How did primitive people differentiate jade from stone?

The Chinese people's love for jade should be rooted in the thousands of years of Chinese civilization history. The early maturity of prehistoric jade culture has made jade the cornerstone of Chinese civilization.

The objects that have been excavated have pushed the history of jade processing back to the Xinglongwa Culture and Chahai Culture 8,000 years ago. From the perspective of cultural development, this is indeed a precocious period.

It is obvious that jade artifacts are the product of jade culture developing to a certain stage. There must have been a long process of jade differentiation before the appearance of jade artifacts.

This most likely occurred during the Late Paleolithic and Mesolithic periods, when primitive people constantly discerned the properties of jade and stone, selecting jade from stone as an ornament or object of worship.

So, what standards did primitive people use to measure whether something was jade or stone?

There are three standards:

The first and most primitive standard is beauty and ugliness .

Because jade varies in color, texture, gloss, and shape, primitive people gradually developed two different perceptions of beauty and ugliness during their long-term contact process. Over time, they gradually came to believe that beautiful stones are jade, and ugly or ugly stones are stones.

Xu Shen of the Eastern Han Dynasty wrote "Shuowen Jiezi" to explain jade: "The beautiful stone has five virtues."

The second criterion is "sacred object".

The primitive beliefs in the stage of natural god worship made primitive people believe that mountains, trees, and jade stones all had gods, and primitive shamanism gradually took shape. At this time, jade gradually shifted from the hands of ordinary people to the hands of shamans who presided over sacrifices and was monopolized by them.

Later, jade, as the materialized symbol of God, had a mysterious and important position in the superstructure of primitive religion, witchcraft and sacrifice, political rule and other fields in prehistoric society.

The third criterion is "virtue".

"Virtue" is originally a concept and creed that regulates people's social life. It appeared in the Western Zhou Dynasty and took shape in the Eastern Zhou Dynasty.

During the period of a hundred schools of thought, Confucianists linked their own ideas with jade, using jade to popularize and visualize the profound Confucian concepts, and connected them with the character and behavior of gentlemen, thus integrating the concept of jade virtue with the social practice of gentlemen.

Confucius said: "It is not because of the abundance of jade that we despise it, but because of the scarcity of jade that we value it. In the past, gentlemen compared virtue to jade. It is warm and moist, which is benevolence; it is fine and dense, which is knowledge; it hangs like a string, which is courtesy; it makes a long and clear sound when struck, and it bends at the end, which is music; its flaws do not cover its merits, and its merits do not cover its flaws, which is loyalty; its credibility is spread all around, which is trustworthiness; its aura is like a white rainbow, which is heaven; its spirit is seen in mountains and rivers, which is earth; its jade is particularly clear, which is virtue; and what is valued by all in the world is the Tao. The Book of Songs says: "When I think of a gentleman, he is as warm as jade, so gentlemen value him."

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