[Aztlan] Maya Jadeite Axe found on Antigua

[michael ruggeri]

Jade Axes Proof of Vast Ancient Caribbean Network, Experts Say

Charles Petit
for National Geographic News
June 12, 2006
A discovery of ancient jade could shake up old notions of the New  
World before Columbus. Scientists say they have traced 1,500-year-old  
axe blades found in the eastern Caribbean to ancient jade mines in  
Central America 1,800 miles (2,900 kilometers) away, New York's  
American Museum of Natural History announced late last month.

The blades were excavated in the late 1990s by a Canadian  
archaeologist on the island of Antigua in the West Indies

But the jade used to make the blades almost certainly came from Maya  
mines in distant Guatemala (see map of Guatemala), says mineralogist  
George Harlow of the American Museum of Natural History.

The find may call into question a once dominant archaeological  
picture of the pre-Columbian Caribbean.

Previous theories held that a few big or budding civilizations  
existed on the mainland of Central America, with only isolated,  
village-based societies on islands in the Caribbean Sea.

The new analysis gives weight to a competing view, which suggests  
that organized, long-distance trade networks were based primarily on  
those islands.

"There has been a closed mind-set that these [ancient] people out  
here were primitive, but we are learning there was a whole world out  
here we don't yet fully know about," said Reg Murphy, an  
archaeologist at the Museum of Antigua and Barbuda in St. John's,  
Antigua.

Murphy collaborated with Harlow on the research.

Murphy says it's likely that complex societies not only existed on  
the islands but also communicated with other cultures in South  
America along the Orinoco and Amazon Rivers.

"Those rivers [in South America] were highways of exchange that  
extended around the coast all the way to Guatemala," he said.

Harlow and Murphy's research team reported its findings in the April  
issue of the journal Canadian Mineralogist.

Saladoid Culture

The small, triangular jade blades found in Antigua are relics of the  
Saladoid culture, a society named for its home region along the  
Orinoco River in modern-day Venezuela (See map of Venezuela).

Known for their elaborate pottery, the Saladoid spread to Caribbean  
islands as far north as Puerto Rico by 500 B.C.

Archaeologists have excavated jade items in the West Indies before,  
but the source of the jade has been a puzzle, Harlow explains.

No jade deposits are known to exist in the eastern Caribbean. Also,  
many archaeologists have held that the Saladoid were insulated from  
the wider world, their travels limited to short canoe trips between  
islands.

Harlow says the jade used to make the Antigua blades is of a  
distinct, very hard form called jadeite.

Only a dozen jadeite surface deposits are known in the world,  
including a vein on the north side of Guatemala's Motagua River  
Valley, he adds.

But until recently Guatemalan jade deposits did not match the Antigua  
jade or other, high-quality forms found in some Maya tombs.

Then came the devastating rains of Hurricane Mitch in 1998. Violent  
runoff brought chunks of extremely high quality jade careering down  
the rocky gorges on the south side of the Motagua River.

"As soon as we heard about that, we started looking for its source,"  
said Harlow, a veteran of previous work in the region.

His team found jadeite there of a quality beyond anything recently  
mined in Guatemala, he says.

The samples they brought back came just in time to answer questions  
about the Antigua jade pieces.

Shortly after the new deposits were discovered, Harlow received the  
Antigua blades, dated from 250 to 500 A.D., from the late University  
of Calgary archaeologist Alfred Levinson.

Harlow says he immediately suspected that the axe blades were from  
the newly confirmed deposits, based on the jade's unique composition.

He compared the texture of both the Antiguan and Guatemalan jade and  
measured their ratios of minerals such as mica, albite, omphacite,  
and quartz.

Harlow found that the newfound deposits and the Antigua pieces bore  
the same distinctive quartz grains, which are absent from jade mined  
anywhere else, he says.

"If that [Antigua] stuff is not from Guatemala, the fates are playing  
some kind of game," Harlow said.

Proof of Trade?

Among those welcoming the finding is archaeologist Richard Callaghan  
of the University of Calgary, who was not part of Harlow's team.

He has studied remains of early Caribbean island societies for  
decades. He says the discovery provides new evidence of long-range  
trade in the pre-Columbian Caribbean.

Based on his research of Saladoid pottery and other artifacts,  
Callaghan believes that the civilization was sophisticated enough to  
maintain organized, long-distance contact with other cultures.

"I think those guys could go by boat straight from Puerto Rico or  
other islands all the way to [Mexico's] Yucatán [Peninsula]," he said.

The trade routes were most likely traveled by big, seaworthy canoes,  
Callaghan says. The vessels may have resembled the dugout logs seen  
centuries later by Spanish explorers.

Such seafaring ability, Callaghan adds, may have persisted well after  
the Saladoid culture faded around A.D. 1000.

The culture was replaced by Caribbean peoples collectively called the  
Taino, whom the Spanish later conquered and all but exterminated.

Murphy, the Antigua curator, shares Callaghan's expansive view of the  
Saladoid's cultural reach.

Murphy hopes the jade-axe findings may spur further study into the  
origins of other exotic, elaborately carved stones found among  
Saladoid relics.

For example, he says, some Saladoid artifacts are made of a type of  
turquoise not known to occur naturally anywhere in the Caribbean.

"It could have come all the way from Chile," Murphy said.

Picture of jadeite axe here;

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/06/060612-caribbean.html


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