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​​Evidence for the production of worked jade artefacts found in the landmass now known as China dates to at least seven millennia ago, during the middle to late Neolithic period (c. 5000-1700 BCE). The earliest worked jades so far discovered come from the North China Neolithic Cultures of Xinglongwa (c. 6200 – c. 5400 BCE), Chahai (c. 4700 – c. 3000 BCE), and Zhaobaogao (c. 5400 – c. 4500 BCE) located in northeast China’s Inner Mongolia and Liaoning provinces, dating to between the fifth to third millennia BCE. By the fourth millennia BCE, other Neolithic jade working cultures had also emerged in China’s northeast, southeast, and northwest, such as the Hongshan culture (c. 4700 – c. 2900 BCE) in the northeast. Jade artefacts excavated from burials and sites associated with these cultures indicate that jade was already regarded a prestige material intended for use by the socio-political elite and valued by all for its aesthetic qualities, for its toughness and durability, and for its ability to signify social, political and religious power; and fulfil ritual, protective, and spiritual needs. Local sources of nephrite jade (ruanyu) used by late Neolithic cultures in the southeast, such as the Hemudu (c. 5500 – c. 3300 BCE) and Liangzhu (c. 3400 – c. 2250 BCE) cultures, have been identified in Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces and it is likely that other deposits of nephrite were found and mined elsewhere in the lower regions of the Yangzi River. Other sources may well have been exhausted, and knowledge of them long since lost. The nephrite used by early jade working cultures in the northeast is also believed to have come from local sources.

 

Nephrite is a remarkably tough stone, which when polished acquires a uniquely soft and lustrous semi-translucent sheen, and in addition it possesses a distinctive sonorous quality. It seems likely that nephrite was initially valued by Neolithic cultures for its practical uses, for both its toughness—or resistance to breaking, chipping or cracking—and hardness—or resistance to scratching and abrading—when used for weapons or agricultural tools, and only later revered for its secondary characteristics which include a unique combination of visual appeal, tactile warmth, and musical resonance—characteristics a piece of worked jade can retain almost indefinitely across centuries and even millennia, qualities which can also serve to make the dating of jades notoriously difficult.

 

The Chinese term for jade (yu) appears as a written character from the very earliest development of systematic Chinese writing during the Shang dynasty (c. 1600-c. 1050 BCE). It seems to have been used to refer to any hard, beautiful stone, and was not restricted to nephrite and jadeite in its usage until well into the first millennia CE. The Chinese term yu can include not only the two “true jades” (zhenyu) of nephrite and jadeite (feicui or yingyu) but also minerals that when highly polished closely resemble jade in appearance such as agate, turquoise, quartz, serpentine, bowenite, soapstone, marble and even glass or crystal, though the Chinese later termed these “false jades” or “pseudojades”. These latter can all be scratched or incised with steel, while nephrite cannot. Steel, which typically lies between 5 and 6.5 on Moh’s Scale is comparable in hardness to nephrite and so is insufficiently hard to effectively work the stone. The form of jade being discussed and described here is nephrite, as jadeite, which is found in Myanmar, was almost unknown in China before the eighteenth century.

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                                                                                             Kevin McLoughlin, PhD

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