Jade

Pakal's skeleton was adorned with jade.

A jade mask covered his face.

Jade rings encircled his fingers.

Jade beads filled his mouth.

The tomb walls were decorated with stucco portraits of Pakal's ancestors.

rendered emerging from the earth like plants, and the sarcophagus lid itself, a masterpiece of Maya stone carving, depicted Pakal at the moment of death, falling along the axis of the world tree into the open jaws of the earth, descending into Sibalba.

Obsidian blades can be flaked to an edge only a few molecules thick, sharper than anything steel can produce even today.

And for ritual implements, including the lancets used in bloodletting ceremonies.

I know some hunters that always come in and ask me for it, but the truth is I don't really like dealing with it.

Jade, yeah, Jade.

I mean, you know Ivory, they used to use, pool tables used to use Ivory balls, you know, they used to, all of the balls.

Cubules, cubules, that's the one.

to jade, shall we? Back to jade, yeah.

There was a jade bracelet that would fit on your wrist, tiny little balls, sold for, I think, £15 million.

Where's jade from? Jade, I mean, you can get it...

The high-quality pieces they find a lot in China, but you can get it all around the world.

No two opals are alike, each one a frozen firework, a spectrum captured in stone.

Jade refers to two different minerals: jadeite and nephrite.

Jade has been revered for thousands of years, especially in China and Mesoamerica.

Yet jade is not a single mineral, but two distinct ones with similar appearance.

Jadeite is a pyroxene, sodium aluminum silicate, and is rarer and generally more valuable.

Nephrite is an amphibole, calcium magnesium silicate, and is more common.

Both are tough due to their interlocking fibrous crystal structure, making them ideal for carving.

This toughness is different from hardness.