade, used by early civilisations in the Americas to make many of their objects of
worship, masks and jewellery.
The project started after significant amounts of jade artefacts and rough stones began to
appear in shops and markets around Guatemala some four years ago.
That led experts to suspect that Hurricane Mitch, which devastated the region in 1998 and
provoked many landslides, had washed jade into riverbeds and exposed all veins of the
semi-precious stone.
END OF REPORT
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